Level Standards For Music For Film

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kslight
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Level Standards For Music For Film

Post by kslight » Sun May 26, 2019 7:55 am

So I've just found out that the feature film I'm working on doesn't really have a film mixer and am looking for a crash course in what I should be submitting for minimum chance of the acting mixer to have to make brash decisions...in the past I'm used to having someone else make my music work with the film audio/I always kept it pretty conservative and no one requested different...so not been overly concerned with broadcast/streaming standards.

Any pointers?
Last edited by kslight on Sun May 26, 2019 9:06 am, edited 2 times in total.

kslight
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Re: Level Standards For Music For Film

Post by kslight » Sun May 26, 2019 8:26 am

I'm not expecting to be mixing the entire film myself...just the music portions. But I may need to guide the director/editor somewhat on the dialogue and foley.

I found this article: https://www.thebeachhousestudios.com/mi ... -overview/

Which seems relevant to me...I own Izotope Insight for metering so seems to make sense..

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Nick Sevilla
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Re: Level Standards For Music For Film

Post by Nick Sevilla » Sun May 26, 2019 8:46 am

kslight wrote:
Sun May 26, 2019 8:26 am
I'm not expecting to be mixing the entire film myself...just the music portions. But I may need to guide the director/editor somewhat on the dialogue and foley.

I found this article: https://www.thebeachhousestudios.com/mi ... -overview/

Which seems relevant to me...I own Izotope Insight for metering so seems to make sense..
Good article. Lots more if you google "audio standards for film".

https://simpledcp.com/sound-levels-in-cinema/
Howling at the neighbors. Hoping they have more mic cables.

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Nick Sevilla
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Re: Level Standards For Music For Film

Post by Nick Sevilla » Sun May 26, 2019 8:47 am

Howling at the neighbors. Hoping they have more mic cables.

kslight
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Re: Level Standards For Music For Film

Post by kslight » Sun May 26, 2019 9:21 am

Thanks. These make more sense than what the director was saying...I think he had a different interpretation of the requirements and I thought it was really odd he was asking me to turn things down to meet these levels...I have generally set myself up to be between -18 and -24 so its not like I'm giving him cooked mixes... I pulled up my meters and with the dialogue and the whole mix I'm not seeing the same problems he is.

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Nick Sevilla
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Re: Level Standards For Music For Film

Post by Nick Sevilla » Sun May 26, 2019 11:09 pm

Reason #1788 as to why doing the final mix in the same room with the director / responsible party is super important.
Howling at the neighbors. Hoping they have more mic cables.

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Re: Level Standards For Music For Film

Post by kslight » Mon May 27, 2019 8:50 am

Nick Sevilla wrote:
Sun May 26, 2019 11:09 pm
Reason #1788 as to why doing the final mix in the same room with the director / responsible party is super important.
I don't disagree, the last film I did seemingly was mixed in the eleventh hour on energy drinks in a hotel room or something, so many amateur audio problems that appeared at the premier (were not present in my cut from a few days prior)...not just music related...this for a multimillion feature not some no budget indie short. But being that this was in LA (I am in the midwest) and surrounded by producers and a studio that was supposed to know what they were doing, wasn't even an option for me to attend the mix. On this film at least I have some degree of control due to being somewhat local and no board of producers to get through, why I want to make sure the director has the right info for the specs..

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I'm Painting Again
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Re: Level Standards For Music For Film

Post by I'm Painting Again » Mon May 27, 2019 5:54 pm

before even trying to make it impactful and dynamic and all that the number one concearn is the intelligibility of the dialog

ideally a theater mix will be done in a theater control room that's set up and leveled at the theater standard - you just mix right up into that completely intuitively

if it's gotta be done in a regular studio or without 5.1 etc. - just give it your best shot - mind that there's a center channel

broadcast facilities have their own specs - and in recent times they're asking for LUFS meter levels - or at least PBS is

something like -30dBFS is usually where the dialog lives and the playback in-house is historically 85dB C weighted / Dolby 7

so maybe calibrating your monitors to that on an SPL will help you make a compatible master ?

there is a lot of information out there on the subject and film mixers are very nice and will probably be happy to talk to you if you seek them out and contact them - find someone in IATSE 695 - go to their webpage and there's a list of members with their contact info

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