WRITTEN BY JEFF SHIFFMAN, CO-OWNER OF BOOM BOX POST
We have dozens of blog posts on how you can level up your sound editorial game. This post is intended to go beyond the basics - making sure you color code you work, cut for perspective, etc. This isn't about missing deadlines or forgetting to clean up markers in your session before turning in your work. This post is about mistakes that even seasoned sound editors make from time to time. Avoiding these seemingly small mistakes could make a big difference in how you are perceived by your supervisors and those mixing your work.
Cutting too many layers in your sound effects builds
“Don’t just throw a bunch of paint at the canvas and expect that someone will work it out later.”
Some editors have a tendency to “overcut” in their work. It’s brushed off as a safety measure, but in practice, it’s muddy and makes the work unnecessarily hard to mix. If you’re building a complicated sound effect, it’s good practice to have multiple layers to cover the frequency spectrum, but keep this to a maximum of 3 layers per sound. That’s plenty of layers to make sure a wide swath is accounted for. Certain simple sounds like hand pats or body falls typically don’t need multiple layers at all. Remember that the mixer needs to consider every single region you cut, so put care into each choice. Don’t just throw a bunch of paint at the canvas and expect that someone will work it out later.
Cutting rendered builds with disparate elements
We tell our editors, any time you design something really cool, render it down! This is a great way to build your library with original, strong elements. But there’s a dark side to the practice as well. Working with a rendered build that contains dissimilar elements may seems like a great shortcut, but in practice can be a major problem in the mix. For example, an editor may have a magic glow build that seems perfect for the scene. One file made up of a tonal synth glow and some atonal wind chimes. This element may sound great on its own, but once it’s on the mix stage, what do you do if the tonal element conflicts with the music? The client may say “We love that magic sound, but let’s lose the glow and just keep the bells.” Unfortunately, it’s all or nothing. If you’re going to work with rendered builds in your editorial, make sure there’s no way to potentially pick it apart.
Overlapping sound effects into a new scene
You may be surprised how often extra footsteps, ambiences or even hard effects inappropriately bleed into new scenes. Sound effects should be hard cut on scene changes. Often it’s an accident, and one easily avoided. But sometimes editors will make the choice deliberately as a creative decision. For sure, there are moments where a sound could bleed over a scene cut for dramatic effect, but that’s a choice for the mixer, who has the whole picture in front of them.
Cutting sounds that don't contribute/won't cut through
Don’t waste your time cutting lackluster elements. Yes, there’s always room for subtlety and artistry, but do remember that your work is going to be fighting for attention with dialogue and music. Any Foley artist can tell you that even simple elements like cloth movement or floor creaks need to have some body in order to play in the mix. This goes for steady elements as well. A common offender is water steadys, which can easily just play as white noise. You need some movement in there, some subtle lapping, splashing, or running texture in order to make it worthwhile.
Missing background or ambience changes
A great example: Someone is standing outside, looking down at a basket. The perspective shifts to where the camera is now inside the basket. This is a new point of view and requires a new set of backgrounds. It should feel claustrophobic; a big change from the outdoor location, which helps cue the audience to this creative choice. One tip: I like to carry over one or two mono elements of the exterior background (a simple bird steady), so we aren’t entirely out of the original space.
Cutting multiple background layers that sound extremely similar
Not every background needs eight layers. Often times I find myself digging into backgrounds only to find very similar elements repeated on different tracks. Trust me, your mixer does not want three extremely similar room tones or a handful of almost identical winds. It’s more to comb through (and ultimately turn off) in the mix. Save yourself the effort and just cut an appropriate amount of really great, dissimilar elements to create a lush soundscape.
Misuse of food groups
Without the proper understanding of how food groups are used in a mix, they can sometimes cause more harm than good. Like when it seems logical to organize some of your editorial into a food group based solely on the name. An example: Let’s say you’re cutting a battle with lots of distant cannon fire and explosions. These are great elements to organize onto a single food group since they are off screen and likely played at relatively the same volume. All distant booms are one VCA fader, easily adjusted in the mix. But often times, an editor will see a food group called “explosions” and will take the opportunity to cut any and all explosions (on-screen or off) within these tracks. On the face of it, it makes sense, but the way the on-screen and off-screen material is mixed could be starkly different. Suddenly your nice consistent VCA level for the distant explosions gets all out of whack when the on-screen explosion takes over and needs much more volume and attention. Even worse, the food group may not have enough tracks for all the on-screen explosion elements so the mixer now has to deal with a situation where part of the build ends up in the hard effects tracks, scrambling for multiple VCA’s just to mix a single element.
Dropping a file in the space between checker-boarded steadies
With the advent of clip gain, it’s remarkably easy to make quick global adjustments to a mix. For example, take a sequence that has been cut for perspective. If I want to maintain the relative perspective volumes but need more presence overall from the steadys, I can highlight and nudge them all up with clip gain. That is, as long as the regions are cleanly organized without interruption. Unfortunately, I often find that an editor has dropped a region in the open space between perspective cuts, which prevents this quick fix. I have to manually move the file out of that space in order to globally adjust my builds, which can grind things to a halt.
Backgrounds that have distinct individual elements
Mixing backgrounds ideally means picking any random twenty seconds of a file, setting a good level and writing that automation across the entire length of the scene. The sounds can have different characteristics, but nothing particular that would poke through and ruin this method of mixing. If you have a file of lovely soft suburban birds that has a loud dog bark once every minute or so, there’s no easy way to set that level. To avoid this, take care to the entire section of the file you’re working with for any distinct elements that may cause an issue, and chop them out.
getting hung up on a precise sound choice
Sound editorial is an interesting art form because it really utilizes both the left and right brains. We need to be highly organized and structured while exuding creativity. But it’s important to remember that the creative should take the lead. As an editor, you don’t need to get all left-brained with your sound choices, restricting yourself to the exact sound of the thing on screen. Sometimes an explosion sounds amazing with a lion roar snuck in. Or maybe a car chase would benefit from a variety of different vehicle recordings. It’s important not to hold yourself back in order to cut the “proper” sound effect. Remember that no one watching your show is reading the file labels; all that matters is how it sounds in the end.