WRITTEN BY JEFF SHIFFMAN
CO-OWNER OF BOOM BOX POST
We are excited to continue our Music Mixing Basics for TV & Film series. All month long, experienced Boom Box Post re-recording mixers Jacob Cook, Kate Finan and Jeff Shiffman are tackling a wide variety of approaches to post-production music mixing.
“...if picture has on screen lip flap (mouth movement) without any dialogue coverage, you should mute any sound effects in the mix. ”
When done right, a music montage is a wonderful thing. The right song or score can bring an audience to an entirely new emotional level. If you don’t believe me, go watch the first ten minutes of Pixar’s “Up.” Incredibly devastating, it’s a master course in montage.
So how do you approach music montages in your mix? What are some of the basic techniques and rules to follow? Below, I lay out my best practices.
THE GOLDEN RULES
MUSIC IS THE STAR
A montage should feel like an intentional moment, an experience. To achieve this affect, I always try and make sure montage music levels are slightly higher than the previous scene. In some cases, like a big Rock track with a lead-in drum fill, you may want to really crank it. In an emotional scene, you may choose to be more subtle. But in either case, use a bump in volume to tell the audience they are entering a special moment.
IT’S DIALOGUE AND SOUND EFFECTS OR IT’S NEITHER
Unless told otherwise in the spotting session, our sound editorial team will cover the effects in montage sequences. This is great if the client decided to include dialogue in the edit; a montage doesn’t need to be just music. However, if picture has on screen lip flap (mouth movement) without any dialogue coverage, you should mute any sound effects in the mix. Why? Because this type of montage is a magic trick. We are breaking reality and taking the viewer along for a ride where even though characters speak on screen, we are only hearing music. If you include sound effects where there isn’t any dialogue, that faux reality breaks for the audience. Why are we hearing cars go by during a clear conversational moment, but not hearing our characters? it just doesn’t work.
DEFER TO THE MUSIC
If your montage has dialogue and sound effects, you never want the effects to conflict or clash with the music. That means any sound effects that are musical in nature may have to go, or at least be pitched to work with the music. You’ll also want to defer to the beat of the music, moving effects to match where necessary. It sounds counter-intuitive to move things off sync from picture, but if we’re only talking about a few frames, the music usually makes it work. Matching a big sword clash or thunder strike to the beat of the music, rather than having it clash just slightly off beat is always preferred.
“the trick is to dip the music to clear space for the dialogue without the audience noticing”
TYPES OF MONTAGES
THE MUSIC ONLY MONTAGE
The most common type of montage is the all-music montage. This is where both dialogue and sound effects drop out entirely. This is the simplest montage to work with, as it’s all about setting an appropriate music level and letting it ride. This type of montage could be needle drop or score, but either way, you’ll generally want to keep the music volume level steady.
MIXED MONTAGE (DIALOGUE & SOUND EFFECTS PRESENT)
A montage where dialogue and sound effects do not drop out is a bit trickier to mix. When a montage has dialogue, it’s usually for a very brief gag or emotional beat (if you’ve got lots of dialogue throughout, you’re probably not in a montage). In these cases, the trick is to dip the music to clear space for the dialogue without the audience noticing. For me, this usually means waiting until the very last second to make the dip, and being very careful to keep that dip small. In some cases, you may be able to get away with dipping only one or some of the stems to clear a frequency range for the dialogue to cut through. For example, I’ve had success with keeping the drums/percussion at a steady level while dipping out only guitars or strings. This keeps the energy up and really helps hide the music dip from the audience.
DIEGETIC VS NON-DIEGETIC
A more rare type of montage would be one that starts diegetic and morphs into non-diegetic. Picture for example a scene where a character puts on a record. We hear a song futzed to sound like it’s coming out of the small radio in the center of frame. The characters start to dance and as the camera pulls back the music transforms to it’s full quality, surrounding us. This is another fun magic trick to play around with. The timing of the change and how subtle you make is all up to the mixer. My tip for this type of moment is to duplicate the source tracks. One track is treated with the futz and pan, the second has the beautiful hi-fi full quality audio. Then it’s just a matter of where to crossfade the two. This makes it very easy to adjust on the stage if the clients want to play around with the timing. You can of course also do this all with automation on the plugin and pan settings of a single track.