Bill Davis
Forum Replies Created
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Your idea isn’t “wrong” it’s just very dependent upon your particular board’s signal flow.
Most consoles have EQ built into the channel strips. If this is NOT enough EQ to handle specific room problems, the traditional solution is to use Channel INSERTS to pull that strips signal out – route it through the EQ or feedback eliminator) and then back into the same channel strip for level control.
This keeps the processing isolated to that particular channel strip and doesn’t affect any other board signal or channel.
On many boards, the channel insert is a single 1/4″ jack that expects to see a stereo plug. Insert plugs are wired such that the insert plug carries BOTH a send circuit and a receive circuit. Properly wired, this single plug both feeds the channel strip signal OUT to a device like a stand alone EQ and also brings the same signal BACK into the strip via the same plug. So you need cables properly wired with a stereo 1/4″ plug on one end – and TWO (typically) XLR connectors (wired in mono) on the other end – one of which is configured as the send and the other as the receive.
Do a web search on “gain structure” or “audio channel strip operation” and you should get good resources to help you understand the basic signal flow – then look up your own specific mixer to understand where and what patch points are available to allow you to access the channel strip signals at the point where injecting your EQ makes the most sense.
Good luck.
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I guess when you think about it, a trailer is the movie further (and ruthlessly) compressed in time.
For a movie with enough content to stand that – it can be a window into what to expect.
But if the movie is structured like so many today – with a “cut to the chase” attitude. Then the trailer shows you all the “chases” in advance – leaving little for the movie to rely on to sustain your interest.
In fact, you could argue that the very act of SEEING the trailer makes it impossible for the punch lines to have any real effect in the flow of the picture since they’re already familiar from the trailer!
Smart trailer editors should illuminate the setup and ask the questions that the audience finds interesting – but never simply show all the “highlights” which is telegraphing the movie’s structure and story too far in advance.
My 2 cents anyway.
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Perception rules.
I won’t risk the sources, but I trust them like they were family. Big Name tech company. Big Event. A few years ago, back when money was loose, they bought a HUGE fancy tent – like think Cique du Solie – in order to hold a big annual outdoor event in a big west coast city. Cost Mega-bux. Was approved and costed out to be used for the next 3 to 5 years for said event.
The following year, the economy took the dive. – so they mothballed the BIG tent they already owned and went out and purchased YET ANOTHER much smaller tent in which to hold that years shindig.
The point is that they couldn’t risk the PERCEPTION that they were over-spending in tough times – even when the reality was that they spent MORE to achieve that perception than just using what they had already paid for.
Thus often operates the world.
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YES – there are substantial issues.
Tungsten technology and LED technology are TOTALLY different ways to generate light.
The primary difference is that in almost every case, tungsten light issues from a point source. Then the mirror geometry and the lens technology place IN FRONT of that point source determines the spread, quality and throw of the light. An excellent example of the difference between two housings around a similar point source is in a Fresnel fixture verses an elipsoidel fixture. One (the fresnel) softens the nature of the beam while directing most of the light energy out the front. A fresnel lens is unique in that if you look at the light it throws at a distance, the edges of the light verses dark area are somewhat fuzzy – yet still distinct. If you move the blade of a set of barn doors to block the beam, you get a similar fizzy edge, but the SHAPE of the cut is still defined.
For a LEKO (elipsoidal fixture) that fuzzy line will be sharp and distinct. Lekos use a shiny mirror that concentrates all the light out of the front of the insturment through a CLEAR lens that keeps the beam focused. It throws a sharply defined light shape the edges of which are clear and distinct. This is excellent, for example for casting clear patterns from gobos. When you use a barn door or internal shutter to “cut” a leko, you get a sharp edge to the shadow/light transfer zone.
Now for the LED. An LED fixture works NOTHING like the above. To understand LED lighting you have to imagine that you took 100 LEKOS and ganged them together in a 10×10 grid. Then shrunk the result down to a 1 foot square. EACH LED is it’s own focused insturment projecting it’s light forward.
Put a barn door in front of the beam and what happens? Just what would happen if you put a sheet of plywood in front of a grid of 100 lekos. The OTHER non-cut off lekos would still have enough spread to cover most of the same area of light – with just some overall lowering of the light value. There’s NO line of cut off! Keep closing off the barn door and eventually, you’ll block all but a single vertical line of LEDs and at that point, the light casts what looks like a venetian blind pattern.
There’s NOTHING equivelent between an LED source and a tungsten one except that they both blast out photons.
And, BTW, those photon will likely be of differing color temperatures when you compare tungsten to current LED technology.
Tungsten is well known. At full power it’s fixed around 3200 degrees kelvin. WHile it shifts toward the red spectrum when dimmed, that’s well understood.
LEDs are manufactured all over the map. Some of the expensive ones used for video lighting are purpose manufactured to be VERY close to the 3200k standard of tungsten – or the 5600k standard of “daylight” sources. But less expensive ones can have PRONOUNCED shifts in spectrum. Sometimes, this shift can be covered by corrective gels. Some times, cheap led’s might NOT be as correctable.
So you have two TOTALLY different light generating technologies.
The one area where LEDs are incredibly superior to tungsten is the fact that they take a FRACTION of the power of Tungsten to generate usable light.
Tungsten verses LED is not just Apples and Oranges – but Apples and Pineapples at the heart of the matter.
So you’ve GOT to know what you want. If vitamin C is the critical need, get some oranges. If you need SOUR, go for the pineapple. If you want to back a pie, well – there you go.
You can’t do everything with one bushel of any ONE of them. And having a couple of the technologies on hand means you better be a darn good cook, because I don’t know of a lot of beginning cooks that would benefit from a larder that has starts with a bunch of apples – but then brings in a bunch of oranges and/or pineapples. And expects to significantly vary the menu with ease.
Good luck.
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Not to put too fine a point on it – but for as long as I’ve been around audio, my studio toolkit has included a few non-lubricated – non-powdered “plain vanilla” condoms specifically for slapping on shotgun mics if it starts raining.
Not only is it ideal mic protection, but making the trip into the drugstore was excellent training for my son when he was about 16 – he was typically mortified at the whole process – but overcoming those particularly nerves early might just save his life someday.
Your mileage may most certainly vary.
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You can’t really RECORD voiceovers using speakers since you’ll setup a feedback loop.
So that’s a headphone only situation.
As to monitoring back your recordings, the rule of thumb is to listen to the final product on whatever is the closest to what your AUDIENCE will hear it on.
That’s why audio suites since the beginning of the modern recording era have not only the large “full range” speakers that reveal all the sounds recorded – but smaller “real world” speakers that can be switched into the playback system. For decades, I worked in suites where they would have spent thousands on the main monitors – but nothing left the shop until it was listened to on the Auratones – speakers that sounded roughly like a junky car or portable radio speaker.
The thinking was that if it sounded OK on the little cubes – it would sound OK everywhere.
FWIW
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This is likely to get worse before it gets better.
I just had a non-broadcast project where the research team went out and bought new iPod Nano’s with video and used them to record simple on-camera impressions of store tours.
The video I got had not only regular, but vertical AND flipped 180 degree video on it.
On ingest into FCP, the footage would look fine when it was still frames on the timeline or as a picon, but the moment you played the footage it would FLIP OVER and play upside down.
Took me hours to get things corrected and eventually find the new controls in FCP recently put there in order to deal with this.
BTW, if you face this Flipped Out Nano Video issue You find an article I wrote about the detailed problem and solution on my web site here:
https://web.me.com/davisbill/Site/Welcome.html
In the ARTICLES tab.Everything old is new again!
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All I can think of is 10 different newsgroups or forums on moviemaking crafts an in each the attendees are saying.
No, you’ve got to understand, what *I* do is what’s important. Without what *I* do this whole thing will fall apart.
And the truth is that they’re all more or less right.
But I’m sorry, but if you think the editor is MORE critical than the folks scoring the film, or the executive producer lining up the cash to pay for everything, or the costume designer working his or her ass off to make sure that nobody is wearing a 14th century design in a 13th century period piece, then you’re woefully ignorant of the whole process.
Look, I’m an editor. And I know that what I do is important. And I’m sorry to have to say it, but to take the next step into thinking that what I do is MORE important than what anyone else does is INSULTING to everyone else at best. And reeks of HUBRIS at worst.
The only people qualified to judge whether their job is more or less critical to overall success than another job is someone who had successfully done BOTH.
And so if you haven’t PRODUCED, or SCORED, or WRITTEN, or COSTUMED at the same level where you’re EDITING, then, sorry, but IMHO you are talking without a base of experiential support.
It’s EXTREMELY difficult to do ANYTHING at a high level. That certainly includes EDITING. But it includes most everything else as well.
And one final thought to stir the pot. Have you ever considered that your project might be every bit as successful as it is if it was edited in an entirely different way? That, in essence, there is never just ONE right way to edit something, but bunches of ways that the audience will happily accept and enjoy, and pay to view?
What does that mean in the overall scheme of things? What if what we do in editorial storytelling is not so unique or precious after all? And, just as with, for example, the craft of writing – there is plenty of room for journeymen writers (just like editors) who labor away doing corporate or business, or comedy writing for a variety of stuff and NEVER have their work tested against any standard of excellence simply by circumstance? Are they still good? Or are they less than good?
Are our gifts as editors so rare? Is everyone who owns their FCP system and put in the 10 years in the seat a “good” editor? If so, there are a MILLION+ registered and updated FCP seats alone out there. If just 10% of them are excellent, that’s 100,000 excellent editors we’re all competing against. Why might I be “better” than you, or Jane, or Raj? Better yet, why would any of us have the right to feel “superior” to the DP, or the scriptwriter, or the freeking Craft Services folks, who might well be a Cordon Blu dropout in these weird financial times, for heaven’t sake.
Sorry to ramble, but I’ve just finished riding heard on a large local charity effort, and I”m particularly sensitive right now to anyone who feels that THEIR contribution is “SUPERIOR” to anyone elses.
Without EVERYBODY motivated to do their best – you always risk falling short of excellence and having your work dragged down by the overall effort.
And casting your part as SUPERIOR to someone else’s is a VERY bad way to set yourself up for long term success in this kind of necessarily collaborative field.
My 2 cents anyway.
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Look, these are two TOTALLY different ways to generate light. They work very differently in practice.
A typical fluor is from 4 to 8 tubes of gas. The tubes glow evenly sending photons out in all directions.
You can put them in a reflector box, and even put barn doors on them, but they DO NOT cut like, for example a fresnel. The barn doors AT BEST narrow the angle of dispersion down a bit. The ones designed with MIRRORED barn doors are a bit more useful, since if you set the mirrors correctly, they will make the fixture appear approximately 50% bigger than the tubes alone and that spreads the light’s WRAP even more for close up beauty work.
LEDS are anything but soft. Each LED is it’s own focused instrument. Putting them in rows or grids makes the light hitting a surface spread out somewhat – but it’s NOT the equivelent quality of a soft box or a soft bank of flos. OTOH, that same bank of LEDS will typically have a MUCH, MUCH farther reach since the photons are directed by the LED lenses. So you can punch light with an LED panel in ways you simply can’t match with flos.
Also, Flos and LEDs typically have different colorometry. So they mix pretty poorly, IMO.
These are two TOTALLY DIFFERENT TOOLS. Period. Each with their own unique characteristics that makes them preferable in certain situations.
But if you’re thinking to pull them out of the same kit and mix them together I’d STRONGLY suggest against that.
FWIW.
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It could be.
But most of us prefer to simply mic things correctly in the first place.
The BEST place to suppress background noise is AT THE TIME OF RECORDING.
Using the proper mic. PLACING it properly. And setting levels correctly will get you a clean audio track WAY more often than trying fancy electronic tricks in post.
Said shorter – fixing something is always harder than having nothing to fix.