Orchestral mixing

[raywong]

hi,
I am a film composer. I have scored 20+ movies, mostly orchestral. I'd been composing, arranging and mixing them on the synths and a 32tk mixer and just outputing directly to a DAT. I can score a movie in a week, but I don't know anything about mixing.
Recently, I just switched to multi trk recording(PT/Digi001) and now realize what I've been missing. It made a huge different to the surround mix just by seperating the music into strings, brass, winds and percussion. And I can use different size reverb on different tracks now.
Want to share what you know about mixing for orchestra or mixing for Dolby Surround?

[Mr T]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<HR> I can score a movie in a week, but I don't know anything about mixing(...)Want to share what you know about mixing for orchestra or mixing for Dolby Surround? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Mixing music or sound is indeed a craft.
That's what a sound engineer does.
That's what most of us on this forum do.
That's what I do as a living.
And you're telling us, being a movie composer, you'd have the opportunity to work with a sound engineer but you don't. Instead of giving work to someone qualified, you'd rather do this by yourself, though you "don't know anything about mixing". And you want us to help you with some tips about mixing...
I think you're kind of pushing it there !!...
Sorry if I sound a little mad on that reply, but it took me 10 years to learn what I know, so : #1/ I would probably cause a complete information overload of this forum by sharing 10 years of experience with you...
(since mixing is not about "tips")
#2/ even if that was possible, no I don't think I would...

Sorry if I'm being tuff on you man, you probably don't mean no arm, but you kind of remind of a behaviour which is getting more and more usual in post prod these days..."Why should we need a mixer, can't we mix this in AVID?". "A sound designer to create the sounds we need?...Noooo, I don't think this is necessary, we'll just ask the mixer to find those sounds for us!.." etc, etc...
I know you'll probably answer me that the people you're composing for are on a low budget...Well, that's what they all say ! Even the biggest network !
If they don't have the money to mix movies or music in a proper way, tell them to make mute movies, it's even cheaper!!!!
[img]images/icons/shocked.gif[/img]

[raywong]

MR.T,
In Hong Kong, we do make mostly low budget movies. Another problem is time, I usually get the film a week before the premiere, I had to compose, arrange, perform and record everything...
I wish the guy at the studio can spend time mixing my music, but he gets only 3 days to mix the dialog, folly, music, effect...
thanks anyways for your advise.

[Mr T]

Sounds more like a marathon to me!...
Too bad you don't get more time, this is a precious thing in the mixing (and artistic) process.
Good Luck! [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[Peter at Ransom Recording]

With that kind of demand you will need to use templates and I think that its then very easy to get quick mixes. If you always put the same instruments (or same sounding instruments) to the same tracks, eg. strings to tracks 1-4, then you will instinctively know where your sounds are. Thats always been so but PT is really good at session management and its worth playing around with this.
Peter