Sountrack Dynamics

[Luke Garfield]

Mixing the music for an independant film. Just wondering if anyone can give a rough guide to how much dynamics music for soundtracks should have. Just a rough idea. I just know it's not as squashed as regular pop record. The stuff is nice and open indie stuff - piano, glockenspiel, organs, drums (stereo OH and kick) other bits and pieces. Any help is much appreciated.

[jkhuri44]

i opened up the soundtrack to Black Hawk Down...no squashing wat so ever.

i suppose you need to do what the film calls for...

if the music is going over a scene with heavy dialogue, FX, and so on, it will inevitably need some limiting to be heard.

I guess your just mixing the music , and not the film?? if you're mixing just the music, my advice would be to preserve the dynamics as much as possible so that the film mixer can either limit it or leave it open and dynamic.

Hope that helps.

oh, and as far as level is concerned, sit it wher eit sounds nice :)

[Kurt]

My guess would be to leave it unsquished, dvd players have compressors built in. Check out replaygain to help you figure out what level it should be at.

[Luke Garfield]

Excellent. Thanks for the ideas gents.