Audio Post Production: A Letter to the Production Sound Department

[@regulartrich]

Hi Tom, great content as usual. I just want to kindly point out that your live streams are quite low in loudness. To listen to them on the street for example I need to crank the volume up with my airpods, which is fine, but then when the ad pops up I get a super hot volume and have to instantly reach the volume to save my ears 😂 I really appreciate your work though. Mine is just a feedback 💪💪

[@ThomasBoykin]

Note taken, I’ve been barely functioning due to being sick but I will do a better job of maintaining loudness standards.

[@regulartrich]

@@ThomasBoykin Thank you Thomas! Get well 💪

[@ili6065]

Thank you very much for so detailed explaning personal experience. It is vital knowlidge for many amateur and beginers all over the world. Hallo from lake Bakal.

[@ThomasBoykin]

My pleasure, and thank you for watching. You live in a great area to record the sounds of ice!

[@pxlmvr7]

Great stuff! I'm a Picture Editor for features and don't that much about sound, so this helps me understand better the whole production sound process, and also post sound.

[@ThomasBoykin]

Glad to help!

[@dcslyxe]

I believe you mentioned you don't use the on set room tone. I have a few questions regarding this that hopefully you can answer. 1. Is this common. would you say most post mixers don't use it anymore. 2. Why not? 3. when did this stop being useful. 4. Do you think this applies to doc work as well? Thanks for your content.

[@ThomasBoykin]

Hello and good questions. 1. Yes, among professional dialogue editors. I don't know of any who use recorded room tone on set. 2. The recorded room tone never matches the actual room tone in the takes. Lights move, traffic changes, actors leave. The camera is off. Room tone needs to be 100% match to be useful. The tiny pieces of silence inside the takes are always better. 3. It's never been useful, unless you are slapping it across and entire scene to cover up a bad dialogue editing job. 4. Nat sound is useful for docs, but thats different than room tone.

[@luist4373]

Do you know a solution for creaky floors for location? I Hhad on a series i finished 2 locations with horrible floors and said to production on the location scout that it will be problematic and we ended up shooting there for picture anyway. Even with thick carpets the floor is squeaking under the actor. I told production that these scenes are probably gonna need ADR because of the location choice. Also, how do you deal with squeaky/creaky wooden floor on dialogue? (Hush pro with decrackle, declick and spectral repair?). Thanks in advance for your answer.

[@ThomasBoykin]

Wild lines and careful editing of alts is best

[@luist4373]

@@ThomasBoykin yes that’s what I did already but I wonder if you’ve heard of a practical solutions from other sound editors or sound mixers to physically treat creaky wooden floors on set.

[@philippfeichtinger7831]

@@luist4373 sandbags and other heavy stuff can help sometimes

[@stevegeorge7773]

Hi! Not sure if you found my reference to you useful but hopefully it was. I was curious about what your thoughts are on Audio interfaces. What should I look at and what needs to be considered for a good quality tech Audio Interface for screen production with music stuff, SFX on the side. Different price points view would be very nice to get your professional perspective on.

[@ThomasBoykin]

Focusrite, Apollo, Avid MTRX, and RME are ones I would check out

[@nathanksimpson]

Don’t forget DPA boom mics. Really nice. Dpa has a really nice off axis sound in my experience.

[@ThomasBoykin]

DPA makes great mics!