Sound levels and mix for festival submission

smhontz wrote on 6/28/2017, 9:51 AM

I'm working on a hour-long documentary that we will be submitting to film festivals and perhaps ultimately to Amazon video.

It's broken into 9 Vegas projects that I render out to intermediates and then combine the intermediates in one project that I can do any final grading or audio tweaking as necessary.

It's a stereo mix and I've been using the ATSC 85 spec to keep my audio levels at -23 db integrated loudness in each separate segment.

In looking at the guidelines for film festival submissions, they usually want a DCP to show in the theaters. When I looked at the guidelines that companies that make DCPs suggest, they say you should have at least a 5.1 Surround mix.

Since I don't have a 5.1 surround setup, I will probably have to give this to an external audio house to do the final mix. In preparation for this, I made 3 separate audio buses - Vox, Music, and EFX - in each separate project, and then I will render each bus as a separate WAV file that I can combine in the final master project (again, keeping the buses separate) so I can send the audio house separate Vox, Music, and EFX tracks so they can do the surround mix.

My question: Was keeping each separate project at the -23 db spec a bad idea if I need to send this out for post-processing? Should I have picked something higher, like -6 db? Is the ATSC spec the wrong spec to be using if I want to submit to a film festival?

If you have to deliver to different destinations (film festival, TV, DVD, etc) is it better to keep any intermediates close to 0 db (without going over), and only in your final master project adjust the output level to match your desired target?

Comments

Musicvid wrote on 6/28/2017, 1:54 PM

-23 LKFS (not dB) ATSC/A85 Is a target for broadcast, not cinema or Internet delivery.

smhontz wrote on 6/29/2017, 10:22 AM

Yes, that's the target for broadcast, but what should be the target for cinema? And if it's going to end up on a streaming service like Amazon, is that a different target, or would that be considered "broadcast"?

Since I don't know where this film will ultimately end up, is it best to mix each segment to some standard of -3db peaks or such, and then in my final master project, adjust the final mix to match the target?

I've only ever put things up on YouTube or made DVDs before so this whole film festival/streaming service world is new to me.

Musicvid wrote on 6/29/2017, 6:25 PM

I don't know that there are perceived loudness standards for DCP audio, although there must be industry best practices.

Apple's de facto internet levels for iTunes are about 6dB louder than broadcast.