Thanks Gaston, that's the idea. When I started out I learned from other sound editors and mixers in-person but with COVID that is not happening. So I'm trying to bridge the gap in a small way with these videos.
Bro did better lesson than many online courses. Thank you for sharing knowledge, as someone who does music production and radio production this series has done me a lot to get into sound for films. Thank you.
Hi Thomas!!! Why are you using 4 mono tracks and 8 stereo tracks for A and B bg? I didn't understand how it would be distributed in the mix Your channel is the best. Thank very much for teach. You are my hero 🙏
The mono tracks are for the center channel mostly or sounds that need to be panned discretely. The stereo tracks are for the left, right, and surrounds. I will cover all that in the mix videos coming up.
Thanks for making this series, even though I have a pretty good handle on what I’m doing at this point, I’ve always been insecure of my workflow. Having been mostly self taught (despite going to film school- lol sound education is LACKING), I’ve missed a lot of the standard procedures. It never occurred to me to have dedicated A and B groups of amb tracks, I usually just checkerboard in a large stack of tracks, alternating within it. Whenever I have to hand a session over to someone else to mix or edit I’m always worried that my internal methods aren’t as clear as they could be or I’ve categorized things wrong. It’s very valuable to be able to take a peak into how you go about your work, appreciate you taking the time. Simple / dumb question that I always am unsure of: do you categorize specific continuous elements (rushing water, foliage movements, etc. that are isolated) under FX or amb? My approach has always been: if it’s not a discrete action, I put it in ambience, even if it could loosely be associated with something moving on screen. Does that make sense? Sometimes I second guess it, but figure I should only put something in fx if it’s a specific instance, ie a single wave crashing as opposed to the constant waves rolling on the beach. I think I probably just overthink it for the most part but considering I mostly work solo it’s hard to get a grasp on how your methods stack up.
Your example of waves is exactly what I do. If it is a featured element I will usually put it on FX tracks, but often towards the bottom so it is close to the BG's. That would go for a car by that motivates a cut, single waves, special wind gust, or other sounds that need to be loud and proud. You can also place these sounds on BGFX tracks.
@@ThomasBoykin Hi Thomas Boykin! Im working on a short film and I need some good 1960s scene Jail cell background ambience inside a police station. What would be the best way to create that using other or multiple tracks of ambient noise and room and maybe sound effects if needed??
Good point on the foreign sound part. There's a language barrier. I plan to do sound for not only my own country, but foreign countries as well. If I get asked to do sound and music for an anime (It's basically a Japanese cartoon), when there's crowd walla, I'm gonna need to search some Japanese walla.
Hi! Great channel with lots of useful tips. A question; why dont you use markers instead of clips to mark cuts between scenes? Would be easier when cutting/trimming starts and ends of AMB tracks..?
Great, do all the individual sounds from one scene have their own track?. I would have thought different sounds sharing tracks might cause issues if you're using inserts, or do you have a workaround for that?.
Hi, I subscribed because you're the only one doing this type of tutorial with pro tools. Keep them coming. Great tuts. Do you mind treating a very poorly recorded audio with a lot of hiss noise. I don't mind sharing a sample (i mean an example) with you. Please
thank you. education is gold! levels seem to be very low on all material. do you control these ambients in any way, i saw that you only do clip gain on the audio clips.
You can do the cut track in Resolve and export it to pro tools so you don't have to it manually. I'll have to check it out to come with a tutorial but it worked for me! Resolve is free btw
For me, I treat ambiences and backgrounds differently. BGs are for the off screen while ambiences are onscreen. I put the ambiences on the top while BGs in the bottom.
@@ThomasBoykin So basically scene A would start on section A on your timeline, then finish off on section B in your timeline? I've had mixers give me a hard time about doing this in my early days.
Amazing video, and very professional methods you're using. Very good insight. I'm curious. How do you keep track of the clips you're using? Do you organize them a certain way? Also imagine if the location at the scene in the beginning shows up later on another scene, do you go to the first scene and reuse those bg?
Thank you! Could you please specify how you imported audio from Soundly exactly to cut time? Or did you select-paste-cut and just cut it off from the tutorial?
Great series. I honestly feel like backgrounds are some of my weaker areas in the whole process. I've never used Soundly, I have some Sound Ideas stuff and a few other collections, but I can't seem to get very detailed results (i.e. party with 20 people, traffic from 20 floors up, neighbors arguing, etc.). Would you recommend Soundly just for cloud library? Or what "offline" libraries would you use?
I have a lot of different libraries. Soundly is nice because if I don’t have something on my SSD then there is a chance it’s on the cloud library they have. Look into the Boom libraries, Hollywood Edge and some of the smaller ones on asoundeffect.com. But also get a field recorder and collect your own.
Hi! Thanks! I've noticed that in most movies (like Marvel) a bg has some sort of side chain compression. When a dialogue sounds, bg and music become a little bit quieter. Do you know what they use to achieve the same result?
@@ThomasBoykin Thanks. Did you noticed this bg and music "compression" in Marvel movies? For example, In Spider Man No Way Home they use sidechain compression from dialogue and foley, so, when foley or dialogue sounds, bg and music become quieter.
I’m currently working on Ambiences for my final student short film. I can attest that working with a horribly mixed guide track is a pain in the ass and should be avoided at all costs. It feels incredibly weird to be adding Ambiences to set location and you can’t hear anything the actors are saying.
Great job. Very clear. A lot of people starting out will be incredibly happy to watch this tutorials.
Thanks Gaston, that's the idea. When I started out I learned from other sound editors and mixers in-person but with COVID that is not happening. So I'm trying to bridge the gap in a small way with these videos.
@@ThomasBoykin🙏
Bro did better lesson than many online courses. Thank you for sharing knowledge, as someone who does music production and radio production this series has done me a lot to get into sound for films. Thank you.
You are an absolute legend. I can't tell you how much I appreciate this course.
Glad to help
Just got my first gig sound designing a short film and your lessons are awesome! Tysm.
I’m glad to help
Thanks for the video
I just graduated from college in audio postproduction and your videos help me to improve.
Greetings from México
Saludos desde EEUU. Encantado de audarte mi amigo.
Great series! Would be cool to see how you pan dx, bg, sfx, etc...(static and in motion) when you get to the mix
Will get to that soon I hope.
Hi Thomas!!! Why are you using 4 mono tracks and 8 stereo tracks for A and B bg?
I didn't understand how it would be distributed in the mix
Your channel is the best. Thank very much for teach. You are my hero 🙏
The mono tracks are for the center channel mostly or sounds that need to be panned discretely. The stereo tracks are for the left, right, and surrounds. I will cover all that in the mix videos coming up.
Thanks for making this series, even though I have a pretty good handle on what I’m doing at this point, I’ve always been insecure of my workflow. Having been mostly self taught (despite going to film school- lol sound education is LACKING), I’ve missed a lot of the standard procedures. It never occurred to me to have dedicated A and B groups of amb tracks, I usually just checkerboard in a large stack of tracks, alternating within it. Whenever I have to hand a session over to someone else to mix or edit I’m always worried that my internal methods aren’t as clear as they could be or I’ve categorized things wrong. It’s very valuable to be able to take a peak into how you go about your work, appreciate you taking the time.
Simple / dumb question that I always am unsure of: do you categorize specific continuous elements (rushing water, foliage movements, etc. that are isolated) under FX or amb? My approach has always been: if it’s not a discrete action, I put it in ambience, even if it could loosely be associated with something moving on screen. Does that make sense? Sometimes I second guess it, but figure I should only put something in fx if it’s a specific instance, ie a single wave crashing as opposed to the constant waves rolling on the beach. I think I probably just overthink it for the most part but considering I mostly work solo it’s hard to get a grasp on how your methods stack up.
Your example of waves is exactly what I do. If it is a featured element I will usually put it on FX tracks, but often towards the bottom so it is close to the BG's. That would go for a car by that motivates a cut, single waves, special wind gust, or other sounds that need to be loud and proud. You can also place these sounds on BGFX tracks.
@@ThomasBoykin Hi Thomas Boykin! Im working on a short film and I need some good 1960s scene Jail cell background ambience inside a police station. What would be the best way to create that using other or multiple tracks of ambient noise and room and maybe sound effects if needed??
Thank you for this! This helps me a lot in forming my workflow in putting the bg tracks.
Good point on the foreign sound part. There's a language barrier. I plan to do sound for not only my own country, but foreign countries as well. If I get asked to do sound and music for an anime (It's basically a Japanese cartoon), when there's crowd walla, I'm gonna need to search some Japanese walla.
Hi! Great channel with lots of useful tips. A question; why dont you use markers instead of clips to mark cuts between scenes? Would be easier when cutting/trimming starts and ends of AMB tracks..?
Yes unless there are picture changes
Great, do all the individual sounds from one scene have their own track?. I would have thought different sounds sharing tracks might cause issues if you're using inserts, or do you have a workaround for that?.
Yeah you just automate the parameters for the inserts
Hi, I subscribed because you're the only one doing this type of tutorial with pro tools. Keep them coming. Great tuts. Do you mind treating a very poorly recorded audio with a lot of hiss noise. I don't mind sharing a sample (i mean an example) with you. Please
Sure you can email me at tomboykin1985@gmail.com. Usually for hiss I use Cedar DNS One for cleanup. It’s the best Noise reduction tool available.
thank you.
education is gold!
levels seem to be very low on all material. do you control these ambients in any way, i saw that you only do clip gain on the audio clips.
Yes in the mix I will cover that. I start with the dialog predub, then add music, then bgs, then Foley and sfx.
@@ThomasBoykin i just cant wait, thank you for these awesome learning lessons
this video is amazing, i just learned so much! thank you thank you thank you!
You can do the cut track in Resolve and export it to pro tools so you don't have to it manually. I'll have to check it out to come with a tutorial but it worked for me! Resolve is free btw
thanks for all the information , its time to put on practice
Thank you Tom! You're a bloody legend!
Nah I’m just a blue collar guy who is lucky to do what he loves for work. Hoping to give back where I can and these videos are a start.
@@ThomasBoykin Hey, Tom. I see you have the Audio Pro library. I do too.
For me, I treat ambiences and backgrounds differently. BGs are for the off screen while ambiences are onscreen. I put the ambiences on the top while BGs in the bottom.
That’s a great idea. I will sometimes use BgFX tracks for on screen elements if there are a lot.
great video! thanks so much!!!!
Hey thanks alot. This is really helpful. I’m just getting started into all this and its given me some ideas.
It was very informative. Thank you very much for sharing this. I truly appreciate you.
Much love,
~SamBoyy
Thanks Sam and glad I can help.
Great tutorial. How do you checkerboard areas where it cuts from scene A to scene B to scene C, then back to scene A?
I don’t. A and B only. You could do as many letters as you want, just takes up tracks. I do most of my mixes on one system these days.
@@ThomasBoykin So basically scene A would start on section A on your timeline, then finish off on section B in your timeline? I've had mixers give me a hard time about doing this in my early days.
Amazing video, and very professional methods you're using. Very good insight.
I'm curious. How do you keep track of the clips you're using? Do you organize them a certain way? Also imagine if the location at the scene in the beginning shows up later on another scene, do you go to the first scene and reuse those bg?
I just search the clips list or use markers. And reusing bgs is fine unless it needs to sound different
Thank you!
Could you please specify how you imported audio from Soundly exactly to cut time? Or did you select-paste-cut and just cut it off from the tutorial?
Spot to Pro Tools from soundly. If you have a timeline selection it will fill it if the file is long enough
Great series. I honestly feel like backgrounds are some of my weaker areas in the whole process. I've never used Soundly, I have some Sound Ideas stuff and a few other collections, but I can't seem to get very detailed results (i.e. party with 20 people, traffic from 20 floors up, neighbors arguing, etc.). Would you recommend Soundly just for cloud library? Or what "offline" libraries would you use?
I have a lot of different libraries. Soundly is nice because if I don’t have something on my SSD then there is a chance it’s on the cloud library they have.
Look into the Boom libraries, Hollywood Edge and some of the smaller ones on asoundeffect.com. But also get a field recorder and collect your own.
Thomas Thank u for this
Glad to help
fantastic video, thanks!
Hi! Thanks! I've noticed that in most movies (like Marvel) a bg has some sort of side chain compression. When a dialogue sounds, bg and music become a little bit quieter.
Do you know what they use to achieve the same result?
A vca fader is most likely
@@ThomasBoykin Thanks. Did you noticed this bg and music "compression" in Marvel movies? For example, In Spider Man No Way Home they use sidechain compression from dialogue and foley, so, when foley or dialogue sounds, bg and music become quieter.
Amazing video 😃👍
which movie is that one?
Thank you sir. It’s not out yet but it’s called “Broome Street Boys.”
@@ThomasBoykin ow wow.
nice review, thanks
Thanks !!!
I’m currently working on Ambiences for my final student short film. I can attest that working with a horribly mixed guide track is a pain in the ass and should be avoided at all costs. It feels incredibly weird to be adding Ambiences to set location and you can’t hear anything the actors are saying.
I just gave you the 500th like on this video. Let's go for a beer.
I’m buying
@@ThomasBoykin damn that was easy.
is the static atmosphere always in mono ?
I like it that way
what is the group " all SFX " include ?
looks like the drive link for the template is down
why do you fade the BGs from scene to scene with linear fades as opposed to equal power?
It sounds better to me