Sound Engineering
Although I must admit to a fondness for MOS sequences, when shooting dialog, I prefer to get clean sound on set. But this isn’t always easy, and sometimes it’s not possible at all. Fixing audio problems in post is never satisfying, and I start to dream of just doing all the dialog in post. In many ways, this makes sense, as on-set time is incredibly expensive, and never having to do an additional take for sound will save loads of time, and time is money. Plus, I’m only dubbing the finished film, and not all the unused takes, so that seems
As mixing engineers, one of our biggest challenges is communicating width and depth in a stereo track. It’s tricky for loads of reasons. For one, what we’re doing is essentially a fiction: When you listen to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on an iPod, you are not at the Philharmonic—yet it’s often the engineer’s job to create the sound of the orchestra, from left to right, front to back, and in the appropriate environment.
Furthermore, the technical concepts we employ to achieve this fiction (dispersion relations, the Haas effect) can be difficult
The sound engineer. Ah, yes. As a performing musician, I’ve encountered my fair share of them, so I understand the stereotype. They can seem disinterested, a bit preoccupied, perhaps brusque.
And sure, there are bad apples out there. I'll never forget playing Kenny’s Castaways (a classic, now-defunct New York City venue), the engineer loping onto the stage mid-song to swap out my microphone while I was singing. Startled by this, I refused to play Kenny’s for years.
That sound engineer became an emblem to me. I had no pathos for him—that is,