How to Be a Sound Mixer | On-Set Audio Masterclass

Welcome back to Sound 101. I'm Andrew from D&D Microphones. And in the past, we have talked about a single source to a single audio recorder. What about multiple actors in one scene? What about multiple volumes? One actor getting very loud and volitious, another actor being very whispery, very quiet. We have set something up right here for you guys to get a better understanding of what it's like to be a sound mixer. For today's episode, it's gonna be all about how to create a sound mix. Today, we are gonna be talking all about mixing. And that means being a sound mixer, as well as using this particular sound bag kit right here. I've got a special guest with me, Ethan, who is a location sound mixer here in Los Angeles. Ethan, tell the people what you've done recently. Yeah, so recently I've worked on projects for the NFL, Discover Plus, and Animal Planet. So tell us all about what it means to be a sound mixer. Being a sound mixer, I think the most important thing is of course getting really clean sound and making sure your lobs and your booms and all of that sounds great, but also making sure that everything is organized and labeled properly. And if, you know, using time code and things like that to make sure that when post gets your sound, it not only sounds good, but they actually know what the sound is for. In terms of mixing and things like that, generally you wanna make sure that things aren't phasing, the mics that aren't being used are faded down, and making sure that everything kind of is at a good middle ground where it's not too hot or it's not too low. So Ethan, tell us what kind of gear does a sound mixer need to get started with? So the gear obviously can change from job to job, but I think really the most basic is this bag over here, two lobs and a boom, and a battery distribution system, some headphones, and a boom pole. So yeah, that's called an ENG style kit, and it's what, like two and a boom, right? Yeah, two and a boom. So that's gonna get you started, and that's classic interview, short film, small project kind of a sound kit. Definitely, yeah. So it's a three channel kit. How do we wire this all up though? Yeah, so essentially, you're gonna take channel one over here, which is your boom, and you're just gonna hard wire that to XLR because it's on your bag, boom's right there. And then we're gonna have wireless channel one and two, which are gonna go on each individual actor or talent, and they're gonna go to two and three over here on the recorder. Okay, so we're going boom, lob one, lob two in that track order. Yes. And that's pretty standard across the board? Yeah, generally, some people may work a little differently, but from my experience, I usually see everyone putting their boom on channel one. Now, if you wanna know more about how to wire up your own bag and do something even more expanded with batteries and everything else, go check out our video right up here. It's gonna show you how I broke down and built a sound bag for you guys. So for today's scene, we have two actors. One will be whispering, one will be yelling. Are we covered? Yeah, definitely. We've got two lobs, one on each actor. We have the boom that we can use for the whole scene as well. And when they're yelling or when they're whispering, we can just ride the levels. I think we'd be more than covered. That sounds like a great plan. Let me go get talent and we can wire them all up. Sounds great. So we just finished micing them all up. Can we talk about some best practices on where we should be placing our transmitters? So with any transmitter, I really like to put them at the path of least resistance. So RF in general just has a harder time going through the more organic matters around it. So I wanna try to place this in the best line of sight places possible. So for Austin's outfit here, for example, we have this shirt pretty much covering it the whole time. And in the scene, he's going to be sitting down. So we're not gonna see that at all. So all I have to do is lift it up, plug it in, wrap it up really quickly, and it just disappears right there. And you're not even gonna see it because of the particular blocking for the scene. Yeah, I mean, given today's climate where we all carry cell phones with us all the time, seeing a square in someone's pocket is not like the devil that it used to be in the mid-nineties when everyone went to the small of the back, right? Yes, and a couple other great places, if you have a talent that's wearing a skirt or a dress, maybe is a great spot is ankles or thighs, front pockets if possible, or maybe the side. Just all depends on the outfit and what the blocking is and what the camera's gonna see. Let's just take a second right there to pause and talk a little bit more about the wiring process and when it happens during a shoot day. So when an actor or actress arrives to set, they're immediately going to get ushered into wardrobe, hair, makeup. Now do not go and bother them because they are gonna be probably rehearsing lines and doing all of their actory things. The AD will then bring them to you when they are done in wardrobe and hair. So they are gonna come to you and say the phrase, they are ready to be wired. That is the appropriate time. Don't go bother them beforehand. Trust me, it's going to give you a longer career if you just let them do their thing. Now, after you've wired them all up and put the pack on them, sleep it or put it to mute. Now, when they go back into frame and they're actually doing rehearsals for camera and everything, you could unmute it and do some mic checks with a mic then. But right now, not the appropriate time. Mute it so when they walk off, they feel safe to talk about things that they wanna talk about. Well, that wraps this little section up. Let's go back to the set. So let's go over some set etiquette. How is it we choose a location on set for us to kind of get set up? Yeah, so when I get to set, the first thing I do is I look for a space that's out of the way from all the rest of the crew and the actors, but still close enough so we can get our RF coverage for our wireless. Okay, so when you say RF coverage, we're talking about our range, we wanna be in that stable proximity to the set. And then we're what, running just like one XLR cable to the set? Yeah, so for this particular setup, we're running a hardwire XLR boom to the set and then we're gonna have our two wirelesses right here, which are on our actors. So what we're gonna wait for is the AD, the call roll sound. When our recorder is confirmed recording, we then say sound speeds. The slate will then get flown into set. They will roll the camera. They will do their own cadence back and forth. And then the person running the slate will call out the slate. In order to get that slate, our boom operator will slide his boom over the slate, making sure we're capturing good audio for that. After that slate is flying out during that process, our boom operator will then what, slide outwards and set back up over the set. And then we're ready to go, waiting for the director to call action. What do we do at the end of it though, when it's time to cut? So when we're cutting, the biggest thing we need to listen in for is somebody, director AD yelling, cut. And once we hear that, then we actually cut. If you think they're gonna cut or it seems like they're cutting, until you hear that word, keep rolling. Now, let's actually get a little bit deeper as to what kind of files are recorded with this type of mixer. While it's a three input mixer, technically you are recording a five track poly wave file. Tracks one and two is gonna be your stereo left and right pair. Track three is gonna be your boom and track four and five is actually channels one and two of your wireless system. So while you hit record once, technically you were hitting record five separate times. When you're delivering these files to post, make sure you don't just transfer over the wave files, but the whole folder structure itself as a lot of metadata is saved in a lot of this extra information in smaller ancillary files like XMLs. Well, that wraps it up here. Let's go back over to our set. So we're about to roll sound. As a sound mixer, what exactly are you doing during the take? All right, so first is we're gonna make sure we have our headphones on at all times during the take. And the very first thing that we're gonna do is we're gonna listen to the overall level of individual tracks and the mix to make sure that everything is sounding great. There's no clipping, it's not too low. Our noise floor is okay. And that essentially we're getting good clean audio for the whole scene. So during this take over here, we have an actor whispering as well as another one yelling. How are we gonna adjust for that? Okay, so on the lav side, we're gonna make sure that the actor yelling is turned down way lower than the actor that's whispering. We're gonna also make sure that on the boom side, our boom operator is pulling back a little bit and then we're kind of coming in to the actor who is whispering. We wanna make sure especially that we're not clipping. And if we have to ride the gain, we will, but if we're gain staging properly, we shouldn't have to. Okay, so my last question for this kind of setup, what we're doing during the take is, if there's a problem or we hear something, how are we going to diagnose that problem? Yeah, definitely. So we have a function on most recorders called pre-fader listen or PFL for short. Pre-fader listen is essentially a fancy solo where you're not only isolating the track to listen to it, but you're also taking away anything after trim. Okay, so if I hear something like a lavalier has fallen, it's no longer placed on the neck, but just dropped into the shirt and I go, someone doesn't sound right here. I could pop into like say Herlov and go, oh, okay, that's definitely the offensive problem. It's not my boom. It's not like phasing, it's nothing else. It's clearly that track right there. And then we, what, after the take is done, we call cut and you're hopping up and you're addressing the issue. Yeah, definitely somebody from the sound department, me or somebody else was gonna go in there and make that adjustment as quickly as possible, but also in the least disruptive manner. Okay. Rolling sound. Sound is speeding. Roll camera. Camera speeds. ISO scene, take 2,600. Boom set. And action. You understand what I have to do. What? I have to steal the declaration of independence. Are you crazy? What, how are you gonna do that? We just need a plan. Cut. You understand what I have to do. What? I have to steal the declaration of independence. Are you crazy? Shh, shh, shh. How are you gonna do that? We just need. So we just had a successful shoot. It's the end of the day. What do we need to do to wrap up? So first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go ahead and go over the actors, grab their wires and grab their packs. And try to get that as quickly as possible before they get in their street clothes. Because once they get in their street clothes, they could damage it as they're taking it off themselves or they walk away with it entirely. That would suck. Yeah, and then the biggest thing afterwards is I make sure that I clean and wrap everything up nice and neat so that when I get home and I'm tired or the next shoot, it's nice and prepped and ready. If you have any questions about how to clean a lavalier, we have a video right up here. So we're all wrapped up. What do we do with our audio files? So the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take a sound report and I'm gonna go ahead and create that on my recorder. So I have all my track names, files, et cetera. And then I'm gonna go ahead and pull the SD card or USB stick or whatever it is that your particular recorder may do. Mine uses a SD card on this MixPre-3. So I'm gonna go ahead and pull that and then hand that over to the DIT. Okay, now I do have one question here. If you've got any body pack transmitters that do record, would you drop off the body pack transmitter or the micro SD card? Do you hand micro SD cards to DITs? If I'm doing any recording on my body pack transmitters, generally I will try to give DIT as much as I can, but I'll typically back that stuff up as well on my own personal computer. And overnight, you're backing up your files to your computer. What are you doing with your batteries? So typically I actually have a charging station on set. So I'm actually charging batteries as I use them throughout the day. So typically I don't need to charge at home. I can just start right back up the next day. But if I do, it's just a quick plug and play and it's super easy. Yeah, now everything is rechargeable. You don't wanna lose those rechargeables because it nullifies the whole point of having a rechargeable. Yeah. So Ethan says sound report right here, but let's do a deeper dive into what a sound report is. A sound report in the digital space is an Excel spreadsheet with different rows and columns. Each column typically means a different wire, take, number, all these kinds of metadata entry points. The rows are typically divided out as to what track or file name. But at the end of the day, it's a giant sheet that tells you I hit record once. It was this take, this scene, and possibly even a slate number depending on if you're in the Europe system. But it's gonna keep all this kind of metadata. And in the notes section column, you can write something during a take in your iPad. So if a air conditioner kicks on in the middle of a take, you write air conditioner kicked on. It's gonna save that note to that file. And that giant spreadsheet is going to mention all that kind of little metadata. You can turn this into post. They can then pair it with the files. And in your NLE editor like Adobe or DaVinci, you can actually see all of this in a giant sheet in your editing software. So you know which takes were the good ones and which ones may have a problem, but only maybe say halfway through the take. So the first half is good. The second half is bad, but that's metadata that you can add in your recorder. That's gonna wrap it up for us at Deity Microphones. I wanna thank Ethan for teaching us how to be a sound mixer. And I would like to thank Katie and Austin for teaching us how to steal the Declaration of Independence. If you like this kind of content, you gotta hit that subscribe button and hit that bell for notifications so you're one of the first people to find out when we drop a brand new video. If you have questions about the audio that you're trying to record on your short film or production, drop them down in those comment section below and we'll try to answer your questions, possibly on any future episodes. I'm gonna wrap it up for you guys today. I'm Andrew from Deity Microphones. Thank you for watching.