CRAFT HIGH-END TELEVISION
POST
SAM CASTLETON
The vast majority of the complications of Atmos will be dealt with by the post facility. You may want to think about using mics that can capture 360 audio but that’s content dependent. This would be great, for example, on a natural history project.
I stick to what I always advise and that’s to simply think about audio and be more audio conscious. Listen to what’s making sound on location and get shots of that source. For scripted content, you need to be more proactive with this approach. Once you have this material, you can explore sonic possibilities in the offline and begin to build the foundations of a successful Atmos mix.
It’s always hugely beneficial to engage with your post sound team before the shoot and even more so for Dolby Atmos content. They are experts in sound storytelling and will give you inspiration and new ideas you may not have considered.
The RMU workflow makes the setup and delivery exports more
cumbersome. Your mixer will have to work a bit harder and also check the mix is still impactful in the extra fold down formats (e.g. 5.1 and stereo). Every project will be different and it also depends on the broadcaster/ streamer requirements, but I would recommend giving the mixer and director at least an extra day in the mix and an extra day for the mixer to run through all the exports and deliverables.
The oversight some people have is that Dolby Atmos simply covers physical overhead sounds but that is just one element. Firstly there is a difference between what we hear above us in the real world and what would be panned to the ceiling in Dolby Atmos, a simple camera tilt down for example changes the onscreen perspective and thus any sound orientation. Now take into consideration complex one shot movements, the rise of drone shots, CGI etc and the world is your oyster. Shots underwater? In space? Any environment without a horizontal plane is begging for Dolby Atmos. Complex fight scene, chase,
Dubbing Mixer, Halo The Surgeon’s Cut, Sunderland Till I Die, America: Our Defining Hours, The World According to Jeff Goldblum
battle, riot? The extra sound field gives separation and can allow us to orientate the audience more. But still that is just the physical panning. The most exciting part is how to use it creatively, you can use it to disorientate the audience as they did in Gravity, to make things sound more ominous and overbearing. On The Surgeon’s Cut, we slid our ethereal sound design up to make it sound like it was ascending to the heavens. We pinged some dialogue delays and reverbs up to make certain sections sound otherworldly. But we are still in the relatively early days of Dolby Atmos, there will be many more exciting ways to use it.
Dolby have tried to make downmixes as seamless as possible and it certainly does a decent job. The all-in-one metadata package is a big selling point for them, but it isn’t perfect yet. I feel the RMU needs more fold down controls, some mixers like myself will take the rerenders into a new session or third-party software for more control. I know some mixers and clients that have worked with the 5.1 output first, then upmixed to Dolby Atmos. But we are talking fine margins here. Regardless of which way you work or how much Dolby improve this, your mixer will always need to check the downmixes for any minor differences.
Spring 2021
televisual.com 95
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