quickie editing and navigating in protools vid

After a twitter conversation last week I decided to shoot a quickie video covering something that wasn't discussed - how I tend to navigate around in protools without constantly zooming in and out.

enjoy!

living vicariously - my friends trip to mexico

go ahead and hit play, then listen while you read.


Last month my friend Mario took the whole month off and traveled to the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico for a vacation.

Before he left, he generously offered to take one of my recorders and roll some audio when he was down there.  Now, Mario is a brilliant chef but he's got about zero experience rolling audio so when he made the offer to take some gear down there with him I figured my Sony PCM M10 would be the best choice for a few reasons:

- The M10 has top shelf battery life.  I figured he'd need to change batteries one time max for the whole trip, and that's if he was recording a TON.  The more likely scenario was that he wouldn't have to change batteries at all.  Battery life on this device is the best of any that I own, and far superior to most others on the market.

- The M10 has the most storage.  It has 4 Gb built in, and another 8 on the micro SD card that I have in it.  The storage also rolls over seamlessly from the internal to the SD card with no user interaction required.  Thats an advantage it has over my PCM D50, and over many other handheld recorders on the market.

- The M10 doesn't require wind protection.  Sure, if it gets up to 15 mph or so it'll blow out, but south of that the built in wind protection works fine.  That can't be said of my D50 or of most other devices with exposed electret condenser mics.  In fact, my D50 often requires wind protection indoors, since even the slightest AC gust will blow it out.

- The M10 is about the size of an iphone, and can easily fit in a pocket.  Its about half the size of the D50 or H4n.  

-The M10 costs about $200.  If it gets destroyed for any reason I won't feel too hard of a loss.

So low maintenance, high capacity, super portable, and moderatly expendable.  I have higher resolution rigs obviously, but this is the only one I could really send out in this capacity with a non-audio guy as the recordist.

And oh man did Mario deliver.  I've only posted a small compilation of some of the stuff he brought back to me, but it really was impressive.  Mario took great pride in his recordings, he just nailed his gain structure and technique, and enjoyed taking some time in the various locales to just sit and listen to what was going on around him.

This horse was pulling a cart that rode on the railroad tracks.  He had pretty good speed too!

Great peacock recording right at the outset.

That's Mario on the right.

Even the traffic ambiances had a smattering of jungle creatures in them.  I love it!

I couldn't be more happy with how it went, and I'm super impressed with the quality that the internal mics on the M10 were able to deliver.

When an opportunity arises, you have to be ready to seize it.  The process of sorting out and listening through all of his recordings from that trip is one of the most enjoyable things I've done all year.

Thanks Mario!

happy new year!

a little gift on new years - turn your speakers up so the voices sound right, and you'll get a feel of how loud the fireworks were. :) at the beginning of this year I set a goal to blog once a week for the whole year - and I fell short of that. The launch of tonebenders made some of my blog ideas redundant, but I think it'll help re-define what I do in this space a bit.

here's to a happy 2013!

movie review: Skyfall *spoilers*

*spoilers*



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srsly.  don't read this if you don't want spoilers.


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ok.  This is my quickie review of the latest Bond flick: Skyfall.




Now, for reference I do my absolute best to avoid any and all media involved with any film I plan to see before I've seen it.  This means that I never saw that trailer or any other than the teaser before actually experiencing the film in its full glory.  I also never read a review, and I purposely stayed as far away from the film's online presence as I could.

I do this for every big film that I plan on experiencing fully in the theater.  I find it gives me a much better overall experience.  As an example, that trailer has probably 6 or 8 things in it that I sure didn't want to see before seeing the movie in context.  It gave away so many interesting moments that I have no regrets about avoiding it.

 I'm currently avoiding any mention of Lincoln until I see that one as well.  :)

I saw the film in Imax at the Northpark AMC.   While this theater isn't "true" Imax - its certainly impressive.  Utterly perfect digital projection, probably the second largest Imax screen in the DFW metroplex (second only to the true Imax screen with film projection at the Webb Chapel Cinemark) and a truly capable and well calibrated sound system.  Stadium seating, ample foot room, and we sat dead center about 1/3rd of the way up.  Tickets were $16 each.  As a theater experience this is close to as good as it gets.

So first off, overall impressions:

I felt that this was probably the best Bond film I've seen.  I certainly haven't seen them all, but I'm sure I've caught at least 80% of them going back to the Pierce Brosnan days, and this one is easily the best I've personally experienced.  I like Daniel Craig as Bond, even though I don't like him as much in almost any other role.  He brings a certain self-loathing to Bond that completely redefines the character in my opinion, and in a good way.  Its far more believable that Craig's Bond would get the girl and kill the bad guy than Brosnon's (or even *gasp* Connery's) would in my eyes.

(That said I hated the poker enough in Casino Royale to write off the whole flick.  That film was a complete insult to poker players everywhere, and Bond was not only written as an awful poker player in the film, he was a complete dick at the table as well.)

While Skyfall started fast - as Bond films tend to - it didn't launch at the flat out breakneck speed that some in the past have.  The opening action sequence was punchy and interesting, but not so massive that it overshadowed the rest of the film.

(Another aside - I thought that The Dark Knight Rises suffered from this.  The sequence where Bane hijacks and destroys the plane is probably the high point of the film, and it happens in the first 20 minutes)

The opening credits were typically epic - as Bond opening credits tend to be.  They hit all of the classic Bond marks - silhouetted women,  guns, tombstones, 2d graphic styles, and general avant garde imagery.  I've seen others complain, but I personally really like Adele's take on the Bond theme, and I won't apologize for that.  For opening credits to be that memorable after the film is over is an achievement in my opinion.



Once the film was off and running I thought the pacing was excellent throughout.  It never felt long or drug out, nor did it feel too short by the time the film was over.  The last third of the film was certainly loud and pretty challenging, but even then it didn't have that "when will this end" moment that most of the final battles in the Transformers films end up at.

Javier Bardem was an excellent villain.  Again, the pacing of the film revealed him at exactly the right moment.  Not to early, but not so late that you didn't get a good sense of him before the final encounter.  I think he should take on something more heroic in his next role, given how huge his No Country For Old Men and Skyfall performances have become.

There were certainly plot holes though (many of them typically Bond).  *spoilers*

Spies probably know better than to run from their pursuers in the dark while waving a flashlight.  Bond would have had his insides liquified by three or four of the explosions that he supposedly survived.  Hacking computers doesn't work that way.   Helicopters can't sneak up on you.  Two tanks of propane can't blow up a massive mansion.  Putting it all on black does not imply that you don't care about the money, it only implies that you're trying to double it.  Also, you aren't likely to get a gun into a casino of that stature, and if you do you're unlikely to walk out after only facing three people and making a bet.  The other assasin certainly wouldn't have brought his payment with him to the jobsite.  If a coworker shot you on accident and let the other guy get away, it'd be pretty hard to get rescued by a stranger unless that coworker just packed up and left.  Fire extinguishers don't have that much foam in them. Car doors don't stop bullets.

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From a sonic perspective I thought the mix was excellent overall - with a couple of exceptions.

First I'll say that I felt I heard every word clearly - though I'll reiterate that I watched this in an excellent Imax theater that was clearly calibrated out well and running the film at spec.

I'll state again that everything I heard was 100% top shelf minus the couple of small things I'll list here:

• There was a moment in the opening sequence where multiple car wrecks were happening simultaneously with big score moments, and I think they could have stood to clear out some space for some of the car wreck elements that were taking up room on the screen but getting lost in the mix. 
• There were several moments in the latter half of the movie when the score contained a heavy brass section and was pushed loud enough to crowd everything else out.  I'm about positive that this was a director's choice (as well as an arrangement thing) rather than a mixer choice, but the end result clashed in the final mix.  It just felt like that typical thing where both the composer and the designers are trying to go to 11, but there's just not room for both to get all the way there. 
• There was very minimal ADR in the film, but in the few spots where it was needed (helicopter scenes etc) it was pretty blatant and not always synced well.  I understand that these actors probably had to be wrestled from their various exploits around the globe to get the ADR cut, but it felt as if they were told certain lines were good enough before they actually got there.  Probably only 4 or 5 lines that looked like this, but boy did they.
• Daniel Craig clearly speaks much more softly than the others on the set with him.  Again, I was in a very good listening environment there at Northpark, but boy howdy I heard that noise pumping on him every time he spoke.  In fact, it felt more like they were gating and editing around the noise on his lines than pumping Cedar or anything.  No one else seems to have suffered from that.  Its also possible that they were burying lavs a little more deeply in his costume than the other characters, but that can't really account for the big discrepancy between his dialogue and that of the others - especially on the very quiet soundstage moments.  I think his suits were noisy as well, which couldn't have helped. 
• Those are American sirens.  I'm pretty sure zero percent of this film took place in the USA.

With those out of the way, I'd like to add a few more kudos to the sound crew:

• The weapon sounds were probably the closest I've come to the feeling of an actual gun being fired in proximity to me.  Kickass field recordings of the guns being fired, and they were mixed LOUD, but somehow not painfully.  Bond fired his weapon indoors on multiple occasions, and in each case the sound of the gun in that space felt spot on, which I know is incredibly difficult to pull off.  Nothing felt exaggerated, but all of it felt very big and very real.  Probably one of the finest weapon sound achievements I've seen in film.
• Ditto the explosions.  The edit and the mix decisions really did those explosions some good when they were unexpected and out in the clear, but they really did give a genuine feeling that you'd get if you were in close proximity to that kind of explosion.  My wife and I both jumped out of our seats in a couple of key moments where they surprised us with a bang, and despite coming out of my seat and looking around I felt as drawn in during those moments as I ever have in a film.  Those things felt REAL.
• Vehicles were kickass, rare, screaming down the road, and as impressive as it can get.  The team recording them must have had a field day.   Ditto the extensive helicopter sounds.
• Punches and kicks felt the appropriate size in relation to the weapons.  Not massive, but still very satisfying and intense.
• BGFX from locations around the globe were deep, intense and clearly very accurate.  
• There were three massive sound events - the opening car/bike/train chase, the train dropping through the subway station, and the final asault on skyfall.  All three achieved what they were going for, but only the train dropping through the subway really tipped all the way into "that has to be exactly what that would sound like" territory for me.  It was just flat out impressive, and even more so for me given that I didn't see it coming.
• kudos to the production sound crew for scoring a place in the opening credits.  Well deserved IMO.

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 that's all I've got.  I'd recommend it for sure.  Suspend disbelief and enjoy the ride.

pouring concrete

Last week we poured some concrete for the foley stage concrete surface.  The pits in our breakaway floors are 4 feet long, thirty inches wide, and 8 inches deep.

After several days of curing the concrete has turned out very nice.  I was a total of 5 full bags to fill the pit, and the resulting slab has zero ringing to it and a very nice surface texture.

apologies in advance for the blurry photos.

a twitter converation about piracy

edited to remove the persistent "@" callabacks (for readability)
original link


Jack Menhorn
Bummed that he even thought of asking the question: ‪http://socialsounddesign.com/questions/3928/pirate-audio-samples-how-risky-is-it-really …‬ ‪#piratessuck‬

Frank Bry ‏
‪@KomradeJack‬ Wow, he admits to theft. Even for personal use, stealing sounds is not a good idea and the Universe does not look kindly on you

Jack Menhorn ‏
‪Just noticed it was 2 years old and someone named "mikol" resurrected it.

Jack Menhorn
‪mikol saw all those replies and still replied trying to justify.

rene_coronado
@KomradeJack @idaho_recordist there is a warez culture out there that the replies ignore.  the OP is probably culture shocked by the resp...

rene_coronado
...and his contemporaries would probably scoff at it.  our replies should always remain aware of that.

rene_coronado
not critiquing the responses.  just noting what I know is a disconnect between the two worlds.

KomradeJack
I suppose im a bit astonished someone in that warez-culture would still not realize piracy ≠ professionalism

KomradeJack
"Hey I need to record some ambiences, better go steal a stereo mic from Guitar Center"

rene_coronado
don't be.  think of the beginnings of the hip hop sampling culture.  many professionals came from those roots.

rene_coronado
the kid's trying to make the turn.  he should be encouraged, not slapped down.  my .02

KomradeJack
Not entirely sure that's this case, but I understand the sentiment. We all start somewhere.

Frank Bry
Yes, at least he wanted to make it right. I hope things worked out for him. Every game I work on I have to...

Frank Bry
 … I Warrant that I have license to use ANY audio I do for the client or they come after my ass.

rene_coronado
yep.  this kid is trying to learn that skill.  he should be encouraged IMO.

Frank Bry
Disney was the 1st client to require proof from me that I owned licenses for the assets I used.

rene_coronado
I believe it.  we had to really re-work our echo collective license to sell it to warner games.

Frank Bry
yep. Ditto.

Frank Bry
It's REALLY cold outside but I'm going to go out and record the crazy wind right now anyway.

touchscreen daw interfaces dont offer tactile feedback

saw this today:

and I thought to myself:

that's really not how I want to control my DAW.  I mentioned this a bit in the comments section of tonebenders episode 2 (check it out!) but I want to go into more detail here.

First of all, I get why random access control surfaces are probably the future - the ability to implement custom interfaces that are not tied to dedicated knobs and sliders is a powerful concept - but the fact of the matter is that finger access is never going to be as fast and accurate as mouse access for fast, sample-accurate and detailed editing tasks.

it also doesn't seem like you'd get the same "feel" as you would with a hardware controller if you're doing fingertip mixing.  All of these "pictures under glass" offer only visual feedback when you manipulate them, which IMO takes you out of the process of manipulating sound.

It also reminded me of this little rant I came across a while back - which very eloquently details the ways in which our hands manipulate the world and receive feedback, while pointing out that the touchscreen interface concept basically breaks that concept by refusing to give tactile feedback.  It forces us to use our eyes to see if we did anything and to measure the degree by which we've done those things.

We can close our eyes and turn a knob or move a fader, and instinctually feel the degree to which we've moved those things.  This is an important concept in manipulating audio, and all of these touchscreen interfaces break that concept.

I'd personally much prefer to see a system that looks like a flat tablet, but actually has a grid of actuators that pop up tactile feedback (much the way a refreshable braille reader does), and have that give feedback.  Maybe it could also be both touch and pressure sensitive, so that it could move with your hands as you manipulate the interface.

I think that would end being more useful for audio specific tasks, and as an interface in general.  Our hands currently aren't getting any feedback from our screens.