The Peril of Background Music

I was up til 2 AM yesterday re-encoding and re-uploading our most recent episode of STBD because Ann pointed out something I hadn't noticed (but have been told before): the background music was too loud to hear the dialogue.

Very often, I don't notice that because, while I'm editing, I'm paying attention to the dialogue. I block out the music in my head. But to someone who's never heard that dialogue before, it might get trampled by the backing track. (I made that mistake a lot in our first two seasons.)

The other side of the coin is audio compression. I've noticed a LOT of background noise coming through in our final mixes that I don't pick up in Final Cut Pro. If the entire mix is going to be leveled up during compression, figure that your background music will get a bump as well, and might interfere with your dialogue.

The Next Sound You Hear...

An audio technician in New York approached the folks at Blip TV to see if any of their shows could use the help of a pro audio guy in his spare time.

The Blip folks forwarded him to us, as they say, "not because you have such terrible audio that you need a specialized audio guy...but because you have a lot going on in your episodes and I think this guy is looking for more of a challenge."

So the audio guy watched the show and dropped me a line, suggesting that he thinks we have a good thing already, but what we could really use is a better audio mix. He suggested I upload the original files, including audio from each of our sources -- boom mic, camera mic, lapel mic, room mic, etc. -- and let him fiddle with it to improve the mix.

That's when I explained that we don't actually HAVE an audio mix.

We have one microphone. Which I attach to the top of the camera.

Needless to say, we won't be working with a professional audio guy from New York in the immediate future...