Re: playing outdoors

In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, The Devil's
Interval <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> The director says that if she is unhappy with the sound of any of the
> footage they use we can re-record it in the park at a later time and they
> can over-dub the new sound (it must be done in the park as opposed to a
> studio to keep the genuine street sound.)

Karen-

Glad to hear things turned out okay with your daughter's outdoor
performance. Sounds like you and her did the smart thing. 

I surely don't wish to second-guess her director, but we have often
done outdoor shoots with indoor mixes substituted for the film
soundtrack. The studio acoustics can be manipulated easily by the sound
engineer to a suitable realistic ambience with eq, digital delay and
other effects. 

The real trick is that we also record 'wild sound' at the scene
outdoors of just location background noise (traffic, wind, dogs barking
or whatever) and then we tastefully and subtly track that sound back
into the background of the final mix. Most folks wouldn't believe that
the final results were not recorded on-site.

We have also produced 'live performance' audio-only projects where we
needed a track or two from another performance at a later date to fill
out an album. In this scenario, we take several minutes of non-musical
background sound between numbers from the original performance location
and save that audio as a precaution. 

If the mix from the subsequent 'live' recording(s) doesn't match the
ambience of the main live session, we can get a near perfect seamless
match by tracking in the saved background ambience with the new
material.

So, if your daughter feels she needs to redo her performance, it seems
it might just as easily be done in a studio and tweaked with effects
and added ambient sound from the location. One good sound engineer
works cheaper than a whole location sound crew. :)

-Turloch