Atmos & Room Tone

Both Atmos and Room Tone fall into a unique category of Film Sound. These are essentially the
only elements of a film soundtrack that are described as unsynchronised. Although they are cued up
to play at a given time in the progression of a soundtrack, the individual elements that go into
making the Atmos & Room Tone do not directly correspond to what is happening on-screen.

It should also be noted that these sorts of sounds do need to directly correspond to what is
happening on screen. When someone someone is watching something, whether it is in film or not,
there will be things that should be making sound. If these things are not what the person is focusing
on they just become generic, unimportant noises. To make scenes in films seem real, these generic
noises are added to help create the mood. They don't need to be specifically syched because
viewer/listeners will not notice the level of synch.

In many instances, the following definitions of unsynchronous sound are interchangeable with each
other. However, the definitions applied to the many terms are designed to provide definitions that
qualify the purpose and applications of Atmos & Room Tone and similar components.

Types
Atmos
Stands for Atmosphere and is the background sound of any given area. It can almost be thought of
as the “noise floor” of a given space. However, Atmos should not be thought of as something that is
not wanted. In order to make a space sound natural, recordings of the space are taken will the
general sounds happening in the background. These sounds might include; birds, fans, cars/traffic,
crowds talking etc.

Atmos is not always required in a scene, it is greatly dependant on the action and other sound
components happening onscreen.
Room Tone
Is described as the sound of a given room and specifically the sound of that room relative to
elements of that room. Room Tone can often be thought of as similar to reverb. For example, if
someone is talking and then they stop, the sound of the room does not die away like the voice does,
the room sound will linger.

For example, when editing ADR, when someone stops speaking the sound of the room will die
away between the edits. This will create an unnatural effect on the room sound and the ADR. Room
Tone is added between the edits to keep the consistency between the edit and make them less
noticeable.

Room Tone is intended to provide a consistent sounding background scene. Each room/scene in a
film will require a different room tone. Room Tone is different from Atmos in regard to Room Tone
has no extra sounds/sound effects whereas atmos contains a plethora of miscellaneous sounds. As
well, it is not always necessary to include both Atmos and Room Tone, usually you will use one or
the other depending on the scene.
Wild Tracks
This refers to any track, not just Atmos or Room Tone, that has been recorded without timecode or
synchronisation. In reference to Atmos & Room Tone, this will be sound recorded without even any
picture rolling. Often Atmos and Room Tone are referred to as Wild Tracks.
Buzz or Ambient Tracks
These two terms can refer to any of the above three types of unsynchronous sound. Depending on
the age, location and expereince of the different audio professionals involved, they may use these
terms interchangeably. In general Buzz will refer to Room Tone whereas Ambient will refer to
Atmos tracks.
Walla / ADR Groups
Many people group Walla into the atmos category as most of the components that make up Walla is
unsynchronous. This idea holds true for Walla that does not contain components that must be
synched up with action on screen (for example, specific crowd cheers like 'hey').

Reveberation
Convolutions & IR
In order to get sounds that have been recorded outside of the desired environment (like ADR), it is
important to get them to sound like they have come from the desired environment, for the sake of
realism. Reverberation is a factor over a given sound that gives aural cues as to the original
environment. Being able to record solely reverb and no original signal and then applying this
recorded reverb would be ideal. However, this is only theoretically possible and we use a system
called convolution to achieve a result that is very close to the original.

Essentially, an Impulse Response (IR) is generated and the IR and the RT60 of the room are
recorded together. The IR itself is required to be a short, sharp sound (something like a gun shot) so
that the sound does not interfere with the reverb time and is then removed (convolved) from the
reverb which is then decoded inside a Convolution reverb unit and can be used like a regular reverb
preset.

Sourcing and Editing Unsynchronous Sound

For the most part, Atmos and Room Tone are recorded during production at the same time as
shooting. Usually the location recordist will record the atmos and/or room tone before or after the
shooting. This allows for better control of noise from cast and crew and other equipment that they
might have (generators, wind machines etc.). Atmos and room tone should be recorded in stereo so
that it can be mixed to hard left and right in either the front or, most commonly, rear channels.

The other option for obtaining Atmos and Room Tone, is to do so through a sound library. The
issue with this is creating a room sound that doesn't sound quite right. Only resort to using the
sound library option if there is no other choice. You'll achieve a higher quality product if you do the
recordings yourself.

Mixing Atmos & Room Tone

Mixing Atmos and Room Tone, for the most part, is fairly straight forward. It is usually mixed to
the surrounds and is dropped in the event that other elements become more important. Essentially
atmos and room tone are the “least important” part of the mix. That's not to say that these elements
should be ignored, because these elements will give fluidity and realism, but they can easily be
replaced.

When going from one room to another, ensure that you crossfade your Room Tones accordingly.
The crossfade should happening along with the speed of the camera movement and how the
characters move from one space to another. As well, you can make the room tone work around the
ADR by ducking the room tone with the ADR as the side chain.

Personnel
Location Recordist / Production Sound Mixer
They will be in charge of ensuring that the Atmos and Room Tone is recorded for use in the editing
process.
Atmos Specialist
On larger budget productions, a job maybe assigned to someone to create all of the atmos and room
tone for the production. This is not a common position but sometimes occurs.
Sound FX Editor
Will edit, select and mix the atmos and will ensure that the room tone has been edited and mixed
correctly. In most cases, if atmos needs to be constructed, this will be done by the Sound FX Editor.
Dialogue Editor
Will incorporate the room tone in and around the dialogue. They will select and edit the room tone.