A COLLABORATIVE POST
WRITTEN BY BOOM BOX POST
Those who are reading this are probably also ready for 2020 to be over. It has been quite a year in many aspects. Putting aside all of the craziness of the world, we thought it would be nice to give you an inside look on audio skills we have improved upon or learned in 2020 and individual goals that we have for 2021!
Brad
2020 Reflection: One skill I honed in on this past year has definitely been mixing and/or predubbing. With COVID causing the entire industry to move to a work-from-home model, clients don't have an opportunity to sit in a fancy room containing amazing gear with us anymore, and could be listening to our work on any number of consumer-grade devices. So it has been my job this past year to make sure the sessions we send out for client approval are incredibly polished and practically mix-ready. That way, our digital sessions are a smoother experience for everyone involved.
Goal for 2021: A goal that I have for the upcoming year is to familiarize myself with more design plugins.
Tim
2020 Reflection: At the beginning of 2020, I started my position as Studio Manager/Assistant Sound Editor for Boom Box Post. The skills I acquired in 2020 heavily reflect this. It was a year full of practice, growth, and learning. I was trained on everything from tech to editorial. I learned how to “pink” a room, prep a mix, and even fix a broken office chair cylinder. When I look back on this year, I have no clue where I stored all the new information I learned because it was A LOT.
Goal for 2021: In 2021, I would love to hone in on my troubleshooting skills. This is a major part of my job as studio manager, and often the one that causes me the most stress. I hope to add more working solutions to my tech toolbox so that I am better equipped to face problems as they arise.
Jacob
2020 Reflection: 2020 has been such a wild year! Thankfully we’ve still been mixing away here at Boom Box and I’ve had many opportunities to try out new tech while we’ve all been holed up working from home. My favorite new trick was explained to me by Boom Box editor Ben: clip effects! For those like me, who had no idea about this new-ish feature, Pro Tools allows you to apply basic, non rendered audio effects to individual clips in your timeline by selecting a clip and hitting OPT+Num 6. My favorite use of this is quick corrective EQ on dialogue that might need a simple high pass or low pass filter applied. No more fussing about writing automation for a quick EQ! The best part is that you can save presets for clip effects and apply them with a keystroke. I’m only just implementing this into my workflow when mixing, and I’m looking forward to exploring it’s full potential.
Goal for 2021: In 2021 I’m hoping to get back out into the field for some wild recordings. In the past I’ve had great fun with car recordings (check out the Mustang library we recorded here) and I’m really hoping to get another vehicle session going to work on my recording skills and beef up my personal car library.
Tess
2020 Reflection: 2020 has been a year of trying to improve my organizational skills. Tim’s blog post was of particular help to me, and I’ve been trying to keep better tabs on my tasks with Todoist. This year has certainly brought on a ton of challenges, and it’s hard to keep track of my daily task in normal times, so focusing on keeping a clean and realistic calendar plus lists of to-dos has been crucial.
Goal for 2021: As for 2021, I’ve recently taken the role of predub mixer on one of our projects and I’m looking forward to learning and improving in that department.
Katie
2020 Reflection: Something I learned in 2020 that I didn't anticipate on learning this year was how to be a team player remotely. I have never worked in this kind of environment and there were a lot of growing pains initially. I learned an entirely new workflow and developed my ability to interpret and take care of notes. I really miss in person preview meetings, however, it is very valuable to learn how to interpret written notes and carry out the fixes without a lengthy in-person explanation.
Goal for 2021: In 2021 I want to learn how to create more toon elements from scratch, either through my own recordings or through manipulating existing files. I am going to have plenty of opportunities to do so in the coming year!
Kirsty
2020 Reflection: In 2020, I learned 2 skills that are really helpful to me. One is exporting markers from Pro Tools. It’s actually super easy. You can find it under File> Export> Session Info As Text, then deselect all of them except Include Markers. Then, hit the ok button! You then have a text file that has all your markers and timecodes in there. I like to use it for passing a big ADR list or scratch list to our assistant editor, so I don’t need to type out every single one of them.
Another skill I learned is using De-bleed from Izotope RX. I use it a lot for live action production dialogue editing. If you have 2 clips that are bleeding into each other, you can select both of them, go to RX Connect, set it to create individual files and clip by clip, then send it to RX. You will see these 2 file tabs in the RX. Choose the one you want to get off the bleeding dialogue. It will be your active track. Then you go to De-bleed module, select the other one as your Select Bleed Source Track, hit Learn, then Preview the result. If it sounds too artificial to you, you can always adjust Reduction Strength and Artifact Smoothing. It sped up my editing a lot once I got used to it, and most of the time it works really well.
Goal for 2021: My goal for 2021 is to keep learning more skills of dialogue editing for live action. It's challenging, and I'm still imperfect on a lot of aspect. Gotta keep learning!
If you enjoyed this blog you should also check out some exciting moments for us from 2020:
WAM EVERYWHERE VIRTUAL WORKSHOP: INTRO TO SOUND DESIGN
CONGRATULATIONS TO THE BOOM BOX POST EMMY NOMINEES!