These past two weeks have been busy (as I have also had to take days off for health reasons). I have finished off the audio for the Animation, I have started editing the music therapy, I have rebalanced my 2.0 mix for A Quiet Place II and have completed a 5.1 mix as well. I have also looked more into the business side of freelance work.
Since the last mix for the animation for Ella I have asked for feedback from associates of mine. The main thing with the first feedback session I had was that it wasn’t obviously a ship and adding seabirds and more ship creaking. I already had other creaking clips in the session which I had edited. I brought these into the time and tried to randomise them so that the timing wasn’t all the same. I went sourcing more CC.0 audio and found some seabirds recordings from the Whitsundays (which made me nostalgic of previous holidays there). I chopped up the clip (remembering to fade all of the edits) and brought in parts focusing on the start when the music hasn’t started yet. I used the same band-pass that I had on all of the ambience tracks which made it sound like it was restricted from the ship. With the mastering I put a slight EQ which I mainly used to control the highs with a slight high shelf lowered. I then placed a gluing compressor to blend together the tracks. After all of this I used a brick wall limiter to bring it up to -14 LUFs. I sent this through to Ella and she loved it. Once she finishes the final animation, she is going to send it thought to me to finish the final sync.
For the music therapy piece, I went into the Neve studio to re-record the recordings from the 8024. This helped make them fit into the other recordings. I then hid and made inactive the other tracks. One of the benefits of this session was that I ended up going downstairs to the 8024 to help my friend Ally with her setup for her recordings of the band Queerbaits. I mainly just setup the session and the console so and worked as an Assistant Engineer as she was alone. As someone that has been working alone on recordings and in Live Sound, I understand the challenge of this and wanted to help. I then spent a session in the S6 and used Melodyne on the vocals to fix the flat notes. I am now working on the arrangement for this piece and the mix. I have booked another session next week in the S6 to master it.
In the same session in the S6 I spent majority of my 7 hour session working on A Quiet Place II mix as wanted to balance the audio with the feedback I was given. I knew that the music during the montage wasn’t quite right. I ended up using an EQ to cut the highs just to keep the bass. This kept the drum hits but took away most of the melody. I rebalanced the Foley/SFX to bring up the ambience and the foliage. I brought these into my mastering session and balanced this for the 2.0 mix. I still have a few small things to change (tripwire and montage music level) .
I had actually started the 5.1 mix after finishing the 2.0 mixes for the trailer but, for continuity I am discussing my 5.1 setup now. I started with the music. I setup up a 5.1 Master track. I also setup two stereo aux tracks and two mono aux tracks. The mono aux tracks become discrete send to the LFE, and C sends. I placed a low pass filter on the LFE aux cutting all from 100Hz. To this I sent all of the bass heavy tracks to reinforce them. For the C I tried to make it decorrelated by placing an EQ on it however, I ended up not using this track in the mix as it conflicted with the SFX too much. For the stereo aux tracks I made one a Rear Reverb and one a Rear Delay. I first set a band pass on and then used a plate reverb (Space – Eco-Plate, medium large room) as it is a personal favourite (in fact I just got another plate reverb plugin and I’m so keen to use). I also setup a 20/40 delay to add more space. I mixed mainly to the front but sent the ending clicking partway up the side. I then decided to play with the monster music to the back and then made another two stereo aux tracks and sent them to the front copying the same reverb and delay. I bounced these out as multiple mono tracks.
For the SFX/Foley session I did a larger amount of panning. I setup the same aux tracks as well as a R/Rs Reverb and Delay as I sent the background car squealing to the L/Ls pair. I panned things to the side slightly more than in the 2.0 mix. I also sent the cracking sound for the monster to the back to make the feeling of uneasiness. I made this my mastering session by adding in the music and DIA. I sent the dialogue to the C discretely. I made sure to make the other C sends to duck when the dialogue was spoken. I put on a final EQ that boost the bass slightly and scooped slightly around 250Hz to clear out the muddiness that can occur there. I tried a high shelf boost but it sounded nicer without it. I did a slight gluing compressor to control the dynamics slightly. I finished it with a brick wall limiter to bring the levels to -14LUFs. I bounced out the final mix as multiple mono tracks. I then imported these into a new session to test it and monitored it.
I haven’t done much official research but, I have taken my class notes to do practical things. I didn’t know how to use Melodyne until now and I had never worked in 5.1 until now. I’m glad that I’ve been able to keep doing work that interests me. It is always welcome to be able to do work that I am interested in instead of what is available. I know that I will use the business information to set myself up for any freelance work I end up doing.
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