» Posts Tagged ‘sound’
Tascam Targets DSLR Filmmakers with Its New 4-Channel Audio Recorder - the DR-60D
Despite all the advances in image resolution and quality, most DSLRs on the market still require separate audio recorders for quality sound capture. We’ve previously covered and compared affordable external audio recorders for DSLR filmmakers, and although great tools in themselves, if there’s one common drawback shared by these recorders it’s that they were designed for live music/event recording, rather than filmmaking. Enter Tascam’s new offering — the DR-60D — an audio recorder designed specifically with DSLR filmmakers in mind. Here are the details:
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If you’ve been following the SoundWorks Collection series, hopefully by now you’ve learned a thing or two about sound design and the professionalism and effort that goes into bringing us the subtle, and sometimes not-so-subtle, effects and mixes that really bring motion pictures to life (I know I have). Michael Coleman, who produces the videos, keeps churning out gold — this time we’ve got the crew behind G.I. Joe: Retaliation, and the work that goes into being objective and trying to find the right balance between sound design, music, and dialogue throughout a non-stop action film. Check it out below. More »
Advertising and the movie business go hand in hand, and a huge piece of that puzzle is the music accompanying film trailers. But have you ever wondered how movie trailers get their epic scores, even though none of that music typically finds itself in the film? That’s where the movie trailer composer comes in. Michael Coleman over at SoundWorks Collection is consistently producing excellent behind the scenes videos related to sound professionals in the film and TV industries, and today we’ve got another fantastic piece with composer Yoav Goren, who writes music specifically for trailers. More »
Getting good quality sound on-set can sometimes feel like an impossibility, especially on lower budget productions. While the sound mixer can often go underappreciated on many of these productions, their job, if done correctly, is right up there with the 1st AC (or focus-puller). If your movie is not in focus it’s going to distract the audience, and at the same time, bad audio will be even more distracting. SoundWorks Collection has profiled professional sound people from all across Hollywood, and today we’ve got a video that goes in-depth with Nicholas Allen, who is the sound mixer on NBC’s Parenthood. More »
RØDE's New smartLav iOS Lavalier, VideoMic Upgrade, Plus Apogee's iPortable Recording Studio
We recently posted about RØDE’s iXY microphone and Rec app for iOS devices. While perhaps not suitable for everyone’s needs (or inversely, budget), it marks another step toward a lone multi-purpose tool handy to the crafty filmmaker — the iOS iPhone/iPad. While I’ll never own one, even I have to hand it to the iLeatherman. In a pinch, it’s a light meter, it’s a GoPro, it’s a shot designer, and with iXY and RØDE Rec, it’s a dual-system audio recorder, too. Now, RØDE continues its drive to make iOS a viable field sound-rec system with the smartLav lavalier microphone — as does the Apogee ONE, a like-minded iPad portable ‘recording studio’ system. RØDE has also upgraded its VideoMic for those run-and-gun shooters unsatisfied with smartphone sound — check out the details of each below. More »
Bad Robot's Creative and Technical Paradise with Avid's Dyamic Collaboration Environments
At the end of last year, Avid announced a free webinar exploring Bad Robot, the film and TV production company co-founded by J. J. Abrams — which, judging by the success of such projects as Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, Lost, and Star Trek, is doing more than one thing very, very right. Don’t worry if you missed that webinar, though, because Avid has recently shared a 20-minute video breaking down Bad Robot’s studio space — and not only is it an enviable one for any independent because each step of the creative process is fostered there, but also because its Media Composer workflow of collaboration taps the future directly. More »
The right blend of subtlety and hyper-realism varies in any successful effect, be it in light or in sound. The SoundWorks Collection has brought us many insightful looks into the sound design and mixing challenges of several films — in a recent case, though, a specific scene (to which sound is truly integral) is broken down, layer for layer, sound by sound, and shot by shot. Check out SoundWorks’ look at the crash scene from Flight below. More »
The Search for Osama bin Laden, and the Cinematography and Sound Design of 'Zero Dark Thirty'
One of the more controversial films to be released this year (at least according to the news media and members of the CIA and U.S. Congress), Zero Dark Thirty is the story of the search for Osama bin Laden and the people responsible for finding him. The film is the first from Kathryn Bigelow since her Academy Award winning The Hurt Locker. The movie is getting attention for obvious reasons (and we’ve already got to hear from the screenwriter, Mark Boal), but it’s also being made in a way that few other Hollywood projects could even come close to replicating. We’ve got an in-depth look at the sound design, as well as some words from the Director of Photography Greig Fraser, ACS, about shooting on the Arri Alexa with practically no lights on set — plus, a bonus interview with one of the lead actors, Jessica Chastain. More »
Building the Fantastical Soundscape of 'The Hobbit' with SoundWorks Collection
Speaking of The Hobbit, thanks once again to Michael Coleman’s indispensable SoundWorks Collection we now have another angle of the rather extensive amount of behind-the-scenes material on the film (trilogy). Previously we’ve had a look at the environment the crew created to be creatively conducive, questioned the aesthetic nature of its 48 frames-per-second acquisition (and delivery, in many cases), all the way back to the films’ truly epic on-location shooting and production design. But foley work, mixing, and sound design in general are things that end up getting less making-of attention than the imagery of films, so check out the SoundWorks mini-doc that rounds out The Hobbit BTS goods below. More »
If you’ve been enjoying Luke Neumann’s weekly music freebies and the daily free music he released this past July, here’s a chance to add even more free tunes to your collection. This time the sonic goodness is coming from Josh Molen of The Tune Peddler. Each week in December he will be giving away his entire library of 130 pieces of royalty free music to a lucky winner. All it takes to enter is the click of a tweet button. Here are the details on entering, as well as streaming samples of some additional free Christmas music Molen is releasing: More »
Sound can surely soothe, but so can it unsettle — I’m sure we can all think of examples of movie movements that were made (or perhaps broken, in some cases) by accompanying sound effects. It may be the heightened styling of places or situations whose soundscapes are familiar to us, or it may be the understatement of realism to highlight the weight of a dramatic moment. Whatever the case, sound design lends a texture of palpability to the world going on beyond that living screen you’ve been staring at — and in certain instances, to the elicitation of a cringe. One such circumstance lies in wait for you should you find yourself seeing the newly released crime drama Killing Them Softly. More »
The footage I’ve seen of Ang Lee’s Life of Pi (released today) so far looks pretty fantastic. I know it’s adapted from a novel, I know there’s a man and a tiger on a boat, but other than that I really know nothing about this movie — just that it looks intriguing from a pure imagery standpoint. That, and the next logical step from there, which is that it is probably going to be breathtaking in stereo. How does one create a soundtrack suitable for the visual side of this experience? Thanks once again to Michael Coleman’s Soundworks Collection, we now have an inkling of exactly that — and of how the sound design team crafted it for Dolby Atmos — beginning with almost no usable production tracks. More »
Luke and the team at Neumann Films are trying to do us a favor. We in the production world aren’t used to getting much for free, and that’s because we don’t — but that doesn’t mean the things we do get for free have to be lacking in quality. If you missed Luke’s tremendous month of free music in July, don’t worry, there’s more professional-grade royalty-free totally costless music where that came from — available for download every single week. More »
Skyfall has been given a fair amount of attention here on NoFilmSchool recently, as there truly seems to be a great amount of interesting material regarding the making of the film passing through the internet, and also because some things are just plain old too cool not to share. You may also be well acquainted with something else we can’t get enough of — the videos from Michael Coleman‘s consistently excellent SoundWorks Collection series. If you’re not yet acquainted, SoundWorks provides rare insight into, you guessed it, the creation of films’ soundtracks — a facet of the craft we don’t get to examine nearly as often as the visual side of things. Now, thanks to another well-produced offering from the SWC, we get to merge the two aforementioned subjects together, and round out the making-of coverage we’ve had so far on the latest 007 film. Read on to watch SoundWorks Collection’s The Sound of Skyfall. More »
The folks at juicedLink have already presented us with strong evidence that using the company’s Riggy Micro/Assist low-noise pre-amplifier configuration with DSLR shooting has major advantages. First and foremost, it greatly improves the noise-floor performance of on-board recorded audio, even matching high-end dual-system recorders in its signal to noise ratio — additionally, though, using any good preamp avoids the mobility and convenience you lose with having to use a separate recorder, plus the need to sync in post. Now, juicedLink’s Robert Rozak performs another exhaustive test, this time to illustrate the benefits of using the Riggy Micro/Assist setup with Blackmagic’s Cinema Camera — plus major audio issues that must be addressed with that camera system. Check out the video below to see the results. More »
Good location audio will make your film shine. The less you have to redo in post the better, as nat sound will bring a level of realism to any project. There are many tools available to help you achieve better sound, from a bevvy of tried and tested field recorders to some crucial on-camera mics like the ever-popular Rode, but what about those hard-to-reach areas away from the camera? Clearly wireless mics are the solution, but which mid-range system is the best? Thanks to Dave Dugdale of Learning DSLR Video, we have our answer. Check out the wireless mic battle of the ages after the jump. More »
What is Foley? What does it take to be a Foley Artist? Many of you might be very familiar with the craft, or maybe you have only heard the word in passing, but Foley is one of the many sound elements that helps bring a film together. It’s arguably one of the more important parts of sound design, because many of the important sounds that really add to the character of the film are all created in post on a Foley stage. SoundWorks Collection, who has given us quite a few tremendous videos, takes a look at the art of Foley with Gary Hecker, who has worked on films like The Empire Strikes Back and Robin Hood. More »
NoFilmSchool is, of course, a site for filmmakers, particularly (but not limited to) those of the DIY variety — but we also foster independent creativity. As independent creatives, we’re able to draw inspiration from virtually any artistic endeavor, including music. To continue this bit of a break from the barrage of recent news in camera tech, I wanted to share something in that musical vein with you guys. For those of you unfamiliar with the electronic-pop duo Purity Ring, they represent a rather refreshing success story regarding internet popularity and the power of new media — not to mention long-distance collaboration. These are all things which we at the forefront of indie content creation can correlate to both what we do as well as the possible future of how we do it. Also of potential interest to us creatives is Purity Ring’s live show. With the help of lighting installation custom-design group Tangible Interaction, the band has crafted a truly special sensory experience to complement — and more fully embody — their unique style of ethereal and euphoric music. More »
SoundWorks Collection has already brought us a number of great videos detailing a part of the process we don’t usually get much of a look at it — the creation and design of that other half of what we do. So far SoundWorks has brought us videos on Prometheus, The Dark Knight Rises, and more recently, Argo and a rock ‘n’ roll documentary. Now, they’re giving us a look at the biographical Chasing Mavericks, which fictionalizes the late surfer Jay Moriarty’s quest to ride The Great Wave. In a film largely taking place on beaches and the ocean, the sound designers were tasked with characterizing the ocean’s sounds in a dramatic context, which probably wasn’t all that easy — especially when it came to mixing the film for Dolby Atmos. Bump the jump to see how the sound team optimized the film’s mix for a 42 speaker (18 of which are overhead) Atmos configuation. More »
RØDE Microphones has recently created a new version of their Soundbooth Broadcast, a web application that allows users to interactively compare a wide variety of the manufacturer’s mics. The original Soundbooth page‘s interface was akin to a simplified mixing program, wherein real-time mute and solo controls were offered for each layer of a typical studio music recording. The original listed the types of mics used for each layer (bass drum, snare drum, vocals, guitar amp, etc.) and demonstrated how each layer contributed to the mix. Now, RØDE is giving us the ability to compare the characteristics of a range of their mics — including voice-over condensers, live performance-style dynamics, shotgun-style super cardioids, even headsets and camera-mounted mics in some cases — matched against each other in various common real-world acoustic environments. More »
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