It starts with pre-production planning. This planning stage sets the wheels in motion, it establishes time line, job assignments, budget requirements of every aspect of the production and every major player in the production must attend.

The location sound mixer is the number one person as far as sound goes. He/she gets the what, where and when of the shoot and they decide on who and how of putting the audio in the can. They decide the need to bring a boom op and or a utility person (read cable pager) or just run and gun by themselves.

They capture the dialogue of the film and any ambient sounds in the area of the location shoot,  They will hold the up the shoot if unwanted noises are obvious (such as air traffic, trains, heavy traffic, etc.) and,  they do some scouting to find good alternate sites that might help. This is a good time for the location sound mixer to get some ambient tones of all of the locations to help later in the post world and as possible ammunition for the change of location argument.

The sound crew starts their day by assuring themselves that every piece of hardware they have works flawlessly.  They post a header and test tone at the start of every days work. The crew takes meticulous notes on every track they record denoting the SMPTE time code at the beginning of each take and the track number as indicated by the recording device. After each take they assign a grade to the tracks so the editor can find the best audio to use in the film.

On the last film I worked on we recorded two tracks of the same dialog from the same microphone at different recording levels to insure we were acquiring the best possible sound. Sometimes the first half of track ‘A’ was great but the tail really sucked, but, the head of track ‘B’ was weak and the tail was great. In post we ‘comped’ the tracks together so the whole line was great. If what I just said flew over your head like an F-15 on afterburners then maybe you should hire a professional sound team.

All of the preparation and attention to detail insures great recordings and less work for the post production team, less ADR, and a great sounding film. In case you’re interested the current budget requirements for a location sound mixer is approximately $300- $500/day and the budget for a boom operator is approximately $150-$250/day.

You might think this is expensive unless you were to buy the field mixer , recorder, microphone, boom all of the cables, batteries, headphones and chargers required to do a day’s worth of recording, learn to connect it all together and operate it correctly, all while trying to film, direct, light and produce the film. Do the words ’Good Luck’ come to mind.

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Tony Tartaglia hold a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree awarded from the International Academy of Design and Technology in Tampa, Florida and owns his own mixing and editing studio. Tony can be reached for consultations and audio production through his website at tony@soniqualitycorp.com.

The most frustrating part of your filmmaking career is when you realize that you are not entitled to success. Early in your career you wake up every day with an unyielding sense of possibility. You think about all the wonderful movies that you are going to make. You picture yourself walking the red carpet with flashbulbs exploding with an intensity of stardom.

You will hold this vision. And if the vision is strong enough, you will take steps towards the achievement of this dream. Maybe you will write a screenplay… Maybe you will pick up a camera and ask your friends to act your short movie. Maybe you will plan your first feature. And if you are lucky, you might even make a movie… And if you are  really lucky, your friends and family will support you because doing something in the movie industry is cool.

But here comes the rub…

Months and years will pass. Your friends will get married. They will have babies. They will have families. And you may very well find yourself living alone in your mid-30s wondering if going after something cool was worth it. It is at this point in life when you must answer one question:

“Are YOU serious enough about your filmmaking career to continue?”

A reader of Filmmaking Stuff wrote me and asked “How do I get started?”

My response is simple: do one small thing every day to get closer to the completion of your project. if you’re writing a screenplay you need to write at least one half page per day. If you are working to make your movie then you should make a list of all the things you can do for free.

There is a lot you can do today. The question is will you get started or will you make more excuses?

Take action: Make your movie now!

The life you live today is a result of the decisions that you made in the past. The life you live tomorrow will be a result of the decisions you make right now. Make your choices, but choose wisely.

The world is waiting to watch your movies. Take action: Make your movie now!

My friend, the famed horror novelist (and screenwriter) Craig Spector once shared some advice with me that I have been rolling around in my head ever since. I had just moved to New York City and I was sleeping on my aunt’s sofa. I had no idea what I was doing…

At the time, Craig was one of the few people I knew who was actually making a living with his creative work. And one day I asked him what I needed to do in order to become successful. Never one to sugarcoat advice, he simply said:

“Work more. Do more. The work is reality. Nothing trumps reality.”

Speaking from my experience in Los Angeles, I have met countless people who have a gazillion great movie ideas. But they are searching for someone else to do the work. And the paradox is this – people won’t help you unless you do the work. Why? Because when it comes down to it, very few people are actually willing to put in the necessary sweat equity into actually finishing a project.

Next thing you know, another decade passes and you wake up realizing you haven’t done any movie work. You have nothing but talk. Talk. Talk.

Big deal.

I know you work a day job that sucks. And I know how tired you are when you get home from work. But if you don’t finish your screenplay, make your short, or plan your feature this year – you might just end up making the same excuses for another decade…

Get off your ass.

Make something. Even if it sucks. It’s better than nothing.

If you are doing any traveling for the holiday season, make sure you carry a camera with you. While your friends and family take pictures of themselves, you should take time to scout for various locations and other interesting elements that you can eventually put in your movie.

Action steps:

1. Find 6 awesome locations.
2. Take pictures or acquire at least 6 interesting props.
3. Study someone from a distance as a prospective character study.

Seriously. You never know where your next movie idea will come from.

As an audio production engineer, I have viewed a lot of independent films and documentaries, and the one thing that stands out more than the quality of the filming and special effects, is the soundtrack, or lack of a proper one. Many independent films and documentaries sound weak or hollow, and in others, the music bed overpowers the dialog tracks.

What makes the audio weak or hollow? Most low budget film makers use a quality camera with an attached microphone, so the distance from actor to camera is the same distance from actor to microphone, greatly reducing the sound pressure level arriving at the microphone while allowing other noises to enter the microphone. The further the microphone is from the source, the more open and hollow the sound is.

Try this experiment. Video a friend speaking any lines at a distance of two feet, now do the identical shot from a distance of twelve feet. It should be quite obvious which one sounds better. The shot from two feet will sound better but look bad, while the one shot from twelve feet will sound bad but look great.

A common remedy for this bad audio is to add music to the track. All this does is further bury the dialog, making the film a chore to listen to, and detracting from the essence of what is being said. In some cases, there is so much noise in the audio tracks, that the film is not even worth watching.

Just to be fair to the videographers out there, I researched two Sony professional handy cameras: the DSR-PD150 which retails for approximately $1300, and the HVR-Z7U which retails for approximately $4000. I found a very curious fact. The two cameras sport the same microphone: the ECM-XM1 which retails for $129. Apparently, the extra $3000 for the HVR-Z7U went into the video capturing and not the sound capturing. Why?

Sony, as with all of the other professional camera manufacturers, realizes that the onboard microphone is for reference audio, and not for the sound track. On board microphones that are rigidly attached to a camera body pick up every noise that is generated within the camera and, worse yet, every noise that is transmitted through the camera, the “handling noise.” For anyone who’s been to a live event and someone bumps into a live microphone or tries to grab a live mic out of a stand, you know what I mean.

Professional sound companies use two microphones that conform to industry standards: The Sennheiser MKH-416 which retails for just under $1000, and the Schoeps CMIT5U which retails for $2100. These microphones are used in dialog acquisition by the boom operator for the sound recorder, and the purpose is to place the microphone closer to the speaker or actor than the camera. Trained boom operators can move the microphone to and fro without generating noise, thereby getting a cleaner sound. This is where it starts, getting the cleanest sound possible into the film.

Next time we will look at the roles of the on-set sound team.

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Tony Tartaglia holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree awarded from the International Academy of Design and Technology in Tampa, Florida and owns his own mixing and editing studio. Tony can be reached for consultations and audio production through his website at tony@soniqualitycorp.com.

Networking With The Film Lobby

Listening to any podcasts, reading any articles or taking advice from others there is one thing that raises it’s head time and time again. The importance of networking. The old adage “you only get one chance to make a first impression” is as important when networking through online social media as it is when attending face to face networking events.

The image you present of yourself should be professional, succinct, consistent, thoroughly up to date and showcasing the best of every talent you possess. Yes there are a myriad choices of social platforms out there, some that can be used personally, some professionally. My advice is to keep the two separate. You don’t wear a suit going to he gym!

My friend Melissa Cantatore is an actress working and living in LA and she strives relentlessly in the pursuit of securing continuous work. Melissa promotes herself as much as possible through her management, agent and by searching out and responding to casting calls herself. Together we designed a website for her, printed up business cards and created a profile on www.thefilmlobby.com.

Remarkably soon after that, two time Oscar winner Ron Judkins saw her online, auditioned her via Skype and she landed a roll in his new film which he wrote and directed, “Neighbours”. With online social networking combined with persistence and professionalism you, like Melissa, can succeed.

So what are your choices? What are your skilled areas and what is the best platform for you? Some may think “well IMDB is great if you’ve made it, MySpace is best for music, Facebook is good for friends and fan pages, Twitter lets me follow my heroes but what is best for me as an establishing OR established professional artist?”

The Film Lobby is an intuitive, free, easy to use platform on which you can showcase your image, photographs, music, reel, shorts, podcast, blog, audio all in the same arena. A platform where you can learn and contribute through forums, search through castings in your area, post castings to help forward your project and mingle with like minded professionals. Join free at www.thefilmlobby.com, professional networking for film makers. The very best if luck to you.

The following short (directed by my friend) is an example of this. Shot on a small camera (Rebel T2i), the video provides a good example of how you can pack an emotional punch into a small project.

A little WARNING: The following video contains some strong language that may be inappropriate for anybody under 18 years of age.

Wild Bill Hearts Candy 84″ from Jared Tweedie on Vimeo.

If you can push yourself to overcome fear and excuses – and just make a movie you can make this year, you will be much better off than the majority of other filmmakers who spend years talking, with nothing to show for it.

Fill in the form below to claim for free subscription to the Filmmaking Stuff, Filmmaking eZine. Packed with modern moviemaking tips and resources, you are bound to get at least one great filmmaking tip you can apply to your life.

And one more thing… Not sure if you are planning your filmmaking goals for the New Year – but now is the time. Make this coming year, YOUR year for making movies!