WRITTEN BY KATE FINAN,
CO-OWNER OF BOOM BOX POST
As a sound effects editor, you are likely part of a team of editors who eventually hand their work off to a re-recording mixer. It’s important to understand that the way that you organize your work is often just as important as your creative quality. And while some of us mixers may have established a reputation of sometimes being… ahem… “grumpy,” there’s one surefire way to forge a path to a happy and peaceful mixer: by saving us time.
As a re-recording mixer, I work with a large bevy of editors, and I’ve noticed that while all of them have well-laid out work, some are still able to save me additional mix time by employing just a few best-practices. Working with those editors makes for my most enjoyable days because I get to spend more of my time doing the fun and rewarding parts of mixing–like making creative choices and fine-tuning the bigger picture storytelling–rather than slogging through materials. So, what are the differences? Here, I’ll share my tips for making your mixer especially happy.
But first, a caveat: every re-recording mixer has their own process and prefers their own track organization. So, I would highly recommend taking these (or any other) suggestions to your mixer before implementing them, and asking if they approve. I love it when an editor or supervisor comes to me with a list of questions or preferred workflows at the start of a project so that we can collaborate.
Tip 1: Color Code Your BGs
It saves me so much time when the audio regions for each BG location are color coded with a designated color. The easiest way to do this is to color code the audio regions the first time you cut a location, and then paste for all subsequent returns to that location. This means that I can set my levels and panning for the environment the first time we go there, and then just jump around in my mix session and copy and paste those settings for all subsequent times, tweaking as necessary. Depending how many BG changes/locations there are in a project, this very simple change can save me hours while mixing.
Bonus: if you receive editorial notes on a location, it’s incredibly easy to find all of the instances because they are color-coded. It will also speed up your editorial by helping you copy/paste when a location returns.
These BGs have been color-coded by location to make editing and mixing a breeze.
Tip 2: Food Group Your Builds, Not Your Sounds
Depending on your mixer and supervising sound editor’s preferences, you may have food groups integrated into your sound effects editorial template. These could be groups to checkerboard builds (Group A, Group B, Group C) or groups organized by sound type (pats, whooshes, vehicles, guns). It’s important to understand that these groups serve three purposes:
They help your mixer find specific SFX/builds during their mix.
They allow your mixer to mix one layer or object at a time (ie doing “vehicle pass” during a car chase) if they choose.
They allow your mixer to add a VCA to each group so they can turn all sounds in the foodgroup up or down with one fader.
Because of these use cases, I would highly recommend assigning your builds to a group, not splitting builds up with individual parts sorted into different food groups. For example, if a UFO flies by on screen, your mixer is going to want to be able to adjust the pan and volume of the audio elements for the UFO to match the picture. Having all SFX covering the by on the same group and on adjacent tracks within that group makes it easy for your mixer to find and adjust the elements intended to cover the UFO. If stragglers are living in different parts of your session, it can cause a frustrating scenario where your mixer is adjusting what they think is there only to have have some parts remain un-changed. Splitting sound for one “object” on screen up into bits in your session creates a scenario where you mixer is constantly playing hide and seek.
This editor placed all car SFX on FX Group A.
Tip 3: Keep Steadies on Their Own Tracks, and Preferably in Their Own foodgroup
For the full duration of any steady elements, do not intersperse hard FX onto those same tracks even if there is a break in the steady. It is necessary for your mixer to ride steadies, which is already a time-consuming process. But this process becomes even more cumbersome if you have to keep stopping to maneuver around other elements. Additionally, it is best to keep steadies on their own foodgroup (pending mixer approval) so that volumes can be adjusted independently of hard FX. If your steadies are on the same VCA as hard FX, it renders the VCA useless because it cannot be pulled up or down to change the volume of any builds without also affecting the steadies (which you most likely do not want).
An example of this again would be our UFO flying around during a scene. A good layout would have all UFO elements on a designated foodgroup so that your mixer can easily find them. An even BETTER layout would have the steadies on one foodgroup and any bys on a separate foodgroup.
These wind steadies were split out onto their own ambience tracks to keep the steadies out of the way of mixing hard FX and easily accessible with a single VCA if needed.
Tip 4: Resist the Urge to Add Reverb
From time to time, you might be tempted to add reverb to your sound effects to either achieve a creative effect (like adding verb to ghost vocals to make them feel ethereal) or help your clients to put a sound effect into the proper space (like making a close-mic’ed hawk cry sound like it’s coming from across a canyon). But, I would urge you to resist the temptation and instead explain that these things will be accomplished in the mix.
As someone who was originally a sound effects editor, I understand that in both scenarios, adding reverb helps the clients to comprehend your vision for how your sound effects will play in the mix, and that cuts down on the probability that you will receive notes. However, in both cases, adding reverb in the editorial process can be detrimental to the quality of the final mix.
In the first scenario, the issue is that when played in isolation, a fair amount of reverb can be used to really sell a creative direction. However, when you add dialogue, music, and foley on top, that amount of reverb often makes the sound effects less able to pop through the mix, and results in more of a “wash.” You’re sacrificing clarity and quality of the final product. It’s also true that your mixer is a true expert in reverb and delay. They have an encyclopedic knowledge of plugins, presets, and settings at their fingertips. This expertise allows them to create something that doesn’t just “get the point across,” but really helps to sell the creative vision of the filmmaker.
In the second scenario, it might seem like a no-brainer to add reverb to something that obviously needs environmental reverb. But, the issue is that your mixer sets a very specific ambient reverb for each location, and that reverb is the same across all dialogue, foley, and sound effects. It helps to stitch everything together and make it feel like it’s in the same real space. Having an outlier with a different type of reverb, different tail, etc. pulls apart that carefully crafted tapestry and sticks out like a sore thumb. Again, keep in mind that your mixer isn’t just putting a generic medium hall on everything. He or she is carefully choosing settings that are realistic to the space, and they are an expert at this. Let them do their job, and the mix will be better for it.
What are tricks of the trade make your mixer happy? If you mix, what saves you time?
If you enjoyed this blog, check out these:
DOWNSTREAM: VALUABLE SOUND DESIGNERS THINK LIKE MIXERS
FIVE THINGS I’VE LEARNED ABOUT EDITING FROM MIXING
LAYING IT ALL OUT THERE: WHEN A GOOD LOOKING LAYOUT IS ACTUALLY BAD