How Do I Prepare My Indie Feature for a Surround Sound Mix?

If your independent feature is approaching the end of picture editorial and you know you’ll need a surround mix, it’s worth thinking about the sound workflow before you get to the mixing stage.

One of the most important things to understand is that a surround soundtrack is built during sound editorial as well as during the final mix.

The re-recording mixer determines how the elements of the soundtrack work together and how they’re presented in the final format. But the mixer also needs the right elements to work with.

If your sound effects and backgrounds were created primarily during the picture edit, some additional sound editorial may be necessary before the film is ready for its final surround mix.

Here’s what that means in practice.

Start with what you already have

Picture editors often do a substantial amount of sound work while cutting a film.

They add backgrounds, find sound effects, build transitions, place temporary sound design and sometimes create surprisingly elaborate sequences.

That work is valuable.

It tells the sound team what the filmmaker has been hearing throughout the edit and establishes creative intentions that shouldn’t disappear simply because the film has moved into sound post.

The first step isn’t to throw that work away.

It’s to determine which elements can carry into the final soundtrack and what needs to be expanded for the final format.

Surround sound starts before the mix

Consider a simple exterior scene on a residential street.

During picture editorial, the editor may have found a stereo suburban background containing distant traffic, birds and some wind.

In the picture edit, it works perfectly.

For the final surround soundtrack, however, we now have speakers around the audience.

The original stereo background can remain part of the scene, but we may want additional independent elements to build the environment around the listener.

Perhaps there’s another layer of distant traffic.

Birds or insects can exist behind the audience.

A dog might occasionally be heard several houses away.

Wind can move through trees outside the frame.

None of these sounds necessarily needs to be prominent. The audience may never consciously notice them.

Together, they create the feeling that the location continues beyond the screen.

Finding and editing those additional elements is part of sound-effects editorial and sound design.

The final mix then determines how all of those elements should work together in the surround environment.

Think in layers rather than channels

Preparing sound for surround doesn’t mean deciding during editorial that a particular sound belongs in the left surround speaker.

That’s ultimately a mixing decision.

What’s more useful is providing the mixer with independent layers that can be treated separately.

For example, instead of one stereo city recording containing everything, the sound edit might contain separate elements for:

• general city ambience
• traffic
• pedestrian activity
• distant horns and sirens
• construction
• wind
• specific vehicles or pass-bys

The mixer now has choices.

Some elements might remain toward the screen. Others might surround the audience. A particular vehicle could move through the room. A distant siren might establish depth without drawing attention away from the dialogue.

The editorial creates the possibilities.

The mix makes the decisions.

Backgrounds are especially important

Backgrounds—or BGs—are one of the major tools used to establish a film’s sense of place.

An interior restaurant isn’t simply “restaurant noise.”

There may be room tone, multiple areas of crowd activity, kitchen sounds, dishes and silverware, HVAC, exterior traffic through windows and other details.

A forest isn’t simply “forest ambience.”

Wind, foliage, insects, birds and other wildlife can exist as separate layers.

A house may have different tones for individual rooms, activity elsewhere in the building, appliances, exterior sounds through windows and subtle details that establish the physical space.

In stereo, a carefully selected recording can sometimes accomplish much of this on its own.

In surround, independent layers give the re-recording mixer the ability to extend that environment around the audience.

Sound effects benefit from the same preparation

Specific effects also benefit from being kept independent when they may need perspective or movement.

Imagine a car approaching from ahead of the characters, passing them and continuing behind the camera.

An isolated vehicle recording gives the mixer the ability to create that movement.

If the vehicle is embedded inside a stereo background along with traffic, wind and birds, there is much less control over its perspective.

Doors, crowds, machinery, aircraft, trains, weather and other effects can all present similar situations.

You don’t need to predict every pan during sound editorial.

You simply want to avoid combining elements that the mixer may later need to control independently.

Dialogue needs its own preparation

Surround preparation isn’t only about effects.

Production dialogue needs to be edited and prepared before the final mix as well.

That can include choosing between microphones or takes, reducing unwanted noise, repairing individual problems, smoothing edits, rebuilding room tone and maintaining consistent perspective between shots.

The goal is to arrive at the re-recording mix with dialogue that can be mixed as a performance, rather than spending the final mix solving editorial problems line by line.

The same principle applies across the soundtrack:

Editorial builds and prepares the material. Mixing determines how that material works together.

What should I deliver from the picture edit?

If your picture editor has already done sound work, preserve it.

Don’t assume that temporary effects or backgrounds should be removed before turnover.

The sound team generally wants to hear what you’ve been living with.

Those elements communicate creative decisions: this transition should feel aggressive, this room should feel uncomfortable, this moment should become quiet, this particular sound is important to the story.

Your sound team can then determine what should be retained, replaced, rebuilt or expanded.

It’s much easier to evaluate an existing idea than to discover after the final mix that an important part of the picture editor’s intent disappeared during turnover.

Does my existing sound edit need additional work?

Maybe.

If your film has already gone through dedicated sound-effects editorial with the final surround format in mind, it may be ready to move directly toward the mix.

If most of the sound work was created during picture editorial, the sound team may recommend additional backgrounds, effects, Foley or sound design before mixing.

That’s normal.

Picture editorial and sound editorial are solving different problems.

The picture editor needs the soundtrack to support the evolving cut.

The sound team is preparing the soundtrack for its final presentation.

On independent films, those stages sometimes overlap considerably. The important thing is simply to evaluate what’s there rather than making assumptions based on the number of tracks in the timeline.

Who does this work on an independent feature?

On a large feature, the process may be divided among supervising sound editors, dialogue editors, effects editors, Foley teams, sound designers and re-recording mixers.

Independent films generally consolidate those roles.

One person may handle dialogue editorial and mixing. Another may concentrate on effects and backgrounds. Or a small team may divide the film according to schedule, experience and the particular needs of the project.

At BDS, the exact structure depends on the film.

Sometimes I’m receiving a professionally prepared sound edit and primarily working as the re-recording mixer.

Other times I’m brought in earlier and the project requires dialogue editorial, additional sound-effects work, sound design and then the final mix.

What matters is identifying the actual state of the soundtrack and building the appropriate workflow from there.

The best time to ask is before the mix

If you know your independent feature will need a surround master, you don’t need to become an expert in surround mixing before hiring your sound team.

You also don’t need your picture editor to build a professional 5.1 sound edit.

What helps most is simply involving whoever will supervise or mix the final soundtrack early enough to look at what you have.

They can tell you what is already usable, what additional editorial may be required and how the existing sound work should be turned over.

That allows the sound-effects edit, dialogue editorial and final mix to be treated as parts of the same process rather than separate problems discovered at the end.

Because ultimately, preparing a film for surround isn’t about putting sounds into six speakers.

It’s about building enough independent, useful material that the final mix has a world to work with.