Three roads to the End

An issue that has come up on a number of forums I'm on is the problem with answers to questions coming from very different perspectives.
I'm going to break down the "community" into three broad categories.
Commercial - public
Commercial - private
Non-Commercial

Those are kind of broad but I think they are valid.
Commercial - Public are those film and media projects that are aimed at selling to the public at large. You are going to have a product good enough that folks who know nothing about your project except the "buzz" are willing to pay to see it.

Commercial - private are projects that are pre sold. That would be industrials, even videography, documentaries that are grant funded (though this becomes one of the problem crossover situations, since you do eventually want people to come and see your film).

Non-Commercial are projects like in house films, home movies, student films, etc. This is a category that has a lot of crossover (well more like wanta be crossover) projects.

The problem that comes up is someone needs help with X and three different people give opposing advice and then start to argue over the merits of it leaving the OP in the dark. Many times they are all correct, but only from their orientation.

This comes up a lot in post sound questions because of the different routes the three take to final delivery.

In the Commercial - Public world tasks are all divided up and specialists do everything. It's really the only way to get to the polish of what Hollywood puts out. I did say "Polish" not "Quality". A high polish not so great quality film will out sell a low polish high quality film every time. It's very hard to see quality if it's just not well put together. You wouldn't hire an electrician to do your plumbing, unless you had to.

In the Commercial - Private world your selling before you shoot. You know what is important to the client and what isn't. Your focus is much more selective and your "public" is paying up front so if they are not willing to pay for X it's not going to cost you at the box office. These tend to be small tight crews with a lot of mixed of roles. This is not generally a category of many crossovers to the "big screen" Commercial - Public category.

In the Non- Commercial world there is chaos right now. It was a category that had just about a zero crossover ratio and now has a lot of crossover potential. The workflow used to be kind of a stripped down version of the Commercial - Private one with Very small crews. With the new cameras and the power of modern computers this category has the potential to make the move. BUT it generally doesn't have the orientation. If you want to compete with the big boys you need to bring polish to your projects. And that means you need to start bringing in specialists.

It gets very tricky because you can't afford to do it the "Hollywood" way,but you need to get a "Hollywood" polish. It can be done and I have posted about this before. On the visual side you can read Stu Maskowitz's blog/ books etc. The big hurdle is your orientation. You need to set some high standards and get over the fact that your making a movie. I know it's cool but gloat when it's done. Right now you need to be hypercritical of your polish. I'm going to assume you have the quality because there is no point polishing a turd. If you botched it up chalk it up as a learning tool and start your next film. When your rich and famous you can revisit and release your "directors cut", but right now you need to get a quality polished film out there.

So when I say you need to replace all the sounds and scrub your dialog and it's going to take you at least 40 tracks of sound... I'm talking from my orientation which is pretty firmly in the Commercial - Public world.

If your doing a student film that is more of a test out the camera thing or a learning how to direct short, you most certainly don't need all that. If your shooting a wedding video you, as picture editor, should go ahead and clean up the tracks and do whatever makes it work. You are not sending this to audio post, do what works for where you are.

But if your a crossover want to be, don't ask what plugin is going to make your film sound like a Hollywood blockbuster. There isn't one. You need to bring in the pro's or at least pro's of the future. You need to set your bar very high on the polish and that means sound also.

The Big D day 2 &3 - moved

Since this blog is really supposed to be about sound... I've moved the Big D posts to a new blog called.
Bug'n out of Babylon

http://bugnoutofbabylon.blogspot.com/

Wellcome to the Big D - moved

Since this blog is really supposed to be about sound... I've moved the Big D posts to a new blog called.
Bug'n out of Babylon

http://bugnoutofbabylon.blogspot.com/

Motown, or, Go MidWeast Young Man -moved

Since this blog is really supposed to be about sound... I've moved the Big D posts to a new blog called.
Bug'n out of Babylon

http://bugnoutofbabylon.blogspot.com/

Mini-Indi, I want residuals!

I came up with this term the other day and I think I'm the first. It's hard to tell but if I am and it catches on I want residuals...

I started using it because there is a whole class of films that have no name. You have major films with budgets in the $100 mil + category. And what Hollywood calls ow budget (under $30 mil. Then there are the "Indi's" at somewhere from say $3 mil to $40-$50 mil. And then you have "no-budget" films, that all have some budget but generally not enough to pay people.
But in between there are a LOT of films being made. They have a budget usually in the $30K to $150K range and occasionally get close to "Indi" range. They are not student films (usually), they are by folks who have some experience (often) and are designed to be potentially commercial. The idea generally is to use it as a calling card. Some are shorts and some are features but the thing they have over most "no budget" films is that they have a focus on quality. Now all to often that focus is way off, they usually don't have "enough" experience to aim correctly. But the idea is to produce a professional film that would not be embarrassing if shown to a paying audience (that is not relatives and friends and crew).

The technology has come down in price and made it possible to make a film that looks great on a big screen for a small fraction of what it took to make a crappy looking/ sounding 16mm film. For all you 16mm fans, 16mm can look good but not when blown up to a full sized movie theatre screen. And it always sounds crappy. Mono, non noise reduced optical track. It's noisy has very limited range and no bass.

Back to the point.
Indi's are usually shot on 35mm, now probably more are shot on RED cameras. Either way your looking at $30K+ of camera and a lot of support gear. Mini-Indi's were born in HD video, one could argue the case for DVX-100's really being the start. But are growing up with HDSLR cameras.

My guess is that it is THE growth area in filmmaking. And what is great is that these cameras force the filmmaker to work in the traditional way. Shorter takes, double system sound, etc. Their fantastic low light capabilities means you can save a fortune in lighting and the fact that they use high quality 35mm lenses and have about the same frame size as a 35mm film means that all the creativity with focus and framing that you didn't have with "video" cameras is at your disposal.

You can make an excellent film that CAN look really good on a big screen. Of course it takes more than a camera to make a great movie, but it's a start. And because of the quality of the shots other weak areas are more apparent. I've already seen a general improvement if films coming through. The weakness of video, for narrative films, was it's strength for doc's. It was dead easy to pick one up and "just shoot". You have to think about what your shooting and how much more with HDSLR cameras and making the director think before "action" is a good thing.

So long live the Mini-Indi.

And when Sundance makes it a category I want a check!

Nobody - and life... If it's a game, we won.

Nice title but what does it mean? Well NOBODY is the title of the new Doobie Brothers album and life is what it makes me think about. I should say right off the bat that I really like this album.

Why the Doobies and life well hard to say. They have been around a long time and the insights are just as fresh as they ever were. They are older and of course experience influences, but I'm older also and I like to think a bit wiser. May be not but at least more experienced. The one thing I have noticed is that there are people who lift you up and those that bring you down.

Warning politics!!! It's not a Red or Blue thing but GW was a bringer downer. It was all about paranoia and "us VS them". Whether you liked him or not it was not a philosophy that up lifted. You know the people, you have met them, worked for them, god forbid, been attached to them. They are just down, down, down. But lets face it if we really felt that down on life we wouldn't get up in the morning. There is the other side the "yes there are problems, how do we fix this?". I think it is what got Obama elected, it's basically what he campaigned on.

So how does this connect to an album by "rock stars" from the 80's? Well they are most certainly "lift you up" people and the album reflects this. It's not a ignore it and it will go away album its a "yes there are issues, but do what you can" philosophy. If you can look your self in the mirror and say you have done more good than bad your on the right side. I know that seems like a low bar, but really think about it. It's not really that low a bar. If you are a totally ethical always do "right" person your probably not that far over the bar. It's hard to not do bad to someone. All you can really do is what you think is right and what you believe in. Ironically this is a very old thought, "to thyn ownself be true", but how many live it every day? Probably nobody, but you can try. This is only my interpretation so I'm not speaking for anybody but myself but I have generally figured that if you can manage to stay on the positive your doing good.

I'm getting philosophical... With the economy what it is it's easy to get into the $$$ is all that counts. And certainly it's harder to get and getting a lot bigger part of everyones life. BUT if that is what you get up for every day, stay in bed. You HAVE to get up for more than money. I was told recently on finishing a project "now you can get a check". Well yes that is true and an important factor in keeping a roof over ones head BUT that is not the #1 reason I did the gig. If you are doing art just for the check your not doing art. I don't think everyone gets this.

So how does this get back to the Doobies?

Well they have plenty of green. So yes they get paid nicely for what they do but they don't do it for the $$$ They could probably make as much with a LOT less effort investing in those things you can only invest in with stacks of green. The point is that touring is hard work. You stay in nicer hotels if your a name but it IS A HARD living. So I appreciate that they are still putting out art and it's a lifting up art and I feel like going out and doing good!

Guess I'm just trying to win the game ;~)

Buy the album, you'll get the reference.

Sounds on the WEB

I get asked a lot about where to get sound FX. There are a bunch of places on the web some are free like Free Sound and others are commercial like Sound Dogs.

I just discovered a really nice site Hiss And A Roar that is a little of both. These are the kinds of sounds most people who don't work on films with budgets never get to use. These are recorded by a pro for his use and he also is making them available to the public. This is the kind of foundation sounds that get used all the time to "layer up" tracks in the post world. And are the building blocks if your "designing" sounds for something. You won't find a few thousand cuts of vegetables being tortured in Sound Ideas libraries because folks would ask "why would I need that?". I on the other hand start looking for my check book. I have recorded a fair amount of vegetable violence but it's really messy so one usually limits the amount you do because of the amount of cleanup afterword. So it's great to be able to get it with out the mess. You won't find any "Dinosaur Roars" or "Car Crashes" or other silly stuff.

Right now he has four collections, Fireworks, Seal Vocals, whooshes, and vegetable mutilation. They are sold at higher sample rates and lower sample rates. The lower sample rates generally have fewer sounds. The prices range from $49 down to free. There is a also a $99 version of the Fireworks with multiple tracks and positions of the same sounds and at 196/24. But you can get a sampler of each collection that is free and it's at 44.1/16 not some wanky MP3 file. I downloaded all the free ones and will be upgrading as the budget allows.