Guide to 16mm mixing

Editing sound

Edit on as few tracks as possible: one if you can; two if necessary; no more than two until you lock picture. "Locking picture" means you've finished editing the film itself and can move to the stage of sound editing.

How to lay out tracks

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The idea of track layout is, where possible, to assign a track to each category of sound. For example, if there is music, it should all be on one track; other kinds of sound shouldn't be on that track. Ambience should be on another track. Almost always, synchronous sound (even if faked) takes up two tracks.

Our sound mixing room can handle up to six 16mm magnetic tracks. In general, it makes mixing easier to use more rather than fewer tracks. There is nothing to be gained by squeezing a lot of closely spaced effects and ambience onto one track rather than spreading them logically over two. Spreading them makes mixing easier because it doesn't require the mixer to manage many changes of level and equalization and other things in very short spaces of time.

There's no need to carry this to an extreme. If you have a film that has only a synchronous track and one bit of music, say, there's no reason to build a music track if your bit of music can fit onto one of the two sync tracks.

Equalization & Level

Probably John Koczera will be the one to mix your film. Essentially, he does what you do when you play back your two tracks on a six-plate Steenbeck, evening out levels, fading in and out and cross-fading. He has more sophisticated controls than you do on the Steenbeck. He can control the equalization (or EQ) of each track, altering its bass, treble, and mid-range components. He can also filter out high or low sounds (this is an effect to be used sparingly since it often noticeable).

A good test of a particular detail of track layout is to try it on a six-plate Steenbeck. If you can make it sound right there, probably you can make it sound right in the mix. You should be keep in mind that the sound reproduction of the Steenbecks isn't very good and that many problems are masked by the mechanical noise of the transport. For critical work, use headphones.

Sound editing

Usually the first step in sound editing is to work on the synchronous tracks, if there are any. At virtually every real cut (excluding unintentional cuts that have been spliced back together again), you should move the sound from the A to the B track, or vice versa. In nearly all cases, these sound cuts correspond to picture cuts. You should then consider each cut and decide whether it represents a continuity or a discontinuity (i.e., a change of scene). If it is a discontinuity, you probably will want to leave it as a straight cut without overlaps. If it is a continuity, you have more work to do. The easiest solution (and the one to try first) is to search your outs for an extension of the outgoing sound. Lay this in and run the cut on the 6-plate, fading the outgoing sound track out starting at the picture cut. If you don't hear the seam, you are home free and can go on to the next cut.

What to do if this doesn't work? Look for a forward extension of the incoming sound. Fade it up before the picture cut. If this doesn't sound seamless, try a cross-fade (fade-in of incoming sound simultaneous with fade-out of outgoing sound). Nearly always this works.

What if it doesn't? Listen carefully to identify the source of the mismatch. It may be (for example) a passing airplane in the outgoing sound which is absent in the incoming sound. No amount of cross-fading will mask this. The only solution may be to find or record such a sound continuously and lay it in later on a third track, the "ambience" track, covering several shots, in the hope that this will smear over the discontinuity. Obviously, this is a solution to be using sparingly. (Refrigerator motors are worse than planes.)

Ambience

Ambience is just a name for a continuous piece of sound, often used to give continuity and enrich the background. When you are on location, you should take the opportunity to record a minute or two of nice, clean, continuous ambience in each location. These are invaluable in sound editing.

A cardinal rule is that you do not make cuts in ambience tracks; that is, you cannot cobble together a long continuity out of discrete pieces. For if you don't hear the discontinuities in these pieces on the Steenbeck, you certainly will in the mixing room when it is too late.

Ambience should be used not only to solve problems but create atmosphere. It is possible, however, to have too many birds.

There can be more than one ambience track: for instance, one for wind, a second for birds.

Silence in a film is virtually never represented by the complete absence of recorded modulation on the tracks or by "fill" but instead by a quiet ambience track (sometimes called "room tone" when it is recorded in an interior).

Effects (FX)

You will need sound effects at certain times when you do not have sound or usable sound for something that we see. When possible, record effects on the spot. Often, however, you'll have to record them afterwards. When doing this, work in a quiet place and get the microphone as close as possible to the source. The idea is to produce the highest possible ratio between the effect and the background. If you do so, then the cuts in and out of the effect will not be heard, for they will be masked by the ambience track. If you are working with effects in the absence of synchronous tracks, then you must have ambience tracks. Sound effects can sometimes be taken from CDs, though these tend to have a generic quality and overuse is to be avoided.

Sometimes you will want to enhance an effect that appears in your synchronous tracks: for example, to give better definition to some barely audible footsteps. The way you do this is to record effects and lay them in at the proper places on your FX tracks, allowing the synchronous track to play the role of "ambience." In the mix you will need to find the proper level for these effects so that they can be heard but not sound artificial.

Fill

The many sections without sound on all tracks are filled with single-perf "fill," sometimes called "slug," bought from labs. It is essential that fill is cut into your tracks so that the base side faces the heads. If even short pieces of fill are inserted the wrong way, the emulsion rubs off onto the sound head, soon causing an audible loss of high frequencies.

Leaders

Your edited work picture and all of your sound tracks must of course be the same length. They should all have white leader, appropriately labeled at the head and tail.

There should be at least six feet of white leader before the start mark. On the sound tracks (sometimes called "elements"), the start mark is a boxed-in X. If possible, at the head of your work picture use SMPTE Leader (this is the leader with the numerical count-down: 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2). In this case the frame that says "Picture Start" is the start mark; it corresponds to the boxed-in X's on the sound track. All footage must be counted from this mark. SMPTE leader is normally available from Pete Grana, but if it is not, then use white leader and use a boxed-in X for the picture as well.

Opposite the numeral "2" on the SMPTE leader (this numeral is only one frame long, as opposed to those that precede it, which are each 24-frames long), there should be a one-frame beep on each of your sound tracks. The most convenient way of putting on beep is to cut it from stick-on strips (available, like the SMPTE leader, from Pete Grana). Be sure to put it on in the right orientation (otherwise it won't beep) and not to make it more than a frame long. If SMPTE leader is unavailable, the place of the "2" on the picture should be marked with a punch hole; it occurs 3 feet and 24 frames after the start mark.

Following the beep on the picture is 47 frames of black, which is part of the SMPTE leader. Of course there should be corresponding 47-frame lengths of leader on the sound tracks. Then the film begins. Usually picture and sound begin together at this point. But if not, add either black leader to the picture or fill to the sound track. The point is that nothing should happen until 2 seconds after the "2" on the screen.

There is no set convention about tail leaders. Our advice is to punch a hole in the picture leader about two feet after the end of the film and put corresponding beeps on the tracks. In the mix this will verify that all is still well with the synchronization and is a very helpful double check. After this comes at least 6 feet of white leader on the picture and all the tracks. This is very important. There is nothing more frustrating than having one or more elements run off the machines at the end of a long session only to find that there is no way of restoring sync other than to wind everything back to the beginning and thread up all the machines again (a process that can take half an hour), then run through at projection speed to the tail of the film--often to correct a minor mixing mistake!

Interlock projection

If you can schedule it, it's a good idea to do an interlock projection after you've finished sound editing. This will let you hear all of your tracks together and allow you to spot and remedy problems before making up the cue sheets and mixing.

Cue sheets

Cue sheets (a sample page is appended) are a road map to your sound layout and contain some instructions for mixing. Tracks are often labeled A, B, C, etc. The cue sheet shows footage, normally running down the page on the left at 5 foot intervals. To the right of the footage there should be a column describing the picture (often scene by scene rather than shot by shot). And to the right of this column, a column for each sound track, with a line whenever there is sound. At the beginning and end of this line there should be footage indications and, beside the line, a description of the sound (e.g. "bells ringing"). Where possible, you should also indicate fades and cross fades.

The cue sheet is the only way for the mixer to know what sound is on what track. A blank cue sheet is attached for you to photocopy if you wish.

What the mix produces

It produces a mixed master track on 16mm magnetic film. The beep tone is used to cue this to the "2" on the SMPTE leader. If you make a composite print, the lab will use the mixed master track to make an optical sound track negative, cue it with the picture and print. The 16mm optical sound track will, alas, be audibly inferior to the magnetic master in signal-to-noise ratio and frequency rang