Your Stage : Land Of Joy Episode 1 by Ana Sitnina

I like the episode and how you mixed futuristic Sci-Fi with the past (like the oldie nightclub scene), Ana Sitnina. You and your team did a great job with a zero budget. Looking forward to seeing how the series unfolds.

Thank you so much for your feedback! I really appreciate it! : ) I am very happy you want to continue following the story and that you liked the webseries' world's aesthetics (which is an important part of the story in the long run too : ) )

You're welcome, Ana Sitnina. I subscribed to your YouTube channel and turned on the notifications.

Hi Ana Sitnina thanks for sharing your work. it's an interesting world you've created. I think there's a problem with the sound in the pub and the location shooting (background noise/atmos levels) need to be remedied.

I did like the Mark Sutton character. Keep on creating!

Geoff Hall Thank you for the feedback! I do realize that sound is my weakest spot, sadly. In an ideal world I would delegate it, but it is 0 budget and I was putting it all together by myself... So I need to try to understand sound better. : ) Did I get it right that you meant the levels of background sounds VS the levels of dialogues? Will be trying to improve for the second season, if I manage to get that far with it = )

I am very happy you liked the world and the lead character!

Someone in the Composing Lounge might have advice on how to understand sound better, Ana Sitnina (www.stage32.com/lounge/composing). The Lounge has a lot of great advice and resources.

Oh, thank you, Maurice Vaughan ! That's great advice = )

You're welcome, Ana Sitnina.

Hi Ana Sitnina , love the concept and the story! (and I have got a thing for the dystopian/sci-fi combination ;) ) . I agree with Geoff Hall . This said, it is more territory for a mixing / sound engineer, so I apologize if my suggestion is not 100% complete, but there is something I noticed. The dialogue. Dialogue fixing on the spot is something I do quickly to the work copies of films I get for scoring; it makes it easier to understand how the music is working on a scene. Listening to the dialogue in the pub, it seems like it needs two things that it is better to do before thinking of levels ( since you have experience in producing music, you can imagine what steps you would take with a vocal track before adding it to your mix). 1) I would clean the audio ( meaning getting rid of the white noise or reduce its level as much as you can without the track sounding non natural). I work in Logic, so I am not naming any specific plugins to do that ( you might not have them ) , but the ones I use in vocal production do work with dialogues as well. 2) I would pan the dialogue audio track to the center. ( it is currently panned to the left). These are two little preparatory steps that already make such a difference. Hope it helps!

First thing is to record using a boom mic, directed at the actor speaking. get as clean as possible out of the gate. If you still have muddy audio, Elena’s comments are great. You may also try the Adobe Podcast app. I’ve used it quite a bit lately to drop out noise and hiss. Does a great job.

Elena Maro I am very glad you've enjoyed it and thank you for these detailed advice! Re #1 I had no luck with the noise reduction - that's something I didn't have to do in music mixing and everytime I tried that on my film audio, I ended up with horrible distorted voices... I will look more into doing it right though, now that I know it is something that can be done right ; ) #2 Is superhelpful, thanks, I didn't quite realise that, despite staring at the meters - weirdest things one misses....

Mike Boas I did use a boom mic, it's a cheap mic though, that probably doesn't help... Adobe Podcast looks very cool, I will definitely give it a try! Thank you!

Happy to help, Ana Sitnina. And I know what you mean about the meters, when I clean dialogues I usually close my eyes and trust my ears first because of that reason ;)

Elena Maro I did the same with music, but completely forgot about that strategy for the webseries... oooops...