User tim prebble - Social Sound Design

Answer by tim prebble for Headphones for Mastering ?

2013-05-20T06:08:25Z

I dont use them for masting but LOVE my Sennheiser HD650 headphones!!

Answer by tim prebble for How to design lava/volcano sounds

2013-05-18T23:37:34Z

A few ideas:

access the real thing! There are plenty of geothermal areas in the world which people have recorded... eg theres 58 geysers on sounddogs - use them and/or youtube as a reference if nothing else
snow, ice, avalanche, water & explosion sounds are all good source material for manipulation eg completely take the attack off an explosion and you have an element of a geyser - layer it with eg a pitched down water burst/hose gush... I've also in the past taken single ocean wave breaks, pitched it down/EQ'd it & then created a doppler/pitch curve on it, since the water spraying out of a geyser is going to doppler to a degree from your pov....
perform EQ sweeps rolling most of the high freq off snow or ice movement & you can get some good murky gritty movement that could work for lava...
for volcanic rock movement, an obvious starting point is rock movement, so try close micing grinding heavy rocks together & add subharmonic synth processing (LowEnder plugin or dbx120 outboard) - doing pitch curves on these may help evoke their movement
i have some sounds in my library called 'erratic pass' that I made years ago in Metasynth using white noise as a source & applying lots of pitch modulation to it so its kind of bubbly and erratic... Then I processed those with doppler plugin and EQ sweeps to provide movement & create lots of variations.. its useful as a layer as its bright/cuts through, but when layered under real sounds you definitely dont 'read' it as synthetic or artificial... Could be useful under a geyser spray, just for a brief moment, as effectively water is spraying everywhere, so it is an erratic burst of hiss :)

Answer by tim prebble for Pre Dub mix question.

2013-05-18T23:14:34Z

When printing stems you need to think through what you will want seperate control over in the final mix, as this dictates the number of stems you will want to predub to. Most films I work on (& many are not big films) I will still plan to predub to eight or ten 5.1 stems, so I can keep elements split to enough of a degree to rebalance. The aim is to make each stem to be balanced & work well as an element... but not stitch you up in the final mix.
if you know an element is subjective/contentious/open to interpretation or the director is not 100% sure of what they want or its VFX dependent & will change with updates, it is often better to not predub it, and run it live into the final mix as a virtual predub. So it is balanced & panned but not printed. I always do this with eg creature vox, and any stings & tones as they may need tweaking (timing/pitch etc) to work with score.
As to your concern about a stem not being right eg panning, the re-recording mixers still have control over the stem eg to change its divergence or spread, or even repan it to a degree - obviously the whole stem is changed, which is why my point 1 is so important ie to not lock together seperate diverse elements into the same predub stem.

Each film has unique requirements but a starting point for me with FX stems is:

FXA General FX
FXB General FX
FXC Movement
FXD Movement
FXE Impacts
FXF Impacts
FXG Vehicles
FXH Vehicles

So something simple like a door open, I might still split/print the door open/close onto FXA stem and the creak onto FXB so if someone says 'lets lose the creak' we can... Or vehicles I might split the engine sounds from the tyre/movement sounds I'll also borrow stems to split wider eg say i want a vehicle split across 3 or 4 stems - if there is nothing on Impacts then I'll use that stem to split extra elements to (& make sure I name it as such/colour code it)

Answer by tim prebble for Exporting clips in Pro Tools and sound card conversion

2013-05-18T22:52:00Z

You'll need a soundcard to work at 192kHz - Protools without any hardware will only run at 96kHz maximum (and obviously only some PT hardware options support 192kHz)

Answer by tim prebble for gift ideas for an aspiring sound designer

2013-05-16T22:58:05Z

books are a great practical present eg

The Practical Art of Motion Picture Sound by David Lewis Yewdall http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Motion-Picture-Sound-Third/dp/0240808657/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257540228&sr=8-1m

And if you got him a recorder, then some fun physical sound props is a great idea

eg a thunder drum? (small drum with spring attached) http://www.ebay.com/bhp/thunder-drum

or maybe a cheap violin bow

Plus some wind protection for the H1

http://www.rycote.com/products/mini_windjammer/mini_windjammer_for_portable_recorder/

http://www.rodemic.com/accessories/deadkitten

http://www.redheadwindscreens.com/

Answer by tim prebble for 23.976fps vs 24fps nightmare

2013-05-12T04:53:52Z

presuming you are working to the offline picture edit, you are also going to have to very carefully check sync against the online graded master, as that picture conform may have sync issues too

Answer by tim prebble for Creating "Vintage" Sound

2013-05-07T23:43:33Z

Back in the day, it was an all analogue path - recording on Nagra 1/4" tape, transferring to 35mm sep mag and then sound editing via cutting that mag (I know a semi-retired local who was infamous for doing fades either by scratching off the mag, or using sweeps with a head demagnetizer to erase some of the signal!) All those rolls of sep mag feeding an analogue desk, using lots of very high quality analogue outboard... all with no automation! But apart from technology it was also a very different creative process, decision making could not be put off until the mix - priorities had to be established early on....

btw for some excellent recreation of vintage film sound techniques, check out this film: Berberian Sound Studio - it is so great!!!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1833844

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berberian_Sound_Studio

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlNCiGVQsd0

Answer by tim prebble for Workflow: Keeping Track of Your Designs

2013-05-07T04:43:20Z

All my editing & layering happens in one big super session (ie all reels of the film, each reel starts on the hour etc) which doesn't have any live plugins running sicne I dont want to be relying on them when migrate to the dub stage for predubs (although I do have a few inactive source & destination tracks in that session for printing simple processing eg doppler, IRs etc)

Anything involving a lot of processing I do in seperate sessions (eg Weresheep Vox is one session, WereLamb another etc) so I have a chronological archive of versions of each session & the plugin setup/routing etc remains intact... But also that work is often done 96k whereas my main edit session is 48k....

As with score cues it can be very important to be able to revert to an earlier version, and potentially continue developing it in a different direction... Same goes for the super session eg when a scene is dropped, but then returns 3 cuts later.. Need to be able to conform between versions of the cuts....

Answer by tim prebble for How does a forest sound through a 6 year-olds ears?

2013-05-03T21:01:35Z

VERY complex delays occur in a forest due to the reflections off individual trees & the canopy overhead - you could def use this to accentuate moments of pov....

But you could also potentially set up some contrasts when you actually are point of view (ie seeing through the kids eyes) versus wider shots where the audience see the kid in the forest..... So eg maybe when it is wide shots, have interesting textured sounds eg gentle wind through trees, discretely panned trees creaking etc... but when pov try layering slightly stranger sounds into the tree creaks, try convolving whispers into the winds, and play with very complex delays on more percussive distant bird calls, treat it all as though a little slow motion....

Answer by tim prebble for copyright issues with recording a broadcast from TV set for sound design

2013-05-01T20:18:18Z

"the character interacts with the TV: she talks to it. So it's a very important part of the script."

If this is true, why not also film/record your own actors performing your own soap opera? Owning the rights via it being your own work is the best solution to avoiding copyright issues :)

Answer by tim prebble for Hardware for Sound design

2013-04-22T23:01:15Z

hardware for creating sounds?

Props!
Vehicles!
are animals hardware or software?

the older & more characterful the better, but as with foley its all in the performance!

I've been in a few big, well used foley rooms & they are like prop heaven!

Answer by tim prebble for Best sounds to pitch down and time stretch?

2013-04-20T21:58:33Z

just two examples:

for pitch shifting, look for sounds that are resonant in mid frequencies - pitching them down an octave or two shifts them into bass frequencies & can make for a dramatic contrast with the original sound....

i've always been impressed with time stretched bell sounds (you'll want to use a spectral time stretch like AudioSculpt so grain doesnt become an issue) - slow modulations become apparent that you cant hear/dont notice in the original sound due to the speed....

Answer by tim prebble for Audio length and video length don't match up?

2013-04-11T00:36:59Z

The most important thing is to find out is do you have the correct video?

if you import the audio from the video and compare it to the exported audio you were given Does the audio drift out of sync (ie there is a ratio problem) or does it suddenly become out of sync (ie the audio & video are from different pic cuts)

If its a ratio/drift issue

Put the timeline in ProTools to display samples (not timecode or minutes/seconds or bars/beats etc)

Measure the length of the video, note the number of samples (it will be a large number)
Measure the length of the audio, note the number of samples (it will be a large number)

Now get a calculator and work out what the percentage difference is ie divide short length by long length, does this ratio look familiar?

Now do a bunch of calculations to see if that result is same as 44100/48000? 23.976/24? 23.976/25? 24/25? 25/29.97? 23.976/29.97? 24/29.97?

I once had this problem and it turned out they had somehow speed changed the audio twice, so in my case it was the 24/25 ratio, but doubled!?!

Answer by tim prebble for Low end impacts/thuds

2013-04-10T07:26:49Z

subharmonic synth, either the outboard dbx120 or the LowEnder plugin

Answer by tim prebble for Pro Tools 11 here already?

2013-04-08T21:09:35Z

No rush - ProTools vX.0 is always buggy/semi stable....

and this sucks: apparently PT11 is only stereo, if you want multichannel you have to upgrade to PT11HD and there is no COMPLETE Toolkit anymore... & cost of CPTK to 11HD upgrade is 999$!?!

Answer by tim prebble for What are you using for Website Creation?

2013-04-04T05:38:32Z

The answer really depends how long term you are thinking, how simple the site you're wanting to create is, and how often & easily you want to update it... A website is about content so its the means by which you can easily update it that matters most imho.

I started off using Dreamweaver for a few years but dislike the workflow of updating sites via such environments.... I have used Wordpress ever since, for half a dozen sites, some of which you would be hard pressed to ever know they were based on wordpress, such is the degree of easily customizing them.... The most important aspect of Wordpress is that it requires some work on your side to research to find a theme that is as customizable as you require (I haven't had any of the problems @Internet Human identifies with wordpress) From then on it is a pleasure to work with, and best of all, it is SIMPLE to update with new content - whether its a portfolio, ecommerce site, blog or whatever....

If you are considering wordpress, my advice would be don't waste time with free themes - find a premium theme that offers what you need - its not a big cost (US$25-US$50), you're supporting the developer & you have someone to get support from...

Answer by tim prebble for Which Sample Library was that? (Alternative sounds from conventional instruments)

2013-04-02T01:35:37Z

Sonic Couture?

http://www.soniccouture.com/en/

or was it Tonehammer?

they split into two companies:

8Dio http://8dio.com/

Soundiron http://www.soundiron.com/

Answer by tim prebble for How do you measure the impact/effectiveness of sound design?

2013-04-01T21:06:16Z

It is your own instincts, aesthetics, taste, & experience (in life and in work) that makes you create/edits sound design the way you do, but I think it is the directors intent & direction that matters most. For better or worse, the elements & the final mix are their decision - moment by moment & overall, it is their concepts and execution. But prior to that it is all also a constantly evolving group decision: every person on the team is using their sensibilities to present what they think is appropriate, which is then shaped by the sensibilities of the re-recording mixers.... But again all of this is formed to follow or support the directors intent, and their purpose is to tell a story and engage the audience.

I agree with georgi re 'cutting edge' etc - its a dreadful term imho, take Transformers for example, I would consider those films (& their sound design) some of the worst film making in film history - overt, crassly manipulative, juvenile, with about as much emotional nutrition as candy floss. But plenty of people consider(ed) them 'cutting edge'

Beauty is in the eye (& ear) of the beholder

Best use of Silence in a film?

2010-03-03T22:07:30Z

In my opinion some of the best film sound is not loud or overt, and I've used silence many times in film soundtracks myself but I am interested to know what your favorite use of silence or near-silence is in a film?

Answer by tim prebble for Research on independent / freelance sound designers

2013-03-20T01:32:37Z

in NZ almost all the sound editors are freelance... but I doubt thats any help with your questions, as they are region & work specific... Rates of pay depends on the total budget of the project and your experience/what you bring to the project. Business advice is best asked of an accountant and/or lawyer... The best marketing happens via word of mouth - be helpful, do lots of good work <- directors and producers notice...

Answer by tim prebble for What would you have done differently?

2013-03-18T06:32:32Z

If I could time travel I would go back & tell myself: apply for the Berlinale Talent Campus (And if you get tuned down, keep improving you application & keep applying every year until you DO get accepted)

Despite any shortcomings, it was the best experience for - appreciating the role sound plays in film making - appreciating all the other key roles - meeting & freely discussing film/art/sound/music with people from all over the planet - appreciating you are limited by your own experiences - appreciating what travel means ie if you have not travelled & engaged with other cultures, then you are VERY limited!

http://www.berlinale-talentcampus.de/

Answer by tim prebble for sound recorded directly on a DSLR, a lot of problems with dialogue

2013-03-15T20:55:26Z

"budget is low and times are very reduce"

Its the old triangle of diminishing returns: Fast, Good or Cheap. Pick two Sounds like what you're working on is cheap, fast so its not going to be good

What is the final destination of the project? Where will it be seen/heard?

"cut with eq at 5 kz, and put an highpass filter at 50hz"

You should be able to get away with the low cut but I wouldn't put a global 5k cut - like all dialogue you will need to deal with it on a shot by shot basis.... But maybe doing a sort of the material so all your 'hiss' takes are on a couple of dedicated tracks, rumbly on another set etc so you can fine tune semi-global EQ...

Of course all the usual dialogue editing techniques should be used, time permitting - alt takes, clean fill, wild lines, ADR etc..

BUT ALSO: do you plan to ever work for these people again? If so, this is your opportunity to show them WHY they must record sound properly, and hook them up with a production sound person for their next project. Sadly I see people with $20k DSLR rigs, with a Beachtek adaptor, a cheap mic & no one monitoring it, who think they are capturing 'good' audio - their gear budget for sound isn't even as much as their cheapest lens

Answer by tim prebble for Mics for ambience recordings?

2013-03-13T00:10:32Z

To answer a question with a question, whats your feeling on ambience recording with omni mics versus more directional mics? That has to be the first consideration when narrowing down your options...

The big downside I see to omni mics is that its very difficult to manipulate them to avoid or at least minimise any unwanted elements in an ambience... If I only had a pair of mics for ambience recording I don't think I would go for omni mics as the only option, def great for a second perspective or for more diffuse ambiences or in very quiet situations....

Also don't forget to compare secondhand prices too - good mics hold their value AND their fucntionality, but are a LOT cheaper than new!

Answer by tim prebble for Waves LoAir layering

2013-03-11T19:53:07Z

I prefer to use the LowEnder plugin rather than LoAir, and always print it 100% wet to a seperate track so we have control of balance between the original & the LFE element when it is in context/final mix

Answer by tim prebble for Recording CRT sound effects

2013-03-07T20:34:27Z

You can use it to test your high frequency hearing response! All CRTs output a whine just below 16k, have someone switch one on in another room without telling you & check to see if you can hear it.... that used to drive me crazy, the whine is very annoying & I was very happy to ditch my last CRT, but it was especially annoying when sounds were recorded in a room with a CRT display accidentally left on....

Answer by tim prebble for How Did They Do That?? Vol. 6: Jetsons Spaceship sound

2013-03-07T00:47:25Z

I'm not sure but have you tried actually analysing it yourself? Sample it, even off that youtube clip and try pitching it up down by an octave, does it remind you of anything?

At half speed it makes me think of a pair of those squeaky shoes that kids wear, or those dogs toys that squeak - rapidly alternating two different pitches 12121212121212 then pitched up an octave and doppler effect applied

"it's pretty old so it can't be anything too hi-tech"

peoples imaginations are not limited by technology - editing, pitch shifting, reversing & doppler were all easily possible using analog technology (eg a Nagra and a microphone)

if I was yoda I would say something like 'reliance on plugins/hi tech your downfall will be'

Answer by tim prebble for What do you expect from the picture editor?

2013-03-07T00:37:50Z

Usually a copy of all the original production audio is handed over (untouched), along with a copy of the audio media ex whatever app you have been editing in eg if cut on an Avid, it makes a copy on import & renames that media with its own unique file name and ID... She'll need the original files to access any eg multitrack files that you may not have used or wildlines etc, but she'll also want all that renamed media so she has everything you might have used in the cut, including any processed files, temp music etc...

With regards to the reference video, make sure your specs are correct with right size, codec (not h264!) and correct speed SMPTE leader with head 2 pop and tail leader with 2 pop

You would usually also hand over EDLs, and a list with FFOA and LFOA for each reel.

I'm not a dialogue editor, so others will be able to clarify exact specs etc...

Answer by tim prebble for Which is more difficult to work with: linear or interactive media?

2013-03-06T09:07:09Z

to me, it is a pointless question. you are not only comparing apples and oranges, but are also attempting to generalize about two entire forms of media and creative expression.

I dont work on, or play video games,or really have any interest in them but i know for a fact that the range of complexity is vast in film - some projects are straight forward, and some are incredibly complex - technically, emotionally, everything... Film has a vast range, so to even generalise about it on its own is futile.... But to compare one epic and frankly meaningless generalisation with another is well... even more meaningless

Answer by tim prebble for Underwater Convolution IRs?

2013-03-01T21:07:18Z

pitched down water bubbles

Answer by tim prebble for Light flicker sound

2013-02-27T23:25:22Z

Try some small splattery sounds eg drop of water into hot wok, then process through glass impulse response (like Fokke Can Sannes free Claustrophobia IRs - the glass jar) to impart the light bulb tonal quality

http://fokkie.home.xs4all.nl/IR.htm

Comment by tim prebble

2013-05-19T04:48:41Z

I print verbs if I've used them for say a transition or a specifically 'altered' moment or any IR processed sounds... but the dub stage have far better verbs than I have in PT

Comment by tim prebble

2013-05-19T01:39:54Z

for sure - for Emperor we had vehicles across 5 or 6 stems at times, as there was a lot of vehicle action & multiple vehicles onscreen at once...

Comment by tim prebble

2013-05-18T23:16:06Z

Another reason to print predubs is track count. if each FX stem is being fed by say 32 tracks & you have say 10 FX stems that would be 320 source tracks playing live into the mix! Add ambience source tracks and you are needing a lot of ProTools for playback

Comment by tim prebble

2013-05-08T22:19:18Z

The current visible playlist will get conformed, but eg if you have ten playlists for a track with alt edits etc afaik they wont get conformed

Comment by tim prebble

2013-05-07T23:29:57Z

only problem with playlists is they don't conform - I prefer duplicate tracks & sue the dupe track command a lot

Comment by tim prebble

2013-05-07T23:28:00Z

if a session is referencing picture then the session name always includes the cut number... so it can be conformed as/when necessary...

Comment by tim prebble

2013-05-07T23:24:24Z

There are very good reasons to NOT do everything in one session eg does Nuendo support 96k, 192k and 48k in 'a single session'? Can you conform from previous versions and picture cuts in a 'single session'?

Comment by tim prebble

2013-04-24T21:12:03Z

Very few? I think you should speak for yourself, and not the majority you seem to assume you can speak for - if you cant be bothered creating original sounds for a project with such great opportunities for creative original sound design as scifi, then imho you aren't the best person to be doing that job.

Comment by tim prebble

2013-04-21T23:36:02Z

Insects pitched are v.interesting too - what appears as a continuous tone reveals the actual rhythym

Comment by tim prebble

2013-04-18T18:56:27Z

Hope you bought the Toolkit? Surely it is a sound designers job to create original sounds for such projects? Imho using predesigned sounds for scifi would be about as lame/unoriginal as its possible to get....

Comment by tim prebble

2013-04-13T07:50:11Z

i agree with shaun,it will lielly cost less than a single MKH416 so dont expect miracles

Comment by tim prebble

2013-04-12T20:14:31Z

not multiple tracks, multiple Quicktime files eg Reel 1 at 01.00.00.00, R2 at 02.00.00.00, R3 at 03.00.00.00....

Comment by tim prebble

2013-04-09T18:57:05Z

losing the ability to have multiple video files in one session would truly suck! Who doesn't work in a super session these days, with all reels in one session?

Comment by tim prebble

2013-03-30T19:41:50Z

Cant you access vehicles from the shoot?

Comment by tim prebble

2013-03-27T21:59:02Z

via google: Oscar voters are predominately white (94%) male (77%) & have average age of 62 :(