Starting from the script, director’s vision, voice, sound effects to silence, every soundtrack is designed in such a way that the story telling happens seamlessly.

After going through the written script, I make notes to prepare a sound script and discuss the same with the director. Then according to the requirements, the script is updated and a budget is estimated. 

But usually instead of script, I get a first cut of the project to start the work with. 

The sound edit session consists of Foley sound effects, recorded ambiance, production sound effects (sync sound) and other sounds from various sound effect libraries.

In this, Foley sound effects are recorded with the help of a Foley artist performing in a studio, sounds are then perfectly edited and synced with the visuals.

Additional Foley sound effects are created using a sound design tool called Reformer Pro when required.

I do record ambient/sound effects from the location before or after the shoot for every project as it sets a space and adds more realism to the soundtrack. Sound editing is done by placing all these sounds along with other sound effects from the library. Once it's done, a reference of the same is sent to the music composer, the same way I’ll get a reference from the music team as well. Then the session is updated according to the pitch and rhythm of the background score to bring harmony and cohesiveness.

Pre-mix of dialogues, music and sound is done before the final mix stage. In a sync (location) sound project, the dialogues need to be cleaned, ambience-matched with the help of industry standard tools like iZotope RX. The files are then imported into the session and tracks from lapel and boom mics are aligned in phase, along with production effects in separate tracks.

For a dubbed voice, the treatment will be different to match with the context of the mix. Dialogues are then balanced, panned, equalised and processed to go with every other element in the mix.

The same way, music and sound pre-mixes are done in a way that matches with the feel and perspective.

In the final mix stage, focus is more on the way the story develops and the totality of the experience. The dialogues are balanced with sound effects, then balanced with music preserving intelligibility of voice as it is the integral part of storytelling. Music and sound effects will have variations according to the scenes but most of the time, music is the second most important part of the mix as it brings emotion and sets the genre. The final mix is done according to the director’s vision and creativity where the sound goes hiding behind the screen finally as it gets transformed into the picture itself and the film comes to life.

Music mixing involves combining multi-tracks or stems by balancing volume, changing pan to arrange sounds in stereo panorama, application of various effects processors in a way that produces the right emotion and production feel. 

As a starting point, the music producer/artist will send a rough mixed track for reference to estimate the budget for the work. Upon receiving the tracks for mixing, I do a mix preparation going through all the tracks one by one, arrange, name and colour code them, insert markers or create regions for sections in the composition to make it easy to navigate through the session during the mix stage. If the recording of the tracks received is of poor quality, the tracks are cleaned without losing timbre using industry standard tools like iZotope RX, noise reduction plugins designed by Cedar Audio, Waves Audio, etc. The mix prep includes editing the recordings to remove noise, tuning the voices in pitch if required using the industry standard pitch correction tool Melodyne or with Autotune if that’s the desired sound. Finally the tracks are organised in folder tracks.

In the beginning stage and during the mix preparation, I spend good time talking to the music composer to understand the journey of the composition, the core idea behind the music piece, reference tracks by other artists if any, etc to set the perspective and build my vision on the mix which will stay core to the process apart from all the technicalities. Sometimes, composers talk very little about the sound in their heads, at times some might reach their saturation points going clueless about the direction, sometimes they give descriptions like warm, soft, mellow, bright, dark, crunchy, punchy, airy etc that bring colours to my vision on the mix. So, I find good communication is an essential part in doing great mixes with less number of revisions. The more clarity we have, the easier it becomes to do the mix.

The technical/engineering part of the audio mixing doesn’t have a specific order of operations to it. But I do follow a basic workflow. Listening to the rough mix (if there is one) thoroughly is the first thing of all, which I won’t be doing during the mix preparation. After that, gain-stage the tracks by adjusting the clip gain levels and track fader (pre and post-fader) levels of all the tracks by a specific value so that the plugins and faders get enough headroom to operate. Balance and pan the tracks, apply corrective/creative equalisations to shape the tone, insert dynamic processors to shape the dynamics, apply other effects processors such as reverb, delay units to add depth and excitement. Then apply automations to various parameters of the tracks such as volume, pan, mute, track send levels to auxiliary busses, etc to make the elements move in the mix and interact with each other well in the desired way. All the above operations may vary according to the genre and production style of the music.

Mastering is the final stage where the elements in a mix are glued together, the track get polished and the loudness is set according to the loudness specifications of the delivery medium. It is also the stage where the playback order of songs, duration of silence between the tracks, sound of an album in totality etc are fixed. The tracks are processed using mastering-grade equalisers, compressors and finally through a limiter during the process.

Music has the ability to transform visuals, play with the dynamics of emotions, flow through the film, move along the story and transcend the movie experience leaving the audience in the intended state of emotion.

The initial step of the background score edit is to watch the video and understand the rhythm of the video edit, the pace at which the visuals flow. Going through the video, I make notes on the desired music genre and emotion for the sections of the video by inserting markers. Using website subscriptions like Envato Elements, its possible to download good quality music tracks that can be used without any copy right issue. The tracks downloaded will be match-pitched, tempo-matched as required to make transitions un-noticeable and music flow without any disruptions within sections. The final edited music should go in sync with the pattern of the visuals, create emotion with its melody, make the cuts exciting with its rhythm. 

Multi-tracks are provided by the music composer with timecode reference/ rough mix with beep to sync with the visuals for mixing. The tracks are named, colour-coded, arranged and grouped together in the mix preparation. The mixing takes place by balancing, panning, applying various effects processors, doing automations, etc and above everything, it happens completely with reference to the video. The mixed track will have enough headroom for the final mix engineer to do additional processing on the same. Regardless of the automations/processes I do on the tracks, the mix engineer does more automations, mostly volume automations on the mixed background score track to leave space for dialogues and sound effects as required. Most of the time the mix engineer ask for mixed multi-tracks instead of a single mixed track to have the freedom to process the elements individually.