dialogue placement in surround mix

[lexaudio]

Originally Posted by mr.armadillo

Reverb: Almost every mix I heard lately.
Panning: From the top of my head, check out "District 9" or "Scott Pilgrim". Very nice track on both of those.
Spreading accross LCR: "True Grit".

I understand that. I was speaking in terms of all the time.
When I'm in a church, I put it all around.

It sounded like the OP was saying that he had dialog up the center, reverb mostly left and right.

Drifting into the CR. Center to LCR.

Whatever sounds best.

[minister]

Originally Posted by MIKEROPHONICS

specs specs specs...... mix to your specs

In film film film there are very few specs specs specs. And certainly none about dx dx dx. You are coming from tv tv tv.


The question is, does it sound good? Did it play well in the theater? Was the director happy? Then the next questions are, what is the QC for? Is it because it will now be broadcast? Will there be down mixes? Did you create an LtRt? Did your liberal treatment of the dialogue survive this? In my experience, spreading the dialogue such as you did does not sound all that great and does not survive downmixes very well. Where did you mix this? Were there guidelines for the Distribution QC delivery??

And once you can answer those, I have to say that most of these QC departements exist to create another opportunity to QC and submit another invoice. They look for the most abstruse reason to kick something back!! Hey there is a click in the mix. Rejected. No, those are footsteps and lighter sounds (that were not clicky and sounded full and phat). Abrupt music level change. Rejected. Hunh? The character is leaving the scene and the dialogue ended and this motivates him to go on his way. (I actually received that note and we had to tel;l them that this was none of their business.) You can push back and tell them that this was an artistic choice. As long as it doesn't bite you in the tuchus with any downstream reconfiguring of the mix (e.g. to stereo, or even mono on someones under cupboard TV in the kitchen). The tricky part becomes when the Distributor does not understand technically what is going on and merely relies on "trusting" their QC department....

[duckandcover]

Originally Posted by lexaudio

I understand that. I was speaking in terms of all the time.
When I'm in a church, I put it all around.

It sounded like the OP was saying that he had dialog up the center, reverb mostly left and right.

Drifting into the CR. Center to LCR.

Whatever sounds best.

I had the dialogue stem's "center %" set to 80% so it's mostly in the center channel but also spread across in the L/R. In the reverb scene, I had some dialogue reverb panned to the surrounds, it was a scene in a big church so I did it to add space. and to be clear, this is for DVD release, not for full cinema release

when ask for confirmation of the issue, the QC guy basically gave me the "trust me, I've been doing this for 20 year." line and told me to stick to the center chan or have the director cite artistic choice.

[lexaudio]

Originally Posted by duckandcover

I had the dialogue stem's "center %" set to 80% so it's mostly in the center channel but also spread across in the L/R. In the reverb scene, I had some dialogue reverb panned to the surrounds, it was a scene in a big church so I did it to add space. and to be clear, this is for DVD release, not for full cinema release

when ask for confirmation of the issue, the QC guy basically gave me the "trust me, I've been doing this for 20 year." line and told me to stick to the center chan or have the director cite artistic choice.

I don't see anything wrong with that. I thought you meant you had the dialog up the center, dry with production verb and your reverb panned more L/R.

For the church, I assume you are panning some of the verb back in the rears, while retaining it in the front as well.

As far as the QC guy goes. I don't care if he is the God of QC.
Your are the mixer, you are on the stage with the client. Panning choices, reverb choices are your job. Not his.

Next time tell him, you don't come down there to tell him how to do his job so don't tell me how to do mine.

There are decent QC people, and ones who want to put their own "artistic" stamp on your work.

Tell him where he can go.

[lylesdonald]

QC people are the worst sometimes! Their job is to find technical problems like phase issues, ticks, distortion, out of sync dialogue and FX(although if the director wants out of sync dialogue or FX, QC can do nothing about it)etc.PERIOD! It has just gone WAY TO far lately. They cannot tell you how to pan or how you SHOULD be panning. They are not the mixer, you are. Whenever I had QC issues I would sick the Post Supervisor on them when I had to. Hopefully you have a Post Super, if not you just have to deal with them yourself and possibly get the director involved. QC for the most part is a money grab. OK, I'm done with my rant. Sorry guys.

[dr sound]

Everyone here is assuming that the OP's mix is good. I am not a big fan of spreading out the dialog. It doesn't sound good to me. No one here has heard the fold down to see if there are any issues. My opinion is down the center until you have a lot of experience behind you and then only on occasion.

[minister]

Originally Posted by dr sound

Everyone here is assuming that the OP's mix is good.

Not everyone. I questioned him on the down mix. And I also said in my experience, the sound of this is not to my liking, especially once I starting mixing in a larger room and getting an idea of the imaging. But this artistic choice is not ours in this case. But I would be surprised if it down mixed to LtRt and decoded successfully.

[duckandcover]

Hey, Marti, Tom,

thanks for your inputs. I will have to take a closer look/listen to what spreading the dia is doing to the mix.

[lylesdonald]

Originally Posted by dr sound

Everyone here is assuming that the OP's mix is good. I am not a big fan of spreading out the dialog. It doesn't sound good to me. No one here has heard the fold down to see if there are any issues. My opinion is down the center until you have a lot of experience behind you and then only on occasion.

I agree with you 100% Marti. My old mixing partner(you probably know him Marti) Stan Kastner would never pan dialogue(besides some group ADR) unless it was absolutely necessary. All I was saying is that some QC people can take it a little to far.

[Charles D. Ballard]

Originally Posted by minister

And once you can answer those, I have to say that most of these QC departements exist to create another opportunity to QC and submit another invoice. They look for the most abstruse reason to kick something back!! Hey there is a click in the mix. Rejected. No, those are footsteps and lighter sounds (that were not clicky and sounded full and phat). Abrupt music level change. Rejected. Hunh? The character is leaving the scene and the dialogue ended and this motivates him to go on his way. (I actually received that note and we had to tel;l them that this was none of their business.) You can push back and tell them that this was an artistic choice. As long as it doesn't bite you in the tuchus with any downstream reconfiguring of the mix (e.g. to stereo, or even mono on someones under cupboard TV in the kitchen). The tricky part becomes when the Distributor does not understand technically what is going on and merely relies on "trusting" their QC department....

Amen and LOL! I've often wondered if the people in QC are actually watching the film. My favorite was once I had "Missing sound effect at 01:...." When we checked it out, it was when the character ran out of bullets and you could only hear the "click" from the empty gun.