We're at a cemetery somewhere in central Alabama. Like many of our HIDE AND CREEP shooting locations, this one could be classified as "the middle of nowhere." And it's cold. So cold I can't feel my feet anymore. Which is bad enough, but one of our actors isn't wearing anything but a T-shirt. No shoes, no pants, just a T-shirt. So I can only imagine what body parts he can't feel anymore.

But he's a trooper, as is the rest of the cast and crew. Other than some lighting issues (the day can't decide whether it wants to be overcast or sunny), we're getting some good shots and moving through the morning's script pages pretty quickly. Until Kenn McCracken, who is recording audio this morning, calls me over. He's having a problem with the DAT audio recorder -- it won't go into "record" mode. We eject the tape, remove the DAT cassette and realize the problem. The recorder has "eaten" the tape. There are a few feet of DAT tape tangled up inside the DAT machine. Apparently, whatever the temperature is at the cemetery, it's below the operating tolerances of our DAT deck.

Kenn doesn't think we missed more than one or two takes of audio. So, instead of taking the time to figure out what audio we're missing, we hope for the best, put a new tape in, and get on to the next shot.

When I finally get around to checking out the day's audio, there are only a few lines of dialogue missing. Wouldn't you know it, 90 percent of the missing dialogue belongs to John Walker, one of our few out-of-town actors. A bit of clarification -- John's lines aren't completely missing -- I have versions of all the dialogue, but it's "off mic," recorded in the background while John ran his lines for other actors. I would get him to re-record the bad dialogue for me, but he's already back in Baltimore.

Dub (First Attempt)

I got lucky with John's bad lines. He happened to be in town on other business a couple of months before HIDE AND CREEP was set to premiere. He was staying at a mutual friend's house, so I took some equipment over and we dubbed his dialogue in the living room of said house.

I've heard pro audio people say that 80 to 90 percent of dialogue in big Hollywood movies is dubbed in after the fact. So it's not surprising that all the HIDE AND CREEP location dialogue wasn't usable. Still, those Hollywood guys have lots of cool equipment in even cooler studios to dub their stuff. Most indie productions aren't so lucky.

On this first dubbing session for HIDE AND CREEP, I had the same microphone and DAT recorder we'd used on the shoot, a DVD-R of the scenes that needed John's dialogue dubbed, a portable DVD player and a set of headphones. The dubbing process was pretty simple. I cued up the scene to be dubbed and let John watch it on the portable DVD player a few times. John practiced saying the lines as he watched, trying to get them as close to the original performance as he could. When he felt comfortable with the lines, I played the scene on DVD yet again, this time while recording John's new performance on the DAT machine (John listened to the DVD via the headphones, so the old performance couldn't be heard on the tape along with the new one).

I tried to watch and listen while John dubbed the lines, to get a feel for how close he was to the original performance. After we got a take we were both happy with, we'd move on to the next set of lines.

When I used Final Cut Pro to place the dubbed lines in with the rest of the audio material, I realized I'd made a mistake. John's lines were matching up with his onscreen movements correctly. However, the scene we were dubbing was shot outside. The dubbed lines were recorded in a large living room and had a different tone -- mainly, a reverb-y sound that doesn't occur outdoors. Even after mixing in the dubbed lines with background sounds from the cemetery, the lines still sounded a little funky.

Dub (Second Attempt)

For the next dubbing session, I tried a different approach. I turned one of the closets in my condo into a sound booth. The closet already had lots of clothes hanging in it, which absorb sound and cut down on the reverb that caused a problem with my first dubbing session. In addition to the clothes, I hung a blanket or two up to cut the reverb even more.

I used the same equipment as the first time, but I found the portable DVD player sounded louder in the smaller space (those discs spin pretty fast). So I covered the loud part of the player with a blanket, too.

Chris Hartsell, Chuck Hartsell and Michael Shelton were the actors for the second dubbing session. After they recorded their lines and I inserted them into the movie, I could hear a definite improvement over that first dubbing session. The lines for outdoor scenes sounded fine right off the bat. The dialogue for indoor scenes was a bit of a problem though, because now it didn't have enough reverb. It was too "dry."

Thank goodness for Final Cut Pro. Aside from the EQ effect I mentioned last time, Final Cut has a nice variety of reverbs with helpful names like "Room (Small)," "Room (Medium)" and "Room (Large)." Playing with the reverb settings, I was able to match the dubbed lines with the location audio without too much trouble.

More EQ

In HIDE AND CREEP, there's a scene where one of the characters is making announcements via a grocery store intercom system. We recorded the actor's dialogue dry -- if we'd actually recorded the sound of the intercom, I was afraid it'd be too muddy to be understood. Returning to Final Cut Pro's audio effects, I was able to make this dialogue sound more like it would if it was coming out over an intercom system.

An intercom, especially one in a grocery store, isn't going to be particularly robust fidelity-wise. A voice heard through such a system usually sounds "tinny" -- the mid-range frequencies are more pronounced, and the low and high frequencies get lost.

So I used a Final Cut EQ to boost the mids (+20db at 6049hz) and cut the lows (-20db at 214hz) and highs (-20db at 9120hz). It sounded pretty good. Given the grocery store's large, echo-y room, I added in some Final Cut reverb, too (Medium Room with a 25% effect mix). I think the end result sounds pretty convincing.

I used the same trick to good effect on some speakerphone conversations, minus the reverb.

Sound Effects

Though it's far from an action movie, there are some action-type sounds in HIDE AND CREEP -- stuff like gunshots, breaking glass and punches to the face. And brain-eating, though I'm not exactly sure what that's even supposed to sound like.

When it's time to add these sounds to a movie, there are two things you can do. To get gunshot sounds, for example, you can either take a portable recorder out to the shooting range or find already-recorded versions of the sounds.

There are all kinds of sound libraries out there, both online and on sets of CDs. Price and quality vary. Since I was short on time, I went with the first library I could find and afford, AudioSparx.com.

For 15 bucks a month, you can download all the sounds you want from AudioSparx. They have thousands of sounds, but I found the quality to vary wildly. Their price is hard to beat, though, so I think it was worth the extra time I spent looking through some of the low-fi stuff for the good sounds.

Hopefully, the next time I make a movie, I'll have time to do more research and find a sound library that's more consistent, quality-wise. If you're looking for a few sounds and are short on time, though, AudioSparx is worth a look.

Foley

When adding sound to a movie in post-production, you can't always get what you need from a pre-fab library. A classic example is an actor walking. You can find footsteps in some sound libraries, but it's often easier to recreate the sound yourself, mimicking the actor's footsteps while you watch the original footage.

This type of sound recording is called "foley." In big-budget movies, it's usually done in a specially-designed studio. For HIDE AND CREEP, I again took a more low-budget approach.

To foley footsteps, for instance, I'd try to find a quiet area in a similar environment. We had quite a few scenes in the woods, with actors walking on pine straw, leaves and sticks. Luckily, it's not too hard to find a quiet place in the woods, at least in rural Alabama.

Using the handy portable DVD player, I'd cue up the scene and walk along with the actor a couple of times, to get used to how fast he walked and any breaks in his walking pattern. Finally, I'd get someone to record my walking sounds with the DAT recorder and boom mic as I watched the DVD player to make sure I stayed in step.

We did quite a bit of foley for HIDE AND CREEP. Art director Mike Benson and I re-enacted a fight between one of our movie's heroes and a zombie in my parents' living room for foley. For that one, we played the DVD on my dad's big-screen TV. There was lots of walking in the woods. We recorded some vehicle sounds -- driving, stopping, doors opening and closing. I wouldn't be surprised if we end up doing a little more foley work at some point, to fill in the few remaining holes in the HIDE AND CREEP soundtrack.

If you'd like to read more about professional foley, there's a nice little primer at www.marblehead.net/foley.

Congratulations to Bruce Page, winner of the first "This Movie Ain't Gonna Shoot Itself" contest/lottery! Bruce will receive an advance copy of HIDE AND CREEP, plus a DVD of a better-known low-budget flick (Bruce's choice). Thanks to everyone who wrote in -- I hope to forward some of the letters to Mr. Ryall for inclusion in a future edition of "Mail Shoot."

If any of you guys have questions about film audio on a budget, or any other indie filmmaking topics, please send them my way. And please stop by again in two weeks for Part Seventeen.

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