Mixing Research

When it comes to final mixing our films, I am in charge of completing the final of Remember. As such, I have done some research into mixing for film, as well as some of the standards that films ought to be mixed to.

As of late 2010, European broadcasters are beginning to encourage the EBU R 128 recommendation, which stands a chance of becoming a de-facto standard for Europe. France and some other countries have started using R 128 since Jan 1st 2012.

R128 is creeping its way up to becoming the absolute standard for mixing. It involves making sure that you normalise your audio to -23 LUFS. R128 measures an average loudness of the entirety of the audio, meaning that whilst you should try and maintain a consistent level all the way through, you do have room for quieter sections and louder sections, meaning you don’t have to completely squash all of the dynamic range out of your audio. Remember has some quite loud sections, particularly its street scene, where there is a lot of shouting, however since most of the film is set in a hospital, the characters tend to speak in quite hushed tones. Whilst it’s easy to turn up the quiet bits, and turn down the louder bits, this makes the film feel very unbalanced as we are constantly hopping back and forth between the hospital location and the other flashback locations.

When it comes to final mixing, I want to attempt to comply with R128, however for the sake of this audio project, it is not absolutely essential. As long as the audio is balanced, isn’t peaking and hits around -3db throughout I will be happy.

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