Pre-Dubs

For this example, we will assume that all units of the sound production have been pre-dubbed and are ready to mix. Pre-dubs take all the source tracks for a given sound and blend them together to make a single sound that can be mixed with everything else directly.

Pre-dubbed sounds often are multi-channel files such as a 5.1 sound effect. For example, a simple gunshot can be made up of several sounds combined together to create a single composite sound. The elements that make up the gunshot could be panned all over the surround field depending on the perspective of the picture. The pre-dub would be all of those elements panned and mixed together in 5.1 on a single audio track for the final mix. In the final dub, the mixer does not have to be concerned about the relative blend of three to five channels of elements but rather the balance of one 5.1 channel against all of the other sound elements in the film: dialogue, music, etc.

Let’s outline how a set of pre-dubs might be presented at the final mix. Note that some key elements should remain isolated if they are likely to need special treatment during the final mix.

That’s a total of 118 discrete channels at the mixing stage. In Nuendo, this will be shown as 30 actual faders in the mixer. This is a manageable number of channels to deal with. This process is similar to the music mixing example where a great number of channels are pared down to something that can be addressed during a mix session, especially with all of the Automation tools (see Chapter 15) available in Nuendo. (See Figure 17.13.)

Figure 17.13 Track list of film mix.