As advertisers look for more inventive ways to broadcast their messages, an increasing number of commercials are being produced for theatrical release. Unfortunately many of these cinema commercials look better then they sound.
A movie theater is calibrated to playback audio with massive low-end and a series of mid to high range speakers arranged to deliver three-dimensional sound. To take advantage of this amazing audio platform you need to mix your project in a studio designed to replicate the theater environment. These studios are called mixing stages; they are essentially movies theaters with a mixing console in the center.
Many agency producers confuse a “surround mix” with a theatrical mix. Often these “surround mixes” are produced in small suites designed to replicate the requirements for TV but often the room size and equipment in these facilities is far from adequate for creating an accurate theatrical mix.
Make sure your composer or sound designer knows that the spot will play both on TV and in theaters. It helps if these people have experience in cinema and TV. The reason for this is that the delivery of the audio elements will be quite different for a cinema mix than for a TV mix.
Most TV mixing suites are built around a digital audio workstation like Pro Tools. The engineer loads the audio elements into the computer and the entire mix is created within the Pro Tools environment. For cinema the stage mixer is doing all of his work on a 500 input mixing console, not in a computer. During a feature film mix the amount of audio tracks playing simultaneously is far more then one digital audio workstation can handle. So the console becomes the central workstation and multiple Pro Tools systems are used as playback devices. These consoles sound amazing and offer a level of audio clarity no computer-mixing environment can come close to.
Work flows differently on a mix stage than in a TV mixing suite. The engineer stays at the console while others monitor the various Pro Tools machines. If a sound or musical element needs editing, these people make the edit on the appropriate Pro Tools systems, freeing the engineer to continue his work. In features these people are the music, dialogue and sound effects editors. In commercials we rarely see audio editors in our mix sessions so we have to create our own method for working on the stage. At Asche & Spencer we use a sort of one-man band approach. We gather all of the audio elements for the commercial and organize them into a Pro Tools session created to interface smoothly with the stage we are working on. One of us then brings the session data to the stage and attends the mix working in place of the music, dialogue and sound effects editor. This streamlined method works very well and gives our advertising clients effortless access to this amazing mixing environment.
If your spot is going to play in theaters, I strongly urge you to take the extra step to ensure it will sound as good as it looks. Remember sound is 50 percent of the theater experience.
Thad Spencer is creative director/owner of Asche & Spencer, which has bases of operation in Minneapolis and in Venice, Calif.
L.A. Location Lensing Declines In 2024 Despite Uptick In 4th Quarter
FilmLA, partner film office for the City and County of Los Angeles and other local jurisdictions, has issued an update regarding regional filming activity. Overall production in Greater Los Angeles increased 6.2 percent from October through December 2024 to 5,860 Shoot Days (SD) according to FilmLA’s latest report. Most production types tracked by FilmLA achieved gains in the fourth quarter, except for reality TV, which instead logged its ninth consecutive quarter of year-over-year decline.
The lift across all remaining categories came too late to rescue 2024 from the combined effects of runaway production, industry contraction and slower-than-hoped-for post- strike recovery. With just 23,480 SD filmed on-location in L.A. in 2024, overall annual production finished the year 5.6 percent below the prior year. That made 2024 the second least productive year observed by FilmLA; only 2020, disrupted by the global COVID-19 pandemic, saw lower levels of filming in area communities.
The continuing decline of reality TV production in Los Angeles was among the most disappointing developments of 2024. Down 45.7 percent for the fourth quarter (to 774 SD), the category also finished the year down 45.9 percent (to 3,905 SD), which placed
it 43.1 percent below its five-year category average.
The two brightest spots in FilmLA’s latest report appeared in the feature film and television drama categories. Feature film production increased 82.4 percent in the fourth quarter to 589 SD, a gain analysts attribute to independent film activity. The
California Film & Television Tax Credit Program also played a part, driving 19.2 percent of quarterly category activity. Overall, annual Feature production was up 18.8 percent in 2024, though the... Read More