[Bob Kessler]

There are lots of books out there to get you pointed in the right direction. Here’s a few of my favorites:

Practical Art of Motion Picture Sound – David Yewdall

Sound Design – David Sonnenschein

The Sound Effects Bible – Ric Viers

The Foley Grail – Vanessa Ament

Dialogue Editing for Motion Pictures – John Purcell

There are also lots of good videos on YouTube and elsewhere; Ric Viers has quite a few.

Spend some time on FilmSound.org; LOTS of great stuff, especially the interviews and the history.

Once you’ve gone through these and other books, listened to dozens of films and watched as many videos as you can find, you start working on no-budget projects for free. This gets you started on doing the actual work. The light bulb “a ha!” moment comes when you get to sit next to an experienced professional for a few days.

Peace,

Bob
____________________________________________________________________
Filmmaking is the art of the invisible;
If anyone notices your work you haven’t done your job right.

[Bob Kessler]

I use Vocalign and love it.

Peace,

Bob
____________________________________________________________________
Filmmaking is the art of the invisible;
If anyone notices your work you haven’t done your job right.

[Bob Kessler]

Which Rode Shotgun? The NTG-2 is notorious for low output levels. (BTW, the AT897 has the same issue.)

The H4n is also noted for low input levels.

Combine the NTG-2 and the H4n no wonder you are having problems.

The Rode D-Power has been discontinued. Sanken makes something similar, but it is really meant for dynamic mics (the D-power was as well) and, anecdotally, they add lots of noise.

Peace,

Bob
____________________________________________________________________
Filmmaking is the art of the invisible;
If anyone notices your work you haven’t done your job right.

[Bob Kessler]

You’ll need nice speakers and you’ll need to treat your mixing environment. A decent selection of mics helps, but you can get by with two or three. Get a good mic pre. Most everything else can be done in the box. Noise reduction and an IR reverb plug-ins are very important to have.

If you’re going to be a “commercial” studio Pro Tools is sort of expected, but if your just doing your own projects you can go with other DAWs and interface.

Peace,

Bob
____________________________________________________________________
Filmmaking is the art of the invisible;
If anyone notices your work you haven’t done your job right.

[Bob Kessler]

I always wonder at the “I’ll buy something to fix it attitude.” Just buying a piece of gear will not fix your problems; it’s all about having a complete “toolbox”, and the knowledge of how to use each specific tool for the specific situation. If you are truly serious about creating content for major media outlets you should invest in hiring someone who actually knows what they’re doing. Even an ambitious up-and-comer with a basic sound kit will do a much better job than you can.

To be honest – and I’m assuming that you want honesty – the people who do the “buying” of new programs want mostly finished product. Reality shows don’t have the polished audio of major network dramas and sitcoms, but the dialog does need to be easily understandable. And they do not want to hear “I’ll do it better if you give me the budget;” they have the mindset that if you don’t get it right in the first place you won’t ever get it right.

Now I can hear the “it’s so expensive” complaints coming, but this is about your career – at least I’m assuming that it is – and you should put everything you can into it. More otherwise worthy projects are killed by poor sound than for any other technical reason.

Peace,

Bob
____________________________________________________________________
Filmmaking is the art of the invisible;
If anyone notices your work you haven’t done your job right.

[Bob Kessler]

The “low budget” standard these days seems to be the Sennheiser G3 series at between $600 & $700 per set. When doing narrative work it is fairly common practice to replace the stock lavs with Countryman B3 or B6 lavs or Sanken COS11 lavs.

Peace,

Bob
____________________________________________________________________
Filmmaking is the art of the invisible;
If anyone notices your work you haven’t done your job right.

[Bob Kessler]

Could you be a little more specific as to what type of sound FX you are looking for?

For buy-by-the-sound you can try SoundDogs and SoundSnap. For free stuff just Google free sound effects. You can also try FreeSound.org; please read the usage terms very carefully and abide by them.

And, BTW, the correct reply is that the sounds were recorded and edited by professionals with professional equipment and mixed by professionals on multimillion dollar sound stages. Even if sound libraries are used, it is only used as a part of multiple layers of sound. So if that’s the sound you want that’s what you have to do – or hire to be done.

Just as you are annoyed by the “A professional does it” answer we get annoyed by the “how do I sound like a Hollywood Blockbuster for free” questions.

So don’t expect the “right” sounds will make your film sound like it has a budget. It is about the marriage of experience, knowledge, tools and technique – plus innate talent.

Peace,

Bob
____________________________________________________________________
Filmmaking is the art of the invisible;
If anyone notices your work you haven’t done your job right.

[Bob Kessler]

The audio implementation of DSLR cameras is quite substandard; after all, it’s a still camera being co-opted into video usage.

More and more it is becoming standard practice to treat a DSLR as a film camera and using a separate audio recording system. So instead of spending $300 to $450 on a one-trick-pony unit like the Beachtek or juicedLink get a decent low-budget digital audio recorder; currently popular are the Tascam DR-40 or DR-100mkII. The Zoom H4n also has a following. If you want to splurge a bit the Fostex FR-2LE, Marantz PMD-661, Roland R-26 and Tascam HD-P2 are all nice entry level pro recorders in the $500 to $700 range.

Syncing is fairly easy as you have the camera audio as a guide, and softwares like PluralEyes partially automate the process.

Peace,

Bob
____________________________________________________________________
Filmmaking is the art of the invisible;
If anyone notices your work you haven’t done your job right.

[Bob Kessler]

SoundSoap is not an editing program. It is a DAW plug-in used to clean up noisy audio.

There are two versions – SoundSoap and SoundSoap Pro. SoundSoap Pro is okay; I’ve never used the cheaper version.

I really like iZotope RX Advanced for all kinds of audio cleanup. The Waves Restoration bundle is also nice. And, of course, there’s the Cedar systems.

Peace,

Bob
____________________________________________________________________
Filmmaking is the art of the invisible;
If anyone notices your work you haven’t done your job right.

[Bob Kessler]

“Why should the reference QTs not be stored on the HD with OS and Software?”

It used to be that the drives weren’t fast enough to run streaming video (I’ve always used .dv stream QTs) and the PT software and/or the PT session on those drives at the same time, so it’s become a habit. I don’t change things that have always worked for me – a drive for .dv streaming video (all videos go to this drive) and a drive for the PT session with another drive for back-up/archiving. The drives are never partitioned. Like I said, this is really old school (I started with PT 5.xx), but the work flow has never failed me so I don’t mess with success.

Peace,

Bob
____________________________________________________________________
Filmmaking is the art of the invisible;
If anyone notices your work you haven’t done your job right.