Deceptively simple stereo question...

Okay, suppose you have a shot in which a spaceship does a fly-by in the background behind a certain character. And suppose that that shot goes by very fast, fast enough that the sound of the ship going past would quite reasonably overlap onto the surrounding shots. And further suppose that those surrounding shots are of the exact opposite angle from the middle shot where the ship actually goes past.

Now that I've set the scene here's the question: If the ship is going from right-to-left in the shot where you can see it, and the surrounding shots are at an opposite angle, should you reverse the stereo for those surrounding shots, or would that be too distracting?
Reversing the stereo for the adjacent shots would make the most logical sense from a purely realistic perspective...but from an artistic perspective, thinking of the viewers' collective subconscious, it would probably be less distracting to have the fly by always follow the stereo model for the shot in which it goes past. Remember, this is an extremely fast fly-by, not a beauty shot of a ship going past...

Anyway, I'm just look for opinions, here. Personally, I'm leaning toward the more artistic stereo in which the sound follows the shot in which the ship is visible, but I'd like to hear what other people have to say.

 

Follow the ship's motion from whichever shot folks will first associate the motion and the sound with each other into the shots after that.

 

Okay, there's a lot going on, it'd be easier to see, but - I'll take a stab at it. Is this a dialogue scene where the ship goes right to left (reverse directions if it's left to right) behind Person A, but the audio would logically start as we look at Person B and the ship is behind us?

If so, I'd start the sound extremely low in volume in the right channel, then as soon as we look at Person A, ramp up that volume quickly so it's the correct volume before it actually shows in frame. Transfer stereo sound as needed and fade that sucker out as fast as possible.

In short - don't disorient your audience with audio flips. In creating UCF, I had to make sense of the flyby sounds of shots fired - which last about three frames - and make such decisions.

 

Yes, exactly.

It goes pretty fast...two seconds, possibly less. So, not a lot of time for quick audio fades...but I take your point.

Yeah, that was about what I was thinking, but I wanted to make sure. The part of me that likes things nice and neat and accurate was totally at war with the part of me that's artistic and wants everything to feel right. In this case, art and feeling wins.

 

After doing a lot of this sort of thing myself, is it possible I can see the clip you are talking about... then I can make my judgements.

 

I guess I COULD make that happen...but Boter already really answered my question. And I don't really want to give out too many more previews than I already have.

 

I'll respect that.

 

If it was a longer flyby... 10 seconds or more, I probably would flip the audio. It seems like it'd be kinda cool.
For something fast though, I'd do what Boter said.

-Vaportrail

 

It's fast. Way fast. Like Maverick buzzing the tower fast. FWOOSH! Gone. That fast.

 

So, we see it happen multiple times?

-Vaportrail

 

Well, I'd like to think you'd watch my fan film multiple times.

 

I'd have it mostly centered and dull the sound a bit to take the edge off of it, but only subtly so.