The Mixing of my Horror Sound Replacement

Hey guys! As promised! Here is my second mix blog for the day! For this blog I'll be taking you through my first time ever mixing audio to picture! Lets jump in!

Mix Window in Pro Tools - Screenshot taken 21/8/18

Wait, Levels isn't using Ableton?! What on earth? I know guys, unfortunately this time around Pro Tools won as its capabilities in editing audio to video is unreal, it seems to be good at everything else that I don't use it for.

Stereo recordings

So before I jump into the more specific panning of the mono tracks in the mix I'd like to quickly touch on the stereo files that really build the atmosphere in this clip!

Ambience

Coming in first we have the deep, dark ambience which makes several appearances throughout the clip to build tension towards the climax. Looking back now, I'm really glad that this was recorded in stereo as it is really wide in the mix when played back and suites the feel of the clip perfectly! However, it was a very hot recording, especially after being processed so Richard and I took precautionary measures for the final bounce and reduced the gain on both the clip and on the track's individual fader. The placing and balancing for this one in particular was rather tedious as it needed to be faded in and out at very specific time to cause tension and suspense in certain scenes. At first, we simply had a long clip of this running for a rather significant amount of time but we came to realise that it didn't suit the feel when the lights in the clip were turned back on. To fix this, we simply had to chop the crap the entire clip and place it only when the lights were off to draw in the horror sort of feel we were going for.

Bed sounds - entrance, creeks + room atmos

Nearing the end of the clip is the bedroom scene, a lot of samples recorded in the field with a Zoom H4n recorder were used to set the environment and feel of the room. These were also stereo recordings and just like the ambience, they were rather wide. However, unlike the ambience which was a fairly thick sound with a lot of body, these room recordings were thin so even though they were wide, there was close to no low end. This made it very easy to balance them with the ambience using minimal EQ.

Panning of mono tracks

This is where it gets a bit strange. For the most part, panning for an audio to video project is rather easy as it is mostly light panning based on the direction of which the desired track is featured in the film. However, I decided I was going to get creative and pan things in random directions for some parts and create a "unique" stereo experience. Needless to say, it just wound up sounding awkward, the fact that the gain on different tracks was rather different as well did not assist in this either. As you can see in the screenshot above, going from the beginning to the ending of the track, the panning progressively travels from left to right. This isn't intentional, its just that a lot more of the action towards the end of the clip was either smack bang in the centre or based more towards the right hand side of the mix.

Overall

As I've said before, this project was incredibly fun to make and was actually rather interesting to mix. In the end however, my EDM mind got the best of me and I wound up experimenting with things that really should have just sat in their place. I honestly believe I overthought it a little bit because looking back, mixing this video was actually a rather basic task. Until next time!

Levels :)