Audio Mixes Finish your film off nice! Dont ruin them on the final hurdle.

Bit Ranty but to many good short films and webedits are being trashed by shitty shitty audio mixes.

So many people are learning about color grading and Getting right into this DSLR shooting wonderland but they are not finishing the film properly.

An Audio mix ,making sure the levels of the Interview tracks and Music tracks are not to loud or quiet and fade together seamlessly.
Its not hard and takes next to no time.

Often when you drop an Audio track (music) into a Edit suite you may need to drop it down about 6DB to make it a nice listening level. most audio tracks import a little hot.

Now you spend heaps of money on lenses and other junk ,go out and buy a good mic ,Rode make plenty ,Sennheiser also.
A directional top mic will give you good results ,but the best (if working alone) will come from a Lapel mic. Also if your on a real camera you can monitor your levels and watch your audio ,wear headphones and monitor the levels.

Then in the Mix make sure to fade down your music track and bring up your interview track. And when the talking is done bring your Music back up to normal levels. If you use a 2nd track of Music make sure to level it with your other track.

Lastly listen to your finished piece (before and after your export) with speakers and headphones just to make sure it can be viewed without touching the volume.

for example the latest Trek video for Neko. The 2nd track came in far to loud and his mother was whispering. This made the film almost unwatchable ,specially after the hearing damage I got from turning up the volume to listen to talking then getting my head blown off by the 2nd music track.