Sound Mixing The Perfect Date…

The sound mixing of "The Perfect Date" took place on Sunday 18th November 2007 at the BBC studios in Bristol. Sound Mixer David Cherry took on the job of finishing the final mix as a favour to the Director and the ITV West Television Workshop. Dave has extensive experience of sound dubbing spending his days mixing Casualty, Channel 4's Skins and natural history programmes. Before Dave started the mix in the studio, a "track laying" session was planned to get the audio tracks ready and in place for the final mix. The sound files and their order in the film were taken from the OMFI files exported from the Avid edit and are then imported into the mixing session. The sound mixer can then use these sounds and add more to them to complete the finished film. Background atmospheres and "room ambience" are added to scenes to create a more realistic soundscape to the film. People talking and moving in the interior of the school scenes, traffic noises, bird song over the opening breakfast scene, and rain fall on the finale all to open up the film and make things sound more real.

David Cherry mixes
the opening of the film
Spot effects are also added where needed. Mobile phones, beeping and ringing. Doors knocking, and slamming. Even some foley was required to bring some shots alive. Foleys are noises such as footsteps, chairs creaking, any kind of reaction sounds that might not have been caught on the microphone or that may wish to be added after. In addition to adding sounds, sometimes the mixer needs to remove unwanted ones. Microphone rumbles, or pops and hisses. People talking or other unwanted noises that may distract or even ruin a scene. These sounds need to be removed and then the "hole" that has been left then needs to be filled with a wildtrack or a sample clip from within the same scene to make everything sound normal again.

Balancing the dialogue
against the rain sound effects
Once all the atmospheres have been added, these need to be mixed with the dialogue and music also present. Making sure people are still heard and dialogue isn't drowned out by music and all the legal sound levels for possible broadcast are monitored. Fading music up subtly and finding the right place to start that music for maximum effect to support the narrative of the film are all considered. A piece might work well within the scene when it stands alone but matched along side other scenes with similar music may make a difference overall. Once finished and the final viewing of the film is over and everyone is happy, any last minute changes are made before laying the new sound mix over the final edited film played out from the on-line edit suite.

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