Is it possible to make instruments sound natural through audio editing like this?

[Brian Drysdale]

There are usually more run down industrial and poorer districts in most cities or surrounding towns.

[Greg Miller]

Originally Posted by Ryan Elder

As for the location, it was said before when I wanted to paint the locations and could not, to just live with the imperfections of the location and make due, so wouldn't that go for audio imperfections with the location as well, or should I try to find better locations for audio and visuals?

First of all, I wouldn't consider wall color to be an "imperfection." Also, painting walls is pretty permanent, AND I've seen a lot of bad painting in my life. Then there's the damage spilled paint can cause. If someone wanted to shoot in one of my houses, and wanted to repaint, I would demand, up front, cash for me to pay a painter to put it back to my colors at a level of quality I accept, and some sort of damage guarantee.

Sound comes and goes. If it's a refrigerator or room A/C, you ask if you can turn it off for a few minutes. If the location is under a flight path, you shoot at night after the day's last flight. If it's server room noise situation, you make sure, in advance, that your sound man can cope with the noise. Of course some b/g noise is OK in the final release, *if* it seems to be appropriate to the scene (e.g. street noise to a street scene). It's the jumping around of level that is unrealistic and jarring.

(BTW, there were parts of your film where the dialog jumped to just one channel, or was on both channels but at unequal levels. There were parts where one channel was more than 10dB louder than the other ... and in those parts there was audible background hum ... that was a VERY bad section of the film. You can't blame that stuff on the location, that was terrible mixing!)

[Josh Bass]

Again, I don't think Ryan knows how to evaluate his personnel...I think he either takes whoever will work with him or if given options doesn't know how to weed out people who don't know what they're doing/talking about.

[Ryan Elder]

Sure, I can try those. Thanks. It's just I don't want the building itself to look rundown, if the story doesn't call for it. But there might be some buildings that do not look like that on the inside there. Thanks.

[Brian Drysdale]

It's the art director's job to make sure it doesn't look rundown.

[Ryan Elder]

That's true, as long as the walls don't look too bad and all. But that's true.

[Greg Miller]

So all you need is a run-down abandoned building in a bad neighborhood, time and money to re-do the interior, utilities turned on and working, and a shotgun to take care of the rats. Sounds like a winner. Oh, yeah, don't forget to evict all the homeless people already living there.

[Josh Bass]

“homeless people?” I think you mean future cast.

[Ryan Elder]

Well I will spend a larger budget on the next one and hopefully that will help things out.

[Brian Drysdale]

Regarding your music, Stop asking questions here, watch this film and work things out for yourself,

Amazon

 

Amazon

As a director, it gives what you need, If you feel the need to ask more questions here about composers and film music,give up directing.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay thanks, that looks interesting, I will watch it! Thanks.

Well the composer wants to use a lot more acoustic samples of real instruments, but there are times when I want to use the synth and actually want the synth style. But he says there is no point in a synth when there are samples of each instrument nowadays. Is that true, the synth is just a paste tense dated instrument?

[Brian Drysdale]

Listen to your composer, it's their job, get them get on with it. The synth is still around, sometimes mixed in with acoustic instruments. The latter can be samples or a real orchestra.

Pure synth can have a 1980s feel.

[Paul R Johnson]

Ryan. You said you watched the spitfire video? How many times must I tell you that nowadays there is no practical distinction between synthesis and sampling, and the software current composers have often feature both. The spitfire people record world class instruments in world class studios and the wrap them in a delivery package that enables attack, decay, sustain, release, filters and effects to be added, which is how synthesisers work. The products are hybrids. You can take the attack off a piano and it changes, you can add attack to a wet finger bowl sound and it changes. You say the composer wants to use more real sounds, but if he does, it’s just a subset in the selection process. Mechanical hardware synths could be from the 80s for a real one, but you now have them as sounds in the computer. Of course they are dated sounds, but you cannot do modern dance music without them, if you don’t do dance music, you might not use them, but if you find a great sound you will.

You have just shown that you still have no clue at all about composition nowadays. Sadly, nor does your composer. If you want your music and effects to be like real movies, you’ve got to stop living in the past and embrace the quite simple technology of music production, or find somebody who does understand it.

I have a Korg synth from the 80s. I also have the same thing in my computer as a 40 pound VSTi plug in. The computer one wins, because it doesn’t go out of tune. Korg still make profit from a 40 year old product. Some people still love the sound and feel and even smell of old instruments. Rick Wakeman lives in my part of the world and has a barn full of old synths, but he has multiples of his favourites because they’re old and fragile, and plays some very modern and expensive ones live. In the studio, we all have access now to any sound we want. We do not care how it is constructed. Explain what part of this you don’t understand?

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, but in the spitfire video though, I thought it didn't sound complete, because he still had to add articulation and certain effects after, on a finished product, or so that is what the composer told me. But if a synth is just as good as sampling then why do a lot of musicians even use sampling, or why was it even invented, if a synth is just as good and no difference?

[Paul R Johnson]

Yes - that is exactly how you PLAY synths and samplers - you have what are called controllers - volume, expression, modulation, pitch bend, noise, ADSR - and your driving keyboard has these mappable to all the parameters - so you have notes played with one hand, and then controllers played with the other hand, feet or even knees! That is why traditional pianists often suffer.

Sampling is the process where you take a sound an manipulate it. The old tape based mellotron was a crude sampler. Today's samplers are totally different. The spitfire collection for example - a violin sample is probably 5000 separate samples. If you play quietly, you might have 100 of those in play, if you play a bit louder, a different set of 100, play louder and another - if you use key switching - your middle C note might be playable in 15 different styles, each one with a hundred samples. So when we talk about sampling - a bass flute could actually be many thousands of samples - and all those faders, keys and knobs select which ones play!

Synthesisers originally were analogue devices, lots of oscillators and filters. Then Yamaha invented FM synthesis which produced different sounds in a totally different way. If you buy a synth at any period in history, you have stock sounds and then variations. If you are Michael Jackson, then you buy a Prophet, which was one of his favourites. However, if you had a Roland, it didn't sound like a prophet. Rick Wakeman loved Moogs, but they were terribly unreliable. Samplers originally were crude devices - they could record, and replay. That's about it. They got better and better but still clunky things - then software overtook them and things exploded. Now if you want to, you can buy a package of Korg historic instruments - their popular synths since the 80s - and I cannot tell the difference. A product called Kontakt can take the samples produced by many individuals and it manipulates them to make something amazing. Some sounds came from a microphone, others have never been real but are recordings of other recordings - hence why sampling and synthesis are now very closely linked. In the 90s, you bought an Akai sampler, connected a microphone and recorded maybe six notes from your chosen instrument - very crude, but they worked.

Sampling and Synths are just different, and now it's a bit like comparing a tape based camera with a card based camera. They are very different in construction, and the media is totally different, but once they are in the editor, can you tell if it started life on tape?

Musicians are no longer restricted by technology, or actual instruments. If you have a guitar recorded with the bottom note as an E - what happens if your song needs an Eb? You tell your DAW to change it. In the DAW that note is a sample, it can be changed.

You are still thinking these things are separate. They are NOT. I've said this time and time again. If I select one sound out of the hundreds on the single knob - I only know if it is a sample or synthesised when I press a button and look. I simply do NOT need to know. Frankly, nor do you, or your composer - who is clearly 20 years behind the times I am afraid. If your composer is less than 25, you have to ask why he doesn't know this? Every teenager at school and college doing music use this kit nowadays.