Behind the Mix: Exploring Audio Excellence

Great sound is the mark of a quality project. In this episode, host Candice Bloch has a conversation with Charlie Hewitt of Mirror Studios to discuss all things audio post and sound design. From the difference between audio mixing and audio mastering, to layering in all the right sound effects at all the right levels, to the new frontier of fully immersive audio, you’ll leave this episode with a greater appreciation for how audio enhances projects and brings them to life. Tune in to hear some of Charlie’s journey, the importance of sound, and why he considers film and television “sensory mediums” for storytelling.

To learn more about Charlie and Mirror Studios: https://mirrorstudios.com/

And to learn more about IAX (the Immersive Audio Experience): https://www.iaxaudio.com/

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Transcript

00:01 - VO (Host)
Quiet on the set. 

00:06
All cameras, good, good, good and action. Welcome to Media Maker's Spotlight from Women in Film and Video in Washington DC. We bring you conversations with industry professionals for behind-the-screens insight and inspiration. 

00:29 - Candice Bloch (Host)
Thanks for joining us. I'm your host, candice Block, and today I'm here with Charlie Hewitt, a lifelong recording artist and performing musician, music producer and engineer and a sought-after voice talent with national and international exposure. Charlie is also the founder and president of Mirror Studios, which first opened as a music recording studio but has since transitioned into a multimedia production and post-production facility specializing in audio. Post Mirror Studios works with a range of clients from independent filmmakers and documentarians to major film studios such as Disney, universal and Sony Pictures. Today we're here to dive more into the world of sound design, audio mixing for film and television, immersive audio and more. Welcome to the show, charlie. Thanks, candice. So pardon the pun, but it sounds like you've had a real passion for all things audio for your whole career, you know, starting as a musician and everything. Can you give us some background on what drew you to music and then eventually producing and engineering, leading to the birth of Mirror Studios? 

01:24
You bet, then eventually producing and engineering, leading to the birth of Mirror Studios, you bet. So I started as a singer and a songwriter and a guitarist and early in my career, when I'd be performing, if I went to buy a piece of equipment. I went to buy a piece of equipment that I could also use in a recording environment, which was bedrooms, garage, whatever use in a recording environment, which was, you know, bedrooms, garage, whatever. And that just slowly expanded and it wasn't long after that I had folks start knocking on the door and say, hey, I understand you can record, so can you record us? And so it just kind of morphed from that to having a real passion for capturing one, that one's essence, you know. 

02:06
So yeah, so the technical stuff just just came by necessity, it sounds like yeah, we, you know, I kind of lived through the, the transition from analog to digital and then into a tape. You know, it's certainly, we started out in tape and then went to digital tape and then into formats that were non-destructive, like we have now. So it's been an interesting transition, but it's, yeah, every day is a new day, right, every day is a new challenge. 

02:39
New adventures? 

02:40
Yeah, we don't even know what's going to happen next? 

02:41
Yeah, we don't even know what's going to happen next. So, yeah, so we at this podcast, obviously we focus on screen-based media production, but nearly all visual media is accompanied by audio to tell the story Not everything, but almost all of it. And anyone, as we know, who's seen a range of quality levels and types of media, you know that, like if the audio is terrible, it immediately pulls you right out of the story. So can you talk a little bit more about the importance of, like high quality audio? 

03:14
Boy. That's a. That's a pretty broad question. High quality audio, I guess, is in the eye of the beholder, right. But good audio, good, clean audio, is the cornerstone of a good production. Sound can pull a less than stellar picture through Good sound. Bad sound can pull a really good picture down so you can have a stunning image on the screen. And if the audio is crap, it's, it's. The audience knows it. George Lucas always said that audio was at least, if not more than, 50% of the experience, and so whenever I talk to students and whatnot with regards to film, I get asked to speak at at some of the film schools and one of the first questions I'll ask is if they can tell me what this medium is. And so many times young film students will say that it's a visual medium, and I disagree. I think it's a sensory medium. I think if it doesn't get the hair up on your or you feel goosebumps and whatnot when you're watching something or a good love story and you cry, then somebody missed the point. 

04:30
So yeah yeah, I think it's a good, a good overall project, when it's done, should be engaging, and that means both visually and orally. 

04:42 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
That's a great way to put it. A sensory medium mean both visually and orally. That's a great way to put it a sensory medium. And you know, as we all know, they always say I mean, I know, if I'm watching something particularly scary or something, you could just turn the sound off and it's an immediately different experience. Or you know the classic with Jaws. You know, it's all in the power of your imagination, but if you just get that music or something going to evoke something, it's, yeah, it's tapping. If you're in the power of your imagination, but if you just get that music or something, going to evoke something. 

05:06 - Candice Bloch (Host)
It's yeah, it's, it's tapping. If you're in the other room and you hear, don, you know what's happening, exactly, exactly. 

05:13 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
So yeah, I'm tying the music to the visuals. How often do you work alongside like directors and things like that, when you're working on a project, to make sure that the audio is complementing the visual elements of a project? 

05:25 - Candice Bloch (Host)
Frequently, frequently. Yeah, I, I, when we get a project in, for film for example, we'll get a. If we're hired to do this, the, the sound package for a picture, we will dive in and we'll go through and and literally familiarize ourselves with the show and then we'll do a spotting session and that is just roll the movie from top to bottom and when the director or producers have you know, we'll stop at a particular scene. How do you feel about this? What are you thinking here? And so many times it's obvious what needs to happen here. 

06:03
And then sometimes there's, in particular, like we've got a project we're working on right now that's 85% sound design there's, the main character is put in a silencing mask, so you can't, there's no dialogue, so everything else is sound design. Or in the brave new world of immersive audio that we're doing, where there is no picture, Right and so. But yeah, to answer your question, we work alongside them pretty closely and then we'll do our job and then we'll circle back and, you know, get closer and closer and closer and fine tune as you go. 

06:38 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
Yes, I mean for our listeners who don't know all of the particulars of the audio space and audio world and audio post. Can you break down some of those roles and, more importantly I guess, the difference between, like audio mixing versus audio mastering? I know people hear these terms but they probably don't know exactly what they actually are. 

06:57 - Candice Bloch (Host)
Sure. So that's a good question. The difference between mixing and mastering and I'll use music as an example when we would make a CD, for example, doesn't happen too much anymore. But when somebody releases a project and they put up 13 songs or something like that under the heading of a CD title, mixing happens when you're mixing song one and you've got drums and orchestra and vocals and background vocals and bass and guitars and keyboards and whatnot, and you're mixing all of those together. Whether it's in Dolby Atmos or whether it's a stereo mix, whatever that is, you're mixing it all together so that song sounds outstanding. That's, you know you go, that's the essence of the song. 

07:40
Then you do that all over again for song two, three, four, five, six, and in most cases not always, but in most cases those songs were recorded kind of usually in one setting. It can be over the course of three or four days, but it's like all the musicians come together, everybody gets together and they record those eight or ten or twelve songs. So there's a common denominator there for the sound of the drums and the sound of the bass and obviously you can tweak it a little bit, but for the most part it's also the same room that it was all recorded in. So there's a little bit of a common denominator that orally runs through the whole project. You mix song one, you mix song two, you mix song three. 

08:23
When they're all done, I've got 12 individual mixes. Then it goes to mastering, and mastering's job is to put that final sheen on it, but that also adjusts levels and whatnot, so that now you're not mixing guitarist-based drums on this one, you're mixing. The mastering engineer's job is to smooth it out. So song one is not any louder than song five, song seven, you so you can bounce around and and there's a common thread through all of it, and it's there's that that final little icing on the cake? It's the last little dash of salt that you put into the stew that that makes. That's what mastering is, and, as you're listening now, more on a macro level as opposed to a micro level okay, does it make sense? 

09:10 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
so it's like, yeah, it's like sounds like sort of like the final continuity of a whole project versus individual elements yeah so, and so, if you're so, I'll just use another analogy, and I don't know that it's a good one. 

09:21 - Candice Bloch (Host)
But, um, if you resurface a piece of furniture, right, and you sand it all down and you get down into the crevices and you make it all beautiful and everything's nice and smooth, and then you put the stain on it and everything's great and you go, wow, it looks great. Mastering would be putting the last sheen of coating on it, so that it's now, it becomes a piece of you know, it becomes an heirloom piece of furniture. Yeah, that final level, yeah it's the final cherry on top. 

09:52 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
It's that final polish, as you said. But how do you make sure that when you're engineering these things, you make sure that the songs are, for example, or like the whole, the whole length of a story project, whatever sounds consistent? How do you consider all of the different listening and watching devices and equipment that people have? I mean, people now are watching films on their phone, or, you know, they might be listening on earbuds to a song or a podcast or anything, or they might have a fully immersive surround sound home theater. So how do you account for all those different environments when, when you're, when you're like mastering all the music? 

10:31 - Candice Bloch (Host)
well, I listened to them on all of those different environments. There was a time in the studios when we had the big speakers and then we would have a little small little set of speakers a b set, if you will, right on the meter bridge and so you'd go from the big speakers and everything sounds big and robust and then you would literally just toggle over. And how does it translate to the small speakers? And now there's so many, there's such a variety of listening environments. We will take a project and we've got a couple of different rooms, and so we'll mix something and before we send it off and actually do final mixes, we'll bring up that project in one of the other rooms it's a little bit smaller or a little bit larger and then we'll do a rough mix of it and mix it down and then take it in to listen to it on your phone, listen to it in your earbuds. I'll go for a walk in the afternoon, I'll throw in a set of earbuds and listen to it and see whether or not everything translates, so that the little nuances come through, and if something stands out in a different environment and you bring it back just a touch and smooth it in and fold it into the dough. Right, it will translate, it will. 

11:45
Sometimes, if you hear something stand out in one environment, you go back to the source. It was standing out there as well, but because of other things that were bigger and louder and more robust, that you didn't notice them as much. But you pull it back. You don't miss it in the in the larger environment, but it it smooths things out. So, to answer your question in a nutshell right here, these two things, right here. You know, just be here now. Pay attention to your mix. Yeah. 

12:14 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
Yeah, and for those of not watching this, he pointed to his ears. Obviously it's nice to listen to it. On all those things, I'm sure it doesn't get frustrating. If there's something that you have to kind of adjust to make sure it still works on maybe a lesser quality listening experience, does that get frustrating? 

12:33 - VO (Host)
at all, or is it just kind of? 

12:34 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
like a fun challenge. That's part of the challenge, yeah. 

12:36 - VO (Host)
That's, that's part of the. That's part of the fun. Yeah, that's that's we. We certainly understand. We were very, very fortunate. We have a beautiful facility and state-of-the-art stuff. I mean it's like great speakers and tuned rooms and you know, dolby came in and tuned our rooms so we've got a great listening environment so that when we place something in the room or we sculpt someone's dialogue, that's what you're going to hear when you hear it back. We're just really, really grateful that we were able to work in that environment. But we also have a very, very keen awareness of the fact that not everybody is going to listen to it that way. So it's vital that we listen to it in different formats in different environments. Is to listen to it in your car, in your computer, on your on your headphones, on your mobile device? 

13:20 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
So yeah, For everyone listening here. Do you have any recommendations for the best possible way, like you know a type of headphoner or experience, or you know just sort of like? If you're like and if you really want to enjoy the audio of of a certain project, try to experiencing, experience it in this environment or or type of speaker you know? I that's. 

13:43 - VO (Host)
I would probably ask someone to reach out which you can. You can find, which you can send an email. You can find us online at mirastudioscom, but I get asked that a lot. I was just at where you and I met and I had a number of people ask if I had a preference in headphones. And actually the headphones that we use here are the Sony 7506. They're $100, right, they're just. They're a hundred bucks. Right, they're the standard. They're in all the voiceover booths and in all of the control rooms. So we'll be listening to something on the speakers and then we'll throw the headphones on and see if it translates and move and go back and forth. So, yeah, I, when I travel, if I, I'll have a Pro Tools rig on my laptop when I travel and sometimes our engineers will send something my way for thoughts or ideas or whatever, and I have a pair of sound canceling headphones that I travel with and I'll throw those on and listen that way. So I don't have any one in particular that just go. Aha, I found the one. 

14:50 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
Yeah, no, not a particular one, but yeah, like so over ear tends to be better, You're you're enclosing your yeah, the 7506 actually is is on ear. 

14:57 - VO (Host)
It's not even over ear, ah okay, but when I travel, those are over ear. So I think that the biggest thing is much like any part of this this we're in, and that is that it needs to be comfortable. So if you're wearing a set of headphones that are clean but you forget you have them on, those are the best ones. 

15:17 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
Yeah. 

15:18 - VO (Host)
Because then you get to concentrate on the project as opposed to the equipment. 

15:22 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
Exactly. Yeah, no, that's just great overall advice for whatever environment you want to be in or you can be in while watching or listening or any of that. 

15:31 - VO (Host)
But yeah. 

15:32 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
I mean, I'm sure people ask you all this advice because that comes with the territory of being really a profession or in that profession. You know I get asked things for other work that I do all the time too. So it's like you know, you just have to have to take it. It's a compliment, you know it's your your expert opinion on something. 

15:50 - VO (Host)
Yeah, no, I, I can appreciate that, and and so, to answer your question, I don't have a particular favorite or something that has stood out. If it's clean and it's, and the environment that I'm in is allows for critical listening, then the magic happens. You know, between your ears, and because that's how we interpret it, that's where the magic happens and how to translate that to the particular project and the software we're working with. 

16:19 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
So let's let's dive into immersive audio. Can you explain what sets immersive audio apart from just like standard audio? 

16:26 - VO (Host)
Sure, so audio is audio right, it's just what we, what we happen to listen to. But when you're, you explain what sets immersive audio apart from just like standard audio. Sure, so audio is audio, right, it's just what we, what we happen to listen to. But when you're walking down the sidewalk, you're walking, you're listening in an immersive experience. You hear the airplane go overhead when the wind is happening, if the wind is coming through the trees, it's everywhere, it's not just at eye level, so it's not just in front of you, it's everywhere. And so someone talking to you in front of you, that dialogue is right in front of you, but the dog barking may be behind you and the airplane is going over your head and the wind is everywhere. Right, so that is immersive. 

17:02
Audio Technology is fascinating, and that it is the algorithms that have been created now to interpret that, and we're using our two ears to hear that as we're walking down the street. So these folks, engineers, that are a whole hell of a lot smarter than me, have figured out how to interpret that into headphones. So when we mix in in immersive, we literally mix in an environment where I'm, I'm working in, um, totally Atmos, and, and that is object-based mixing. So the bed, the stuff that happens at eye level is they call that a bed, and back in the day there was stereo. Right, it went from mono to stereo. 

17:45
That like revolutionized the audio world when it expanded that big and then it moved to 5.1s. There's three across the front and two behind you, and then the sub, and then 7.1 and 9.1, et cetera, and then recently they added the speakers above us, which are the height speakers, and when we go to object base, it's just, it becomes far more specific but beautiful on the back end, which is the stuff. The magic that happens under the hood is that when you place an object like right behind your head and somebody whispers like I'm right behind you and you can literally hear it in your headphones right behind you, when that gets rendered out, that translates down the road, that translates to being a deliverable, so that when somebody else puts the headphones on, they can hear that very same thing right behind their head, and so it cracks open a whole new, brave new world of mixing. It's exciting, you know, I listened to one that I did a year ago and, go, holy crap, I wish I could do that one again, because you're better at it every day. 

18:52 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
So yeah, that's so cool. So how many, how many points then do you have to work with now? Or you know sort of Everywhere. 

18:59 - VO (Host)
It's 360 degrees. 

19:01 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
Okay, so it's not it's not just like. 

19:04 - VO (Host)
That's the beauty of object-based Right. So you can have. You can have 12, 15, 25 speakers in your room, but you can toggle back to binaural and throw on the headphones and put on your headphones and mix in the headphones and and experience the same placement in the room. Only now it's just coming through on your headphones, so there is not a speaker there. There's a point in space, if you will. 

19:33 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
That's pretty magical that they found a way to make that translate. 

19:37 - VO (Host)
Oh, it's nuts, it's fabulous. 

19:39 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
A little like 30 degrees to the right and 15 degrees up, but while you're just in your earbuds, that's exactly right. 

19:45 - VO (Host)
That's exactly right. That's what makes it magical, that's what immersive is. Yeah so. 

19:49 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
So that puts you in the environment even more, which is fantastic, but you don't want to like bombard everyone with too many sounds. So what are? Are there guidelines, if any, or is it just sort of artistry or whatever for balancing how many kind of audio tracks or imports or sources or whatever are more dominant in a particular moment versus things that are more in the background? 

20:12 - VO (Host)
Anybody that's known me will know that I preach subtlety, and not every mixer is that way. There are some that you know the big crash, bang, boom, the fight scene and the thump and the chains and the chainsaw, and the race of the engine of the cars when they're racing and whatnot. Those are the obvious big things, right? So in immersive audio, if you're standing in the middle of the middle of a racetrack and it's an oval, you can hear the car going around you, right? So that would be one way to do it. But I always like to put myself in the listeners, the audience's seat. And if something is, there are so many buttons and knobs now and so many opportunities to move things around the room that when you go to an extreme, it becomes noticed, and the minute somebody notices your mix, you just pull them out of the story. So my job, if I've done my job right, nobody notices, they just walk away going. Holy cow, that was a great story. 

21:22 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
Right, they don't notice it, they feel it. 

21:25 - VO (Host)
That's exactly right. Yeah, so it's all about the subtleties. And so we'll break open a project and one engineer will work on dialogue and, depending on the size of the project, one, two, three, four engineers will work on sound design. We'll have one do special effects, we'll have another do backgrounds and then, if the project warrants it, it'll go off to Foley. And when all of those pieces come back together, for us, invariably sound design and backgrounds and Foley's will be a little extra loud, which it should be, because that was the environment they were concentrating on, right, right? Well, I want to make sure the sound effect works, so I bring the volume up. 

22:10
And when it comes to us, the final mixer, if I'm the re-recording mixer on the project, my job now is to tuck those in so you really don't notice it. It's just when you're walking down the street. You're walking down the street with that individual and then, in immersive audio, when there's no picture, it even goes a little further, which is that's where you want to bump it up, just a touch maybe. So in the background. Now you sense that you're walking down the street, so the wind will be a little bit more noticeable because our job as a re-recording engineer or sound effects editors for picture. Our job is to support what's on the screen. When it's immersive, there is no screen. So now we have to support your imagination. So it's kind of a fine line, and the beauty is is there's no rules, there's just guidelines. You know yeah. 

23:09 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
So is immersive. Oh like, can you do immersive with visuals, or? 

23:14 - VO (Host)
is that sure? Oh, absolutely. 

23:16 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
Right, so it's not. 

23:16 - VO (Host)
It's not, they're not separate Cause you know yeah, immersive is falling into the, so they'll be atmos and and and and that surround environment. Um, when they talk about immersive more now they're talking like in on Spotify and podcasts and I guess audible is is now is now released that they're going to be doing the Harry Potter books in immersive. So right, so we just finished a book that we did in full immersive. We released a podcast a little while back. Four episodes of a podcast, it was full immersive. It was a full blown motion picture with all the sound, design and music and comp in a composition and whatnot. The only thing that was missing was the picture. So people talk about immersive that way, but you're, indeed you're, absolutely correct and that is immersive, is immersive. It's everywhere. So, whether whether or not you're supporting, whether it's on on in the cinema or it's on a TV show or it's a podcast, Right, it's just, yeah, putting you inside that environment a little bit more, with even more like sort of uh, environment building, world building kind of with. 

24:23 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
Yeah, I was just thinking. It sounds like you don't want to necessarily notice everything, but you would notice if it wasn't there. Oh absolutely, because there was people it's like, if it, if it will know if it's something sounds realistic or not, or true to the environment. 

24:38 - VO (Host)
Yeah, there was a picture that we worked on and the, the young gal, and the music was going and the music was pretty big at that particular point and she's and it's a transition from one scene to another. 

24:50
So it was the music is tailing off and she comes back into the house and she's walking in her, in her socks, across the kitchen floor, which is a hard floor, and then she reaches up and flips off the light and when she's walking you can't really hear her footsteps. But if they're not there, something's missing, even though, because of the music and whatnot, you can't really hear it. And so I've gone through and literally toggled that on and off there's the footsteps, the foley of her footsteps, walking through the kitchen. But if you mute that channel, there's something, a little bit of substance, there's a little bit something missing from the scene, even though when you turn that one back on and mute the music, you can hear footsteps clear as a bell it's like the uncanny valley for your ears that's exactly right, so that when you put the two of them together, now you've got you know, now you've got the, the whole picture yeah, something would seem a little. 

25:49 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
If you're like, is she floating? 

25:50 - VO (Host)
I don't know, that's weird, something's a little off there even though you can't really right, you can sense it when she's there, because there really is a little, yeah, subtle, subtle, very the subtlety is key, that's exactly right that's awesome. 

26:06 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
I personally for many years considered being a artist, so I love that stuff. But have you had experiences with creating some fun, sound design for things that don't exist in reality, like not footsteps, but something more like the thopters in Dune or something where you're kind of creating a new thing that doesn't have like a comparison in reality? Has that been something you've? 

26:30 - VO (Host)
had. I just mentioned that we did a show, a four part thing, on a podcast. It's on Spotify, it's called the Metal Detective. We actually have a podcast episode in this show about me and said we've got a project and it's a, and he kind of laid it out and then, and then he dropped the bomb and said but there's no, the only thing that's missing is the visual. There's no picture. So and that was the first time we dove in in a, in that, in that format, in that format. So sound design which, like I mentioned earlier, our job is to support what's on the screen, and sound design for a picture can take anywhere from four or five days to a couple of weeks, right, depending on the complexity of a show, and that's working pretty diligently on it. Some take longer than that. Metal Detective took four months. 

27:38 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
Wow. 

27:39 - VO (Host)
And the reason it took four months it was we were experimenting with a lot of things, but in addition, this was a futuristic film, noir, thriller, right, right. So when a gun fires in a movie, if you look up and you see the person raise their hand with a gun in their hand, you know the bang is coming. Without a picture, I don't know that the bang is coming. So how do we give you that, that just that little moment of anticipation ahead of it that something's coming? So the sound designers Nico was the sound designer on that particular show and he did a fabulous job. And he said, okay, we need to, we can't venture too far from reality. So the gun's going to go off, it's going to go bang. But a futuristic gun may have an electronic component to it. So he introduced this little bit of a line, this. So that's just one example, but it was, it was and it was really, really effective, because it's like don't, don't, don't. You know it's common, right? So yeah, don't. 

28:56 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
You knew it was coming right, so yeah, that's fun. Have you done? Have there been any like? 

29:06 - VO (Host)
standout or memorable or interesting moments, where you're recreating realistic sounds in a unique way. Well, sometimes I mean, obviously you can go back and fully something that's just a standout that you don't have. But I'll give you an example. This is where you kind of use your imagination, right? So we did a film and there was a character, if you will all throughout the film, and it was this guy's conscience. And the conscience was in the form of a plastic figurine bobblehead that sat on the dashboard of his car. 

29:40
So this guy was just kind of like he was broken and every he could just couldn't get out of his own way and every time he'd do something goofy he'd look at this bobblehead and this bobblehead was just bouncing around looking at him. He's like, just shut up, right, yeah, he's talking to this inanimate object and towards the end of the movie he does something, as you would expect, just crazy and he looks at this bobblehead and this bobblehead is just kind of looking at him and he reaches up and he grabs it and he throws it out the window of his car and in the cut that we got, i'm'm listening for it and I'm like, okay, that never landed. There was no sound of it landing outside on the pavement. 

30:24 - Candice Bloch (Host)
Yeah. 

30:25 - VO (Host)
So I went. Fine, we just put a note in there. Well, we're going to have to have this land, is it? I asked the question and it turned out they only had one. So they had a pad outside the window of the car. So when he threw it out it landed in the pad instead of breaking, because they had only one for the movie. So when I got to that spot I happened to be cutting sound for that particular one and we've got a sound effects library here. That's about four and a half million sound effects and it's all cataloged. And I'm here to tell you that there is no entry in four and a half million sound effects. That plastic bobblehead hitting pavement, right, right, there might be now, though, it sounds like Right. 

31:11
Figuring whatever. There is no such sound effect. 

31:14 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
Yeah. 

31:15 - VO (Host)
So I started racking my brains what, what would sound like that, anything that would sound like that. But it has to. It's not just a hit, there's a skitter effect, right, it's like, yeah, like if you would toss something on the on the pavement, like a frisbee or something like that. So I thought about it and we tried out numerous things and we came to it was like aha, a newspaper. If you throw a newspaper, a newspaper hits scooters across the pavement as it goes up to your next door neighbor's house. 

31:48
So I went in and, sure enough, that sound effect was there. So I grabbed that sound effect and put it in. And then of course, there's a low end. There's a low end frequency to the size of a newspaper as opposed to this tiny little plastic, the sound that that would make. So then you go in and you're creative and we compressed it a little bit and then roll all the low end out of it and now it's just the high frequencies. You would never know that that was not a plastic figurine hitting the pavement. So, and it was all right there in front of you. It took five minutes of eking and compression and pushing it into place and voila, move on. 

32:23 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
Yeah, that sounds so fun. I mean, that's what I think is so fun. That's partly why I wanted to do Foley when I was younger. Is the creativity that comes with it Sure that you might not be able to always recreate with the same things. You're like, ooh, what else could do this? Those kinds of stories, I think, are the most interesting, and people don't think about it, they don't realize that this is what goes into it, and so I love kind of shining a light on the fact that, yeah, you know, they didn't have that person's footsteps or that little like spoon that fell behind the counter. They did that after, and it's not even a spoon, you know, like. I think that that's that's so interesting. Can you talk about what IAX is, or audio experience, and what is the IA certification? 

33:09 - VO (Host)
so iax is let's harken back to the beginning of our conversation is the difference between mixing and mastering? So when the this brave new world of of immersive that's now being reduced to binaural so you can listen to it in your headphones, we did the metal detective and we mixed it in full goldy atmos and then we did a binaural mix of it, which is a render process with inside of and you can get it in pro tools I think black magic has it and there's several different formats where you can do this mix down. And we listened to the excerpt that we would do, and when we started listening to it, we went this doesn't translate as well as I'd hoped Like we were talking about before, right, when I listened to it in earbuds, it's pretty good. When I listened to it on a computer, not so much. When I listened to it in the car, horrible. 

34:08
And so we went back to the drawing board and it occurred to me in a conversation. I went hang on a second here. I grew up in the music business and we would never release an album or a CD or I'm dating myself for the album there but we would never release a project without it going to mastering first. And so from my perspective perspective, that's what was missing in this final transfer that went out to spotify was it didn't go through mastering first the binaural part, not the doldy atmos part. That's. That's fabulous because that gets translated to the theater or to netflix or whatever. 

34:46
But when we do the fold down into binaural and we played it back, there was something that wasn't translating. And I'll bet we did about a hundred different mixes here at the studio and we came up with some multi-channel compression and EQ and whatnot, that final sauce that we were talking about, that sheen, that polish and generated it out and it was like, finally, it was, wow, that holds up in all of these different formats. And so when we started asking around, there didn't appear to be anybody else doing this. So we went back and said immersive audio, so that's what iax is, and and um, and so the certification is currently coming through mirror studios. That's where the iax certification comes through. It's like we have clients that send us their project and and we go through and and put that final, that final machine on it right, that final polish, much like after you finished your music project, you'd send it to a mastering engineer and they would use their ears and their fine tune and tools and whatnot to put their final sheen on your project. 

36:02 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
Excellent, so that's making sure it will sound just as awesome, no matter where it's being enjoyed. 

36:07 - VO (Host)
That's right. Yeah, that's the idea is that it gives you a leg up so that your audience whatever format they happen to be listening to, it gets as much oomph as they can. 

36:20 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
Nice and yeah, you put all that work into creating something. 

36:24 - VO (Host)
Yeah, you don't want it to fall apart when somebody's walking in and slamming it, exactly right. 

36:27 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
Exactly exactly. Then they might not have even known some cool little thing was considered. So that's really great that you all offer that. So, and hopefully more and more people take that into consideration as well or go to you for that sure that they're going to have good audio and a nice, fully immersive experience and I'm talking like live on set, for example, versus additional stuff like ADR and Foley and things like that. 

36:55 - VO (Host)
Well, all of those things come into play. But, hands down, the most effective and cost effective thing that you can do is good production audio. Get the best production audio you can is good production audio. Get the best production audio you can. And, as a filmmaker, the director or the producers need to don't skimp on getting a good sound person. And then you need to empower that sound person to say cut, because so many times the sound person is just kind of back there listening and they go yeah, yeah, it's good, yeah, it's good. And a director that I worked with on a project when he would, when they go, yeah, yeah, it's good, yeah, it's good. And a director that I worked with on a project when he would, when they would call cut, he would turn to the, to the DP, and say did we get it? And then he would turn to the onset audio recordist and say did we get it? And if either one of them said nah, they go do it again. 

37:47 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
Yeah. 

37:48 - VO (Host)
Because that is the single biggest challenge we have, certainly with independent filmmakers and documentarians when it comes through, and that is that it was poorly recorded. And then they come to us and say, can you fix that? Yeah, right. 

38:06 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
You work some magic, but you can't do all. Well, yeah, exactly. 

38:09 - VO (Host)
Right and so so, and there's a lot of things we can fix, some of the technology. There's a lot of things we can fix, but it's time-consuming. So now, instead of taking three days to prep and mix, or maybe three, four days to go through and dial it in and tweak it, and everything's great, dial it in and tweak it and everything's great, it ends up taking seven or eight or nine days because there's so much cleanup to do in order to make it be, you know, commercially viable and that becomes that's more expensive, far more expensive than just getting a really good take first time around. 

38:43 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
Well, and speaking of the expense, just a final, for we have a lot of independent people that that listen. If someone can't necessarily afford a full like audio post-production, like major budget to get the high end best of everything, Do you have any advice about like some particular equipment or software that can help them get partway there? 

39:03 - VO (Host)
Well, I would say that one of the challenges that I see that comes up with some regularity is that independent filmmakers on a tiny budget try and do everything themselves, and the best projects are the ones that are done collaboratively. So don't try and do it all yourself. 

39:28 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
Yeah. 

39:28 - VO (Host)
So you spent the money on a camera, you spent the money on some lights. When you're, when you're putting together the project, don't don't be afraid to put a few bucks into um, some post, and there's facilities like ours as well. We've got young, sound designers and interns and whatnot. That when, when things come through, occasionally we'll get a phone call and say I, we can't afford your rate, but we've got this project. It's it's a 15 minute picture or whatever, or it's a or it's longer. 

39:57
We always say don't hesitate to ask. My mom always told me it's okay to ask. Sometimes the answer is no right, but it's okay to ask. But I would, I would venture to say, reach out, because that's how we learn. We don't learn when we're stuck in a, in a vacuum. We learn when we collaborate. I mean, I'm still learning every day and and I learned from those that have gone before me and and those that are coming up behind me. Some of these, some of the young artists that we have working with, blow my doors off every day. So you know, you spent the money on a camera because we think of it as a visual medium, but when you start thinking of it as a sensory medium, then you know, spend a few bucks on a good microphone. Make sure you wear your headphones, because microphones don't lie. 

40:49 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
Right. 

40:49 - VO (Host)
Your ears do. When you're standing out there, I can hear you and I talking, but you can't hear the river running right out here, right? So because I'm you know your ears block that out. So make sure you're wearing your headphones when you're on set or your audio person is wearing their headphones when they're on set. Listen to it back If you hear something that sounds odd or distortion on a microphone. 

41:10
On dialogue, nothing pulls you out of us, out of a story faster than than that, which is why you end up doing adr, which ends up costing more. So a good recording on the front end and then, if it's recorded well on the front end and it's put together, and it's systematically put together in a nice template so that it's very easy for someone else to understand it when they receive 50 tracks of audio from you. There's not dialogue on one and dialogue on nine and dialogue on 37. It's like it's all over the place. Like, keep the dialogue in the first two or three tracks and keep your music in the first couple of tracks and the next couple of tracks. 

41:50 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
Yeah. 

41:51 - VO (Host)
So that there's some organization, to the way you lay it out, and then, when you hand it over to a post house that you've negotiated with and say I can only afford so much, can you help? They are much more amenable Certainly I'm speaking on for us amenable. Certainly I'm speaking on up for us. We're much more amenable to helping. If you all have done your homework ahead of time and really put forth a really good effort, now you just want to take it home. That's my two cents. 

42:18 - Charlie Hewitt (Guest)
Yeah Well, no excellent advice, good good stuff. And and thank you so much for talking to us about all this I know, myself included we've all and the listeners, hopefully have learned a lot more about audio and we'll respect it a little more. Make sure to wear headphones, especially when capturing stuff. And yeah, I mean there's. There's even more I could ask, but we're already running long. I do that a lot, I just. I find I find you all so interesting talking to people in these because, as you were saying, the collaborative element as well. Not everybody can be more of an expert in every single thing that goes into bringing these projects together. 

42:50
So you have to lean on people that have devoted more time, energy and effort to their specialty. So thank you for talking to us about yours. 

42:59 - VO (Host)
Thanks for asking. I really enjoyed it. Thanks for the opportunity. 

43:03 - Candice Bloch (Host)
Thanks for listening to Media Maker Spotlight from Women in Film and Video. To learn more about WIF, visit w-i-f-f-v-vorg. This podcast is created by Sandra Abrams, candice Block, brandon Ferry, tara Jabari and Jerry Reinhart and edited by Michelle Kim and Inez Perez, with audio production and mix by Steve Lack Audio. Subscribe. To continue learning from more amazing media makers, please visit mediummakerspotlightcom for more information.