Re: OT: final mixing and mastering of film score....hints?

[andy butler <akbutler@tiscali.co.uk>]

mark francombe wrote:

> The next process (that I am terrible at... always use to use an engineer 
> for) is mixing.. I really want to make all the music sit well together, 
> I expect that the Film Director will drop the music VERY low in the mix 
> ofr my tastes, and often what tends to happen with my mixes, is that one 
> hears ONE instrument stick out above the films mix. 

Check the mix at very low volume, ..even walk out of the room.
That's a pretty standard trick.

...and why not just try mixing it low under the dialog
   

> Reverb?? I usually like to use as few different reverbs as possible, 
> just one short one, for increasing the size of instruments, and one Hall 
> reverb to emulate that all the instruments are in the same room. Is this 
> the right approach?

I never mixed for vid, but I assume there's a "rule" to make
sure the reverb on the music isn't shorter than that on the dialog,
or overly inappropriate to the location of the scene.

> Any other tips of tricks.. ( feel like theres a  professionals trick Im 
> missing here) Like someone with say " Well Mark, you HAVE cut the whole 
> mix at 1k havent you? and boosted the Sub?

watch out for sub frequencies below the range of your monitors

> The final job is to score music ontop of a song that an actress sang 
> live on set... yikes.. no click track 

and no reference pitch?

yike...good luck with that

andy