Mixing ‘The Loop’ Documentary With DaVinci Resolve Studio’s Fairlight

MILWAUKEE –The documentary “The Loop” looks back at Chicago AM and FM radio stations with that moniker during their heyday from the late 1970s to the 1990s. The Loop was known for its on-air personalities who were notorious for crossing the line: Jonathon Brandmeier, Steve Dahl and Garry Meier, Kevin Matthews, and Danny Bonaduce. They inspired and were copied by stations and DJs across the country.

I was brought onboard by production company Duncan Entertainment to produce 5.1 and stereo mixes, plus stems. I used DaVinci Resolve Studio’s Fairlight audio post production tools, a Fairlight Desktop Console, Mac mini, Focusrite interface and Lipinski and JBL monitors as part of my workflow.

AI Noise Isolation
Given the project is a documentary, interviews were key, and most were done in decent locations, so noise wasn’t too much of a problem. However, DaVinci Resolve Studio’s AI-based voice isolation did come in handy on several occasions, and it’s so nice to have it on every channel.

As the name implies, it allowed me to isolate dialogue from background sounds, easily removing any unwanted noises. And because it’s AI-powered, I only had to click a button, and the DaVinci Neural Engine did all the heavy lifting.

I’ve found setting the processing to around 30% cleans up the dialogue yet still sounds very natural, and I’ve rarely had to use 100%. I used to reach for another solution for these real-time cleanup jobs, but now I can just press the voice isolate button in DaVinci Resolve Studio, which is incredibly easy and saves me time.

While most of my work was carried out in the Fairlight page, I also used DaVinci Resolve Studio’s edit page to lock the reference video or delete multiple video tracks I didn’t need, and the delivery page came in handy when sending the client a rough mix with reference picture. “The Loop” documentary was a joy to work on. It’s very entertaining and irreverent. Most documentaries are serious and even somber, but not this one.

Studio 19 in Beta
Since my work on “The Loop,” I’ve had the chance to dabble in the beta of DaVinci Resolve Studio 19, and some new features have found their way into my workflow right from the start, including dialogue separator, music remixer and ducker.

The music remixer FX is my current favorite. With it, I can lower the vocal of a song when it’s under dialogue, keeping the rhythm and percussion strong. Ducker does what it’s supposed to: one track can auto-adjust the level of another track without needing side chain compression or automation curves. For example, you can automatically set background noise or music to lower when dialogue is present. Nothing flashy here, but very useful and so handy.

Another AI-based tool, dialogue separator, helps bring dialogue upfront while lowering random noises that I swear are from outer space. Sometimes it makes you wonder what is happening on set, but thankfully in post, I have a tool that makes it easy to rebalance the dialogue against background sound.

Finally, audio panning to video is another AI tool that I have my eye on to use in my next project as it works amazingly well. Using DaVinci Resolve Studio’s IntelliTrack AI point tracker, which tracks people and objects, I can quickly pan multiple actors, for example, and control their voice positions as they move across 2D and 3D spaces.

I’ve had features like these in third-party plugins for quite some time but having them in DaVinci Resolve Studio on every track, only one click away, is a luxury. l

Randy Bobo is founder and sound designer at Independent Studios, which delivers crafted audio and visual post production to filmmakers, advertising agencies, corporations and digital media producers. For more information about Independent Studios, call 414-347-1100 or visit www.independentstudios.tv .

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