Category: Benchmarking

 

Tuesday 13th December 

RX Insight Research – Benchmarking for Broadcast Standards

As well as having the RX Advanced Audio Editor, the university also have the Post Production Suite bundle. This includes Insight, Loudness Control and Final mix. Grant Bridgeman has attended the university several times, and on one of these occasions he critiqued our work. He suggested using the Insight plug-in to help improve our sound. To refresh my memory with this plug-in, as we used it for our final year project, I watched a couple of iZotope guides.

The first, Insight Overview, illustrated the basic features of Insight, the five customizable partitions including: Levels, Loudness History Graph, Sound Field, Spectogram and Spectrum Anayser.

The second was more detailed and explained broadcast standards further. The Loudness History Graph appeared most important when adhering to Broadcast Standards. The graph illustrated Momentary Loudness (loudness over last 400 milliseconds), Short Term Loudness (loudness over the last 3 seconds) and the Integrated Loudness (loudness over the complete duration of the program). As well as this there are numerical indications of the Integrated Loudness (displayed as Loudness Unit referenced to Full Scale-LUFS), Short Term, Maximum Momentary Loudness, and Loudness Range. The larger the number in the range, the greater dynamic range. There is also a true peak meter situated within Insight.

To refresh my memory with Broadcast Standards, I headed to R128Audio.com, which had a neat guide explaining the standards. European broadcast standards must adhere to EBU R128 (the European Broadcasting Union Recommendation of August 2011). EBU R128 “is a set of rules regarding loudness normalisation and permitted maximum level of audio signals during broadcast”. To find out what these rules were, I found TCElectronic’s page detailing the standards. The most important for our film to meet is the Target Loudness of -23 LUFS. This is the standard chosen after conducting the EBU experiments to best suit the needs of broadcast. Therefore, when we are in the Final Mix stage for Cognition, we will make sure we adhere to this broadcast standard, and not exceed -23 LUFS, this is the benchmark we will work too.

I believe this additional practical research throughout the semester is greatly helping towards meeting my learning outcome of working with and gaining experience editing dialogue with RX. From being not very confident before this semester, I now feel competent with the Advanced Audio Editor, and plug in Insight, which has improved my cleaning and editing skills, as well as final mix levels – meeting the broadcast standards.

References List

iZotope (2012) Insight Overview. [online] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCSjR9XVC8M. [Accessed 13 Dec 2016].

iZotope (2014) Loudness Compliant Metering. [online] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HDjsLR6YhY&t=99s. [Accessed 13 Dec 2016].

Unknown (2012) Video and Audio Solutions for Broadcast: What is R128? [online] Available from http://www.r128audio.com. [Accessed 13 Dec 2016].

Unknown (2015) Broadcast Standards. [online] Available from http://www.tcelectronic.com/loudness/broadcast-standards/. [Accessed 13 Dec 2016].

 

Thursday 1st December 

Benchmarking

When working on the dialogue edit, I needed a professional benchmark to compare my work to, and aim for it to sound similar. The film I chose was Zodiac (David Fincher, 2007), starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr. and Mark Ruffalo among others.

The particular scene occurs inside a basement, as was ours when originally planned, with the action following two characters conversing. I found the scene on YouTube and will embed it below.

I chose this scene for my benchmark because the reverb on the dialogue sounds excellent. The reverb illustrates the space of the basement, as well as the emptiness and hard-surfaced nature of the walls and structures, giving it a cold, tense atmosphere. I aim on creating a reverb which is somewhat similar, while portraying a smaller room (as Cognition is set in an attic), but with equal technique to illustrate the size and space in the room.

One of the dialogue editors for this film is Malcolm Fife, who has won two Golden Reel Awards. One for Best Sound Editing – Dialogue and ADR in a Feature Film for The Social Network (2010), which was also directed by David Fincher. The other for Best Sound Editing – Sound Effects, Foley, Dialogue and ADR in an Animation Feature Film for Inside Out (Pete Doctor and Ronnie Del Carmen, 2015).

 

The scene starts at 1.10 during the clip below:

 

I had originally planned to use Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999) as my benchmark, as there as several scenes in the basement of the bar where Fight Club takes place. These scenes offer outstanding dialogue reverb, most notably during Tyler Durden (Brad Pitts)’s speeches. This is perhaps what I would have used if we would have filmed in a basement, as the space would be larger and give me the ability to replicate this through creative reverb. Interestingly enough, Malcolm Fife also worked on this film, and was nominated for Best Sound Editing – Effects and Foley for Fight Club.

 

Reference List

Fincher, D. (dir.) (1999) Fight Club. [film] London: 20^th Century Fox.

Fincher, D. (dir.) (2007) Zodiac. [film] London: Warner Bros.

TBSmedia (2015) Zodiac Analysis – Inside the Basement. [online] Availabe from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af78yVw_O9c. [Accessed 13 Dec 2016].