I just signed up for what looks like a killer 6-week workshop, Sound Design for Pros, by accomplished sound designer and filmmaker David Sonnenshein. If you’re wondering whether this is worth the $250 bucks, check out this free one-hour overview webinar which gives an outline of the topics he’ll be covering and the assignments he’ll be giving. Here’s the scoop:

This free Intro Webinar will give you an overview of topics essential for the creative, professional sound designer that will be covered in detail in the upcoming six-week webinar series beginning Sept. 8. You will see and hear audiovisual demonstrations that will stimulate your auditory mind and sharpen your abilities to produce powerful soundtracks. We will also have an open chat for your questions related to sound design.

* Master theory and application of your audio craft to become an in-demand professional
* Discover tools and tricks to find an expressive voice and maximize your creativity
* Impact the audience effectively on intellectual, emotional and visceral levels
* Build successful communication skills with job-hiring producers and the post team

WEBINAR TOPICS
1. THE INTELLIGENT EAR – Listening Modes, Sound Qualities and Bipolarities
By deconstructing the listening experience into discrete elements, the grammar of sound design language gives you access for clear and powerful communication.
2. PLUG-IN POWER – Size, Distance, Speed and Non-Physical Reality
Understanding principles of real world acoustics and palette of subjective auditory experiences offers you enlightened use of digital processing tools.
3. RULES OF the BRAIN ROAD – Psychoacoustic Principles and Applications
When the curtain is lifted on how humans process auditory information, you master the art of sonic illusion (creating and hiding) as essential tools in sound editing.
4. SONIC TIME-SPACE CONTINUUM – Soundscapes and Sound Spheres
Creating an effective cinematic space depends on familiarity with your physical and social environment, and the knowledge of how to psychologically orient yourself through audio.
5. AUDIO BUILDING BLOCKS – Constructing Sound Events and Sound Objects
Mastering techniques of sequencing, layering and mixing will infuse sonic fragments (sound effects, words) with meaningful messages (sound phrases, sentences).
6. PEOPLE, PLOT AND PASSION – Narrative Structure and Sound Mapping
Bottom line, how can sound help tell your story? By understanding dramatic elements of character and emotion, the map can guide you to creative and impactful decision-making.

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David Sonnenschein’s book is legendary, and the interactive webinar which presents and analyzes examples of the theory, truly brings the material to life. – Nathan Moody, NoiseJockey.net

David gives a lot of fantastic theory and examples about the emotional and technical side of sound design with detailed explanations, presentations and audiovisual material. If you enjoyed David’s book you will love his webinars. – Miguel Isaza, DesigningSound.org

David Sonnenschein is without a doubt an expert on sound design for film, television, and multimedia projects. His impressive knowledge and easy-going personality make his classes both informative and enjoyable. – Joel Krantz, Sound Editor/Mixer and Author, Pro Tools Post Production Techniques

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If you can’t make it to the live event, you can watch the recording anytime after August 24. Registration is the same for the live and recorded webinar.

This free event is an intro to a six-week webinar series that will begin on Sept. 8. For more info go to sounddesignforpros.com.

Popularity: 2% [?]

I picked up a Rode VideoMic a few months ago, and I tried using it on some shoots. However, I noticed a horrible amount of handling noise whenever I used it, which I attributed (mistakenly, it turns out) to the mic being very sensitive to my fingers on the camera controls. I even bought the expensive Rode VideoMic handle, to try it handheld, and that didn’t help. So I stopped using it, because I couldn’t get any clean audio whenever I used it. But today, I discovered that it’s NOT my ham-handed fingers: there’s a problem with the shock mount.

Here’s how I figured it out. Today I was testing my iPhone with a mic adapter, the KM-IPHONE-MIC from KVconnection.com, which makes it possible to use external, self-powered mics with the iPhone. Just for grins I thought I’d test it out with my idle Rode VideoMic. Guess what I discovered? I got the same horrible handling noise as before, only this time, I had the mic in a controlled environment.

So where is all the handling noise coming from? From the shock mount. All those tiny rubber bands emit audible creaks. And it’s bad. Worse than useless, in my opinion: the Rode VideoMic introduces unwanted noise that otherwise wouldn’t be there.

Listen for yourself:

Am I the only person in the DSLR universe who has this problem? Is it possible that my unit is defective? Does the rubber on the feet age quickly and need to be replaced? How’s your Rode VideoMic working out?

**Update: I ordered a set of new silicon bands for the shock mount, and after replacing them, the mic is blessedly quiet. But I’m still not crazy about the fact that they had to be replaced inside of a year of very light use. That feels like a design flaw to me. The VideoMic should come with the following disclaimer: note that you will need to replace the bands frequently.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Last week there were some spectacular sunsets around Puget Sound caused by smoke drifting south from forest fires in British Columbia. I seized the opportunity to try out some timelapse shots. I got out my Nikon 300mm f/4, put a 1.4 teleconverter, and with a fotodiox adapter, mounted it on my Canon T2i. Here’s the results from two subsequent days, following two different approaches:

The first shot was made at 1080p, 24p and speeded up 600 percent in Final Cut. The second was shot the following evening, when the smoke had mostly cleared (notice how much less red there is). For this one, I shot stills, at the rate of a frame every second, and later assembled them for editing with Quicktime following these instructions from Phillip Bloom, who is a real timelapse junkie.

The nice thing about the second approach is that the much higher resolution of the image allows you to crop in and increase the magnification without losing quality. Because there was a lot less filtration of the sun on the second day, the sun is much brighter, though, and that definitely detracts from the magic of the first day.

If you look very closely to the first shot, you can pick out two sunspots that are hardly larger than specks.

For doing timelapse with the Canon T2i, you need an electronic interval timer. The official Canon part for this is listed as “temporarily unavailable” at B&H, so I picked up a really inexpensive one on Ebay, the Aputure AP-TR1C, for about $40. It worked great, once I replaced the old hearing aid-type battery it ships with which died within 15 minutes of use.

Interesting to note: the photo was taken facing due west (of course), and if you look closely, you can see how far the sun is moving south in a single day. In the first photo, its trajectory takes it north of the big tree – in the second it’s path intersects the tree, setting enough further south that we lost we lost 3 minutes of daylight from the previous day.

Popularity: 10% [?]

This screamin’ deal I just learned about via Planet 5d: this weekend only you can purchase Lock and Load X for $79. That’s 47 percent off the $149 I paid for it. Next to Red Giant’s amazing suit of plugin’s, this one tops my list of most-useful plugins. I routinely apply this bad boy to get the jitters out of my handheld footage, and it works like magic most of the time. The controls are intuitive and it’s FAST. And speed is often the difference between using and not using a plugin.

Here’s an example of just how effective it can be:

Last weekend I was shooting a documentary about a band on tour, and they spent the night at an interstate hotel. We were returning to the hotel after eating fast food, so I wasn’t lugging my tripod – and I saw these great ambience shots. To film them, I just reached into my shoulder bag for my 35mm nikon 1.4 lens, and grabbed these available-light shots handheld on my Canon T2i (using Novoflex lens adapter to get the Nikon glass on the Canon). If I hadn’t known in advance just how well these shots would clean up because of Lock and Load X, I probably wouldn’t have even tried to shoot them handheld.

Notice the before and after difference. Especially note the lens flare on the hotel shot, which shows how jittery the shot really is. After Lock and Load X is applied, you still see the lens flare bouncing around – but the background is solid.

One limitation of Lock and Load X: it doesn’t work with footage in which you’ve changed the frame rate. So if you’ve shot something at 60p and used Cinema Tools to convert it into slow motion 24p, you’ll have to use Lock and Load (the non X version, which is included with your purchase) instead. It’s much slower than X, and has to be re-rendered whenever you make changes in the timeline, but it works great if you’re patient.

Popularity: 11% [?]

I’m slightly red-green color blind. Yet at this stage of my career, I have to do all my own color correction. Impossible? Well, maybe if I were REALLY color blind it would be. I can eyeball most colors just fine, but the ones I have a hard time with are flesh tones. That’s why I’m so excited about the latest update to Red Giant’s amazing Colorista cool. Because hidden within the interface is a secret weapon that Colorista II inherits from Magic Bullet Mojo called “show skin overlay.” When enabled, it literally lays a grid over your clip’s flesh tones, telling you when you’ve got it right. Here’s how it works.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Earlier this week there was an excellent post from one of the clever guys at dslrhd.com, explaining a technique that can be used to disable automatic gain control (AGC) on a Canon 7d or T2i:

Only problem is, I followed the steps, and it didn’t work for me and my t2i. So I started tinkering. After a bunch of trips to Radio Shack, I figured out how to make it work, and if you got what I got, it’ll work for you too.

So, here’s what I got: a Rode VideoMic and a T2i. I’ve found the VideoMic to be almost useless, because of Canon’s AGC. In fact, the tiny built-in mic on the camera sounds better than the VideoMic, which is ridiculous. Anyway, when I hooked up the VideoMic to the splitter as outlined in the above tip, I got nothing but a lot of static and hiss on the line.

It turns out the problem is because the VideoMic outputs a stereo signal (which doesn’t make very much sense, because it’s a mono mic, but it does). Plugging a stereo jack into a mono jack doesn’t cut it. You need a 1/8″ stereo plug to 1/8″ mono jack adapter (part number 274-882 at Radio Shack). Plug the VideoMic into that, then plug that into the Y described in the video. Bingo, you’ve got audio. Note: for playing the tone from your iPod, you’ll need either a mono 1/8th cable OR another one of the aforementioned stereo to mono adapters plus stereo cable. In the picture above, I’m using a mono cable to connect to the iphone, but these only come in 6′ length at Radio Shack, so I’m going to switch to using a 12″ stereo cable with an adapter to make it more manageable.

The volume slider on my iPhone is what you use to control the sensitivity of your mic (that is, the amount of reduction of the AGC). I find that setting it at 1/3 volume works best for recording someone speaking at a distance of 3-5 feet directly in front of the camera. Sliding the volume up increases the tone and thus reduces the gain, and vice versa. Pretty slick. Using this setup, my Rode VideoMic is finally useful to me.

Gotcha alert: This splitter is just slightly too big to fit in the T2i’s mic jack socket, and as a result, tends to work itself slightly disconnected with normal handling during a shoot. And, since you can’t monitor the sound going into the camera, there’s no way to tell for sure whether it’s come lose, except to physically grab the thing and push it in every so often during shooting. It’s always something with these DSLRs, hey? But in a year or two, when all of these problems are solved in a $2,000 ergonomically-correct, fat-sensor proper video camera body, I got a feeling we’ll remember these days fondly.

To generate the tone: Fire up Final Cut Pro and an empty timeline. Use the Generator > Bars and Tone to generate 20 minutes of something like NTSC bars and tone. Export it. Open it in Quicktime 7. Export again, only this time uncheck video, and choose to save the audio only as an AIF file. Drop that into iTunes. Create a playlist called “film utilities.” Drop it in there, and you’re all set.

Popularity: 100% [?]

The more I use the Zoom H4N, the more I love it and discover new uses for it. My latest find: it can work as an audio interface. I’ve been doing a lot of voiceover work lately, and was on the verge of purchasing a USB audio interface such as the Fastrack so that I could use a quality mic like my Octava MK0-12, to record directly into Soundtrack Pro. The Zoom H4N is supposed to work as a USB audio interface – but it doesn’t. I did a ton of testing, and all the voiceovers I recorded via the USB connection to the Zoom were distorted – not only tonally, but they had weird random snapping and crackling and occasional skipped sections of sound. Very bad. But there’s a workaround…

As I was on the verge of placing an order for the Fastrack, it occurred to me: why not simply use a 3.5mm male-to-male cable (which I already own) and connect the Zoom from its line out to the Mac using the Mac’s 3.5mm input jack? I tried it out, and it works great! That’s about $120 saved, and one less piece of equipment to clutter up my editing table.

Configured like this, the Zoom does not have to itself be recording for this to work – I simply press the record button once (not twice, which would cause it to record onto the sd card), which puts it in standby mode, passing the signal through the line out and into the Mac, which handles the actual recording in Soundtrack.

Soundtrack’s right pane is set as follows (see graphic to right):

Input – set to Built-in Input and Mono selected for voiceover work.

It’s best to leave the monitor set to None, or else you’re likely to have feedback issues while recording.

Finally, arm the track you want to record to, press the record button and away you go.

Popularity: 20% [?]

Recording conversations on an iphone is pretty simple once you know how, but I had to spend a couple days and repeated trips to Radio Shack to figure it out. If you need to make professional recordings of both sides of your conversations, such as for interviews, this approach is a winner.

So here’s what you’ll need:

1. iPhone (with earbuds that have inline mic).
2. Zoom H4N.
3. A professional microphone that uses XLR jack (I used my Octava MK-012).
4. An XLR cable.
5. A 3.5mm jack splitter (part number 42-2570 at Radio Shack).
6. A 3.5mm male to 3.5mm male audio cable (part number 42-2497 at Radio Shack).

The xlr mic is necessary to record your voice; the splitter running from the phone to the Zoom records the voice of the person you’re talking to. (You might think that your voice would be included on the splitter line, since you’re talking on a mic that transmits via that line – but it’s not.

To configure the Zoom, set the recording mode to “4 Channel,” which allows you to record input from the 3.5mm jack on the back AND from the XLR jacks simultaneously. It’s totally professional because your voice and the voice of the person you’re speaking with are recorded onto separate tracks, which is ideal for editing later in Soundtrack Pro and Final Cut. You can control the recording levels independently as well.

NOTE: At first I thought I could get this to work even more simply by using the Zoom H4N’s built-in mics to record my outgoing audio. But the built in stereo mic is disabled when you plug in the 3.5mm external mic jack. Hence, the need to use an XLR mic to pick up your side of the conversation.

In this 30-second test conversation with my wife, which I edited in a very simple Soundtrack Pro multitrack project (see graphic), if you listen very carefully beginning halfway through, you can hear my wife’s voice being picked up by the very sensitive Octava mic from sound bleeding through from the earbuds. I replaced my earbuds partway through with proper Sennheiser 280 Pro circumaural headphones to keep any sound from spilling out, and for that you’ll need a third-party external mic such as the Shure Music Phone adapter. You can hear Lara telling me initially that it sounds like I’m on speaker phone when I’m using the Apple earbuds, but as soon as I hooked up the Shure, she noted a major improvement in sound.  So here’s a snapshot of my final setup for professionally recording iphone interviews, below.

Popularity: 36% [?]

I’m still in the early stages of developing my style as a filmmaker, and one technique that I’m already noticing is becoming part of my style is to record audio and video separately in two takes. That is, have a sit-down with the interview subject in which there are no cameras present – just audio recording. This puts people at ease, because they can focus on what they are saying, not HOW they are saying it, or how they LOOK while saying it. I find it makes for more authenticity, and it’s nice to be able to focus on JUST getting great audio in this pass.

Then I schedule a second session with the subject, in which it’s all about the video. I DO record reference audio with a camera-mounted shotgun mic during this second session, but find I rarely use this audio.

Breaking these steps into two also allows me to do everything: I can run sound the first day with a boom pole, and work the camera the second day. Of course not all shoots allow for the luxury of two days of shooting, and I do work with a great sound guy who is a student at Art Institute of Seattle when needed. But at this point in my career, part of the joy of filmmaking is doing it all. I missed film school, so it’s the only way to learn.

Ok so back to the reason I made this post: Using this approach creates a big long audio file, usually about an hour long, with a lengthy interview, which I then carve up into the much briefer segments needed for the edit. Initially, I would drop the file into Final Cut, and slice and dice until it was about right, before sending it to Sound Track Pro for sweetening and repair.

The problem I run into, though, is that since I’m essentially working on the same big long clip, just sliced into different segments, FCP gets unhappy when I try to send individual clips over to Sound Track for repair.

The solution: Drop the whole audio file into FCP, then immediately, before you do anything, send it to Soundtrack (ctrl-click the audio file, then select “send to > soundtrack pro audio file project”). Then apply a Limiter filter to limit the dynamic range of the entire interview, which means the quiet bits will have more volume and the loud bits won’t be too loud. For the details of how to do this, follow this step-by-step tutorial from Larry Jordan on using the Soundtrack Pro Limiter Filter.

Starting with my audio more or less correct at the beginning of the editing process has helped me immensely to get the rest of the mix right, ie, music at approximately the right level, etc.

Popularity: 17% [?]

Glidetrack arrives from UK in a securely packaged tube

When filming things that don’t move, it’s sometimes nice to set the camera in motion. The opening sequence of my first film Shine, for example, is a tracking shot of a crowd made using on a dolly at Fremont Studios here in Seattle. The smooth motion creates a sense that you are taking the audience on a journey, that the story is beginning to unfold. Since then I’ve had my eye out for a way to achieve this effect that doesn’t require a small army of technicians and a fat bank account.

What's in the tube

So when I read about Glidetrack, I was intrigued. After doing a bunch of research, I ordered one just before Christmas (I like to think of it as a gift to anyone who watches my future films). With FedEx shipping, the only option provided, the total was $355. I also considered a Pegasus Carbon System from Cinevate, but it costs $850 configured the way I wanted it. The difference between $350 and $850 is – for me – the difference between actually making the purchase and thinking about it. Although I’d sure love to get my hands on a Pegasus some day.

The Glidetrack arrived via FedEx in a 4″ diameter tube, into which the Glidetrack was carefully packed for overseas shipping from the UK, where they are made by Alistair Brown. Taking it out of the packaging, it’s immediately clear that this is a really solid, simple device: a 1-meter-long piece of aluminum with some channels for the slider, which is already attached, and holes for mounting it on a tripod.

Assembly is a snap

It’s a snap to put Glidetrack together using the included hex wrench – you simply bolt the end pieces on, and you’re done. The end pieces have soft rubber feet that allow you to use the Glidetrack as a table dolly, or on a nice hardwood floor, without leaving any scratches. The big question in my mind: is it possible to mount the 1-meter long Glidetrack on my tripod from a single point in the middle and have it be stable enough? Or would it require two tripods, one mounted under each end piece?

Good to go

I tested out the Glidetrack by making a short film starring the chandelier in our upstairs media room (which I’ll post later – you can see another film I made with it below). I mounted the Glidetrack on the quick-release plate of my Manfrotto 755XB tripod, which has a 501HD fluid head (which FYI I’m replacing with a 701HD head – the 501 is too heavy for use with this tripod and makes it top heavy). The Glidetrack felt stable once I mounted it to the tripod, although I had to really crank the quick-release far tighter than normal to keep the  Glidetrack from slipping from side to side while using it.

Tip: Use a ball or fluid head

The gliding platform of the Glidetrack contains a standard 1/4″ mount which you could twist your camera onto. But that would mean you’d have to adjust your tripod legs to tilt the lense. Ideally you’d mount a small fluid head on this. I used a Manfrotto ball head, which does the job fine for under $40.

I mounted up my JVC GY HM-100, and tested out the stability by sliding the camera all the way out to the edge of the Glidetrack. It does dip a bit from the weight of the camera, maybe a half inch total. And, I found that my already top-heavy tripod almost began to tip when the camera reached the end of the rail in some angled positions – I think this will improve when I swap in a lighter head.

Tip: use rubber band for silky slow movement

I pushed the camera from one end of the track to the other, and the first thing I noticed was the sound: it’s a noticeable swish, but not loud. The faster you push, the louder it gets. But slowing it down, it’s almost inaudible. This would be a problem if you plan to use a shotgun mic to record audio while you’re filming. But for this type of shot, it’s common to use externally recorded audio or track the shot over music, which is what I did. The small noise factor is a tradeoff I’m willing to make to have such such a small, portable, inexpensive piece of equipment (if quiet operation is of critical importance, check out the Cinevate Pegasus carbon fiber system I mentioned previously).

Now for the fun part. I positioned the tripod and Glidetrack under my chandelier, and took my first shot by starting the camera, then pushing the track from one side to the other. The unit slides easily and uniformly. I noticed, however, that my first movements were not perfectly even, resulting in some very slight jerkiness. So I resorted to a trick I learned for smoothing out tripod pans: using an elastic band to pull the handle rather than by touching it directly. That way, the rubber band absorbs the small jerks and the whole thing moves smoothly. I’m afraid I have shakier than normal hands, so I have to use this technique as standard procedure. Works great.

You can see the results in this short film I made using the Glidecam:

A couple of filmmaker tips I learned while producing this:

1. You can actually do some interesting, crane-like shots with the  Glidecam by turning the tripod head and thus the Glidecam track, while at the same time pulling the slider down the track. However, it’s difficult for one person to manage both with perfect smoothness.

2. To make the unit rock solid, you will want to mount it on two tripods, one under each foot. It’s solid with just the one center mounted, but I had to wait for minor bouncing to subside after moving the camera all the way to the end of the track before starting a new shot. I’m willing to put up with a little instability for the added range of motion and ease of repositioning that comes with using a single tripod.

3. You have to move the camera REALLY SLOW, slower than you think, to produce silky results. You can use the elastic band tip (mentioned above) to accomplish this without jerkiness.

I’m thrilled with the results of my first Glidecam shoot. It’s a tad long for taking everywhere, perhaps why the unit is available in a half-meter length. But I like having the full meter of runway to work with. I also like that Glidecam appears to be an indie product, produced by a guy with a name whose Twitter account I can ping to say: Thank you, Alistair Brown, for a producing a solid, affordable tool that puts smooth tracking shots within easy reach of documentary filmmakers.

Popularity: 81% [?]