This week we began the 5-week post-production intensive. Our first assignment is to undertake the task of mixing and doing post for the student film Darkness Calls. This film is a modern horror about a couple who go camping and along the way come into contact with a possessive demon and find themselves in a bit of strife.
Another thing that's new to us is working in 5.1 surround sound, something I have not gone deep into yet. 5.1 is the common name for a six-speaker setup where you have 1 speaker setup in the centre of the viewing point, 1 speaker either side of the viewing point, 1 speaker either side behind the listeners head and 1 subwoofer. The main purpose for this is to add excitement and extra emotional connection to the film on-screen, although you have to be careful not to be making the sound too distracting from the film which should always be at the forefront of the presentation.
The idea behind 5.1 and stereo is to have your 5.1 mixes fold down to stereo instead of doing 2 separate mixes for both speaker setups. The way you do this is by using a downmix plugin in your daw. What this does is takes the 5 channels you currently have and subgroups them down to 2 stereo tracks. The main catch is splitting your middle speaker out to 2 stereo speakers. You have to ensure that this channel is turned down 3db in your down mixer this is because panning law states that when you have something coming out of both speakers at an equal volume, the perceived loudness of the source in question will increase by 3db, so we need to compensate for this change in level. The phenomenon known as the phantom centre is the perceived direction of where a source that is playing at equal volumes form both stereo speakers is coming from. Because we cannot distinguish which speaker the sound is coming from our brain is tricked into thinking it is coming from the centre, even though there isn't a speaker there to play this sound.
Stereo is great for an at-home situation because it has a phantom centre, but when you play your stereo mix in a cinema where there are 30 metres between the front left and right speakers, this is where 5.1 comes into play nicely. In a cinema 5.1 re-enforces to someone sitting on the far left or far right of the cinema that the dialogue or any sound intended to come from the centre is, in fact, coming from the centre, whereas if they only had a stereo set of speakers the fact that a person is sitting on the far left or right of the cinema may lead them to believe that the centre sound is coming from that speaker, this can make it confusing and uncomfortable for the viewer to watch the film.
In terms of the film Darkness Calls, our group has set out with the mindset to make the film as scary as should be, being a modern-day horror. Sound design and music will play a big part in this especially towards the end of the film where Amber and Michael are possessed by the demon and are trying to kill each other. Tension and stress building sounds such as drones and sporadic rhythms will help to implement the feeling that we intend to create with this film.
One technique I think we can implement into the sound design and mix is the use of dynamics. By making use of parts that are tense with things such as music and sound design, we can make the quiet parts so much more effective and dissonant.
Comentários