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.
Oscar Nominees Delve Into The Art Of Editing At ACE Session
You couldn’t miss Sean Baker at this past Sunday’s Oscar ceremony where he won for Best Picture, Directing, Original Screenplay and Editing on the strength of Anora. However, earlier that weekend he was in transit from the Cesar Awards in Paris and thus couldn’t attend the American Cinema Editors (ACE) 25th annual panel of Academy Award-nominated film editors held at the Regal LA Live Auditorium on Saturday (3/1) in Los Angeles. While the eventual Oscar winner in the editing category was missed by those who turned out for the ACE “Invisible Art, Visible Artists” session, three of Baker’s fellow nominees were on hand--Dávid Jancsó, HSE for The Brutalist; Nick Emerson for Conclave; and Myron Kerstein, ACE for Wicked. Additionally, Juliette Welfling, who couldn’t appear in person due to the Cesar Awards, was present via an earlier recorded video interview to discuss her work on Emilia Pérez. The interview was conducted by ACE president and editor Sabrina Plisco, ACE who also moderated the live panel discussion. Kerstein said that he was the beneficiary of brilliant and generous collaborators, citing, among others, director Jon M. Chu, cinematographer Alice Brooks, and visual effects supervisor Pablo Helman. The editor added it always helps to have stellar acting performances, noting that hearing Cynthia Erivo, for example, sing live was a revelation. Kerstein recalled meeting Chu some eight years ago on a “blind Skype date” and it was an instant “bromance”--which began on Crazy Rich Asians, and then continued on such projects as the streaming series Home Before Dark and the feature In The Heights. Kerstein observed that Chu is expert in providing collaborators with... Read More