Today the sound for ‘April’ was completed and mixed ready for the final movie export. Due to booking complications with the sound theater, the final mix of the audio was done at my home studio set up. When we were using the sound theater for our pre production we were using blue sky 5.1 speakers, in a 2.1 setup. At my home we were using KRK Rokit RP8 studio monitors to mix the movie. We listened back at first to the full audio with the visuals. From listening to the movie through studio monitors we noticed several noises in certain atmosphere and dialogue tracks which we did not previously hear on the sound theater speakers. This meant we had to amend the noises by either laying tracks over them to cover the noise up, or dip the volume to mute the noise in the audio.
In the final mix of the audio we automated fade ins, pan changes and bus sends. From making subtle changes to each track the overall mix began to sound more realistic to accompany the visuals. We used fade ins and outs to link atmospheres to different scenes and to control the volume of the music tracks. We used pan changes to automate some foley sounds which go off center camera and are off screen. For example, the keyboard that Issac is typing on in scene 7. The camera pans round to April entering into the room but the sound of Issac’s keyboard typing continues but pans the opposite way to the shot. This adds realism to the visuals and adds greater ambience to off screen sound.
The director of ‘April’ watched the film with the final mix of the audio, and was very pleased to the standard and the placement of the audio that had been inserted. This means we can export the final mixdown for the editor to burn down to a DVD ready for submission.
