Sound stage

Last updated April 02, 2024

A sound stage (also written soundstage) is a large, soundproof structure, building or room with large doors and high ceilings, used for the production of theatrical film-making and television productions, usually located on a secured movie or television studio property.

Compared to a silent stage, a sound stage is sound-proofed so that sound can be recorded along with the images. The recordings are known as production sound. Because most sound in movies, other than dialogue, is added in post-production, this generally means that the main difference between the two is that sound stages are used for dialogue scenes, but silent stages are not. An alternative to production sound is to record additional dialogue during post-production (known as dubbing).

Early history

Structures of this type were in use in the motion picture industry before the advent of sound recording. Early stages for silent movies were built, either as a three-wall open-roof set, or with large skylights, until electric lighting became powerful enough to expose film adequately.

Contemporary building requirements

Extensive soundproofing

With the advent of electric lights, enclosed stages were built in Hollywood and rapidly converted to sound stages with many mattresses placed on the walls. With the coming of the talkies in the late 1920s, it became necessary to enclose and fully soundproof these stages to eliminate noise and distractions from outside, including limiting access.

The ceilings and walls of the building containing the sound stage must be heavily soundproofed, so the structure must be sturdy and capable of accepting such additional features and loads, or a new building specifically designed with the features and to bear the loads is required, which often is the less expensive alternative to retrofitting an existing structure because of engineering issues.

Buildings without soundproofing still are referred to as silent stages and may be used where the dialogue and other sounds are recorded as a separate operation. This separate operation usually involves the principal actors doing synchronized dialogue replacement voice recordings over a working cut of the film, specialized language actors doing a secondary language dubbing or for the filming of special effects.

A sound stage, unlike a silent stage, requires caution to avoid making noise anywhere within range of the audio recording equipment.

A sound stage traditionally has a large red light above or next to each exterior door. When the light starts blinking, it means shooting is in progress.^[1] Anyone who opens the door at that point will introduce external sound and light and ruin the take in progress.^[1]

When a studio is home to multiple sound stages, they tend to all look alike from the outside: giant beige box-shaped buildings. Sound stages are marked on the exterior with large numbers to help distinguish them.^[1]

Enclosed stage

An enclosed stage makes it easier for the crew of a production to design and build the sets to exact specifications, precise scale, and detail. The art director of a production makes an architectural plan and carpenters build it. On a film, the head electrician is credited as the gaffer and the assistant as the best boy , regardless of gender. After a set is painted, the set dresser furnishes it with everything that the set designer, under the direction of the art director, has selected for the interior.

Catwalks and ceiling lights

On a sound stage, the camera may be placed exactly where the director wants it. Achieving the desired lighting is easier because each stage has a metal framework with catwalks and lights suspended from the ceiling. This makes it easier for the cinematographer to have the grips position each flag or bounce and the lighting technicians to position each light to get exactly the correct lighting for every shot.

Cameras, rentals, and special techniques

Television production generally uses multiple cameras, and cinema production generally uses a single camera. This is not universally true because the choice varies very much on what the director is trying to achieve.

Rental of a sound stage entails an expensive process, but working on a sound stage saves time when setting up for production as long as access to all of the necessary technical equipment, personnel, and supplies is readily available. As all the scenes can be filmed on the sets inside the sound stage, using it also eliminates having to move the production from location to location.

With the use of bluescreen or greenscreen techniques (whereby backgrounds are inserted electronically behind the actors in the finished film) and a sound stage, extensive control of the production process is achieved.

"Soundstage" of an acoustic recording

The term soundstage refers to the depth and richness of an audio recording and usually relates to the playback process. According to audiophiles, the quality of the playback is very much dependent upon how one is able to pick out different instruments, voices, vocal parts, and such exactly where they are located on an imaginary 2-dimensional or 3-dimensional field. The quality of this soundstage can enhance not only the listener's involvement in the recording, but also their overall perception of the stage.^[2]

Special effects before post-production

The latest technology and software can render basic previsualisation effects into scenes in real time while recording, before post-production, with the use of sensors detecting the position of actors and elements, in the staging of the frame. The director during filming can view what the composition of the picture is with basic digital objects and surfaces included and how it appears, assisting the creative process.^[3]

Virtual production volumes

A newer form of set being used in both the production of films and television shows is the virtual production "volume". Different from the volume of a conventional motion capture stage (where often no physical image is being recorded for the final product), a virtual production volume is a stage that is surrounded (in varying degrees) by screens that extend the set. These screens, most commonly large arrays of LEDs, show a version of the set that was constructed in 3D (using software such as Unreal Engine) that tracks its motion in real time with camera movement. A static display can function similarly for a still camera, given there is no parallax. However, these volumes allow the scenery to adaptively move and distort according to how the camera ought to see it if it were moving in a real environment.

Benefits of such a setup include total control of a scene; dusk and dawn can last all day. Not only can time of day or number of light sources be manipulated at will, but portions of the volume off-screen can be turned completely white to add fill lighting from a given direction, or they can be turned off to darken that area. They can also function as a typical green/blue screen for chroma keying by displaying the solid color behind the performers. Having a physical space where actors can see their environment and inform their performances accordingly is something that most greenscreen sets lack.

The controlled visual environment also allows directors and cinematographers the ability to better create mise-en-scène, with greater control over the set, and the ability to see the final image as they are creating it. Where these volumes are especially beneficial is in having light behave perfectly realistically on transparent, translucent, and very reflective materials. These types of objects, such as eyeglasses, glassware, and shiny armor, are often very difficult to deal with in a conventional chroma key work flow. This technique also minimizes the amount of tedious rotoscoping work required in post-production to cut out what was not picked up by chroma keying.

The downside to this setup is that unlike with greenscreen, whatever was filmed is final in terms of visual environment (as is the case with filming on any normal set or location). By contrast, a greenscreen film segment can essentially be swapped to anything at any point in post-production.^[4]

Related Research Articles

A film crew is a group of people, hired by a production company, for the purpose of producing a film or motion picture. The crew is distinguished from the cast, as the cast are understood to be the actors who appear in front of the camera or provide voices for characters in the film. The crew is also separate from the producers, as the producers are the ones who own a portion of either the film studio or the film's intellectual property rights. A film crew is divided into different departments, each of which specializes in a specific aspect of the production. Film crew positions have evolved over the years, spurred by technological change, but many traditional jobs date from the early 20th century and are common across jurisdictions and filmmaking cultures.

Mise-en-scène is the stage design and arrangement of actors in scenes for a theatre or film production, both in the visual arts through storyboarding, visual themes, and cinematography and in narrative-storytelling through directions. The term is also commonly used to refer to single scenes that are representative of a film.

Chroma key compositing, or chroma keying, is a visual-effects and post-production technique for compositing (layering) two or more images or video streams together based on colour hues. The technique has been used in many fields to remove a background from the subject of a photo or video – particularly the newscasting, motion picture, and video game industries. A colour range in the foreground footage is made transparent, allowing separately filmed background footage or a static image to be inserted into the scene. The chroma keying technique is commonly used in video production and post-production. This technique is also referred to as colour keying, colour-separation overlay, or by various terms for specific colour-related variants such as green screen or blue screen; chroma keying can be done with backgrounds of any colour that are uniform and distinct, but green and blue backgrounds are more commonly used because they differ most distinctly in hue from any human skin colour. No part of the subject being filmed or photographed may duplicate the colour used as the backing, or the part may be erroneously identified as part of the backing.

A stand-in, sometimes a lighting double, for film and television is a person who substitutes for the actor before filming, for technical purposes such as lighting and camera setup. Stand-ins are helpful in the initial processes of film and television production.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Recording studio</span> Facility for sound recording

A recording studio is a specialized facility for recording and mixing of instrumental or vocal musical performances, spoken words, and other sounds. They range in size from a small in-home project studio large enough to record a single singer-guitarist, to a large building with space for a full orchestra of 100 or more musicians. Ideally, both the recording and monitoring spaces are specially designed by an acoustician or audio engineer to achieve optimum acoustic properties.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clapperboard</span> Device used to aid in the syncing of audio with a moving image

A clapperboard, also known as a dumb slate, clapboard, film clapper, film slate, movie slate, or production slate, is a device used in filmmaking and video production to assist in synchronizing of picture and sound, and to designate and mark the various scenes and takes as they are filmed and audio-recorded. It is operated by the clapper loader. It is said to have been invented by Australian filmmaker F. W. Thring. Due to its ubiquity on film sets, the clapperboard is frequently featured in behind-the-scenes footage and films about filmmaking, and has become an enduring symbol of the film industry as a whole.

Visual effects is the process by which imagery is created or manipulated outside the context of a live-action shot in filmmaking and video production. The integration of live-action footage and other live-action footage or CGI elements to create realistic imagery is called VFX.

A boom operator is a core role in the sound department of a film production, who works with the production sound mixer and utility sound technician. The principal responsibility of the boom operator is microphone placement, usually using a boom pole with a microphone attached to the end, their aim being to hold the microphone as close to the actors or action as possible without allowing the microphone or boom pole to enter the camera's frame.

In the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, grips are camera support equipment technicians in the filmmaking and video production industries. They constitute their own department on a film set and are directed by a key grip. Grips have two main functions: The first is to work closely with the camera department to provide camera support, especially if the camera is mounted to a dolly, crane, or in an unusual position, such as the top of a ladder. Some grips may specialize in operating camera dollies or camera cranes. The second function is to work closely with the electrical department to create lighting set-ups necessary for a shot under the direction of the director of photography.

Grips' responsibility is to build and maintain all the equipment that supports cameras. This equipment, which includes tripods, dollies, tracks, jibs, cranes, and static rigs, is constructed of delicate yet heavy duty parts requiring a high level of experience to operate and move. Every scene in a feature film is shot using one or more cameras, each mounted on highly complex, extremely expensive, heavy duty equipment. Grips assemble this equipment according to meticulous specifications and push, pull, mount or hang it from a variety of settings. The equipment can be as basic as a tripod standing on a studio floor, to hazardous operations such as mounting a camera on a 100 ft crane, or hanging it from a helicopter swooping above a mountain range.

Good Grips perform a crucial role in ensuring that the artifice of film is maintained, and that camera moves are as seamless as possible. Grips are usually requested by the DoP or the camera operator. Although the work is physically demanding and the hours are long, the work can be very rewarding. Many Grips work on both commercials and features.

Filmmaking or film production is the process by which a motion picture is produced. Filmmaking involves a number of complex and discrete stages, beginning with an initial story, idea, or commission. Production then continues through screenwriting, casting, pre-production, shooting, sound recording, post-production, and screening the finished product before an audience, which may result in a film release and exhibition. The process is nonlinear, as the director typically shoots the script out of sequence, repeats shots as needed, and puts them together through editing later. Filmmaking occurs in a variety of economic, social, and political contexts around the world, and uses a variety of technologies and cinematic techniques to make theatrical films, episodic films for television and streaming platforms, music videos, and promotional and educational films.

Compositing is the process or technique of combining visual elements from separate sources into single images, often to create the illusion that all those elements are parts of the same scene. Live-action shooting for compositing is variously called "chroma key", "blue screen", "green screen" and other names. Today, most, though not all, compositing is achieved through digital image manipulation. Pre-digital compositing techniques, however, go back as far as the trick films of Georges Méliès in the late 19th century, and some are still in use.

Television crew positions are derived from those of film crew, but with several differences.

This article contains a list of cinematic techniques that are divided into categories and briefly described.

A front projection effect is an in-camera visual effects process in film production for combining foreground performance with pre-filmed background footage. In contrast to rear projection, which projects footage onto a screen from behind the performers, front projection projects the pre-filmed material over the performers and onto a highly reflective background surface.

Camera coverage, or coverage, is the amount and kind of footage shot used to capture a scene in filmmaking and video production. The film editor uses coverage in post-production to assemble the final cut.

Previsualization is the visualizing of scenes or sequences in a movie before filming. It is a concept used in other creative arts, including animation, performing arts, video game design, and still photography. Previsualization typically describes techniques like storyboarding, which uses hand-drawn or digitally-assisted sketches to plan or conceptualize movie scenes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Multiple-camera setup</span> Method of film making and video production

The multiple-camera setup, multiple-camera mode of production, multi-camera or simply multicam is a method of filmmaking and video production. Several cameras—either film or professional video cameras—are employed on the set and simultaneously record or broadcast a scene. It is often contrasted with a single-camera setup, which uses one camera.

In filmmaking, Foley is the reproduction of everyday sound effects that are added to films, videos, and other media in post-production to enhance audio quality. Foley is named after sound-effects artist Jack Foley. Foley sounds are used to enhance the auditory experience of a movie. They can be anything from the swishing of clothing and footsteps to squeaky doors and breaking glass. Foley can also be used to cover up unwanted sounds captured on the set of a movie during filming, such as overflying airplanes or passing traffic.

Articles related to the field of motion pictures include:

This glossary of motion picture terms is a list of definitions of terms and concepts related to motion pictures, filmmaking, cinematography, and the film industry in general.

References

1 2 3 Miller, Pat P. (1999). Script Supervising and Film Continuity (3rd ed.). Burlington, Massachusetts: Focal Press. p. 1. ISBN 9780240802947 . Retrieved 22 July 2023.
↑ Moylan, William: The Art of Recording - The Creative Resources of Music Production and Audio. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1992
↑ Avatar 3D film employs cutting edge visual effects from the BBC, retrieved on 26 January 2010.
↑ "How 'The Mandalorian' and ILM invisibly reinvented film and TV production". TechCrunch. 20 February 2020. Retrieved 2021-09-08.

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[Miller_Page_1-1] 1 2 3 Miller, Pat P. (1999). Script Supervising and Film Continuity (3rd ed.). Burlington, Massachusetts: Focal Press. p. 1. ISBN 9780240802947 . Retrieved 22 July 2023.

[2] Moylan, William: The Art of Recording - The Creative Resources of Music Production and Audio. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1992

[3] Avatar 3D film employs cutting edge visual effects from the BBC, retrieved on 26 January 2010.

[4] "How 'The Mandalorian' and ILM invisibly reinvented film and TV production". TechCrunch. 20 February 2020. Retrieved 2021-09-08.

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