MPSE Wavelength

M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S I 23 the edit system so that the sound editor can access the meta-data? If you're lucky enough to have any input during the shoot, make sure the sound is being recorded with a good signal-to-noise ratio. Make sure you get an AAF or OMF with access to whole takes, if possible. (Then you can hunt for fill if you have the whole take available.) If the editors haven't broken a feature-length film into 15- to 20-minute reels, then the session may be too large to access whole takes. In that case, ask for the production sound takes including, hopefully, the sound reports. The problems start on set and trickle down. Make sure the picture editor puts an Academy leader with a 2-pop on every reel! I have seen the quality and professionalism dropping over the last five years or so. As more editors come up from film schools, their level of what is industry standard drops. Editors would come up through assisting. Now they come out of film schools. You don't become an editor because you've graduated with a degree or certification from Avid. You become an editor by editing and by being with those who have edited before you. As the quality drops, more problems arise that could have been prevented. Then it gets dropped in our laps and we're given less time and less money to fix it! PRINCIPLE 2: Know what the movie is about. Know what genre it is. Let the movie dictate what you do to it. Talk to the director about the characters. What are the characters' struggles? Who is the protagonist? Antagonist? Use the characters' names, not the actors' names when talking to the director unless you're booking them for ADR. Respect the movie even if you think it's awful. Do your best to edit it no matter what you think of it. It's still your name in the credits! PRINCIPLE 3: Learn the principles of dialogue (production sound) editing. Listen to the film the first time through to get an impression of the movie itself, as an audience member. Watch it without interruptions. Pretend you're watching it in a theater. Give it your attention as a film lover. After you see it that way, let that inform you about decisions about ADR, sound effect choices, etc. Were you able to understand a line of dialogue the first time through? If not, that might be a candidate for ADR. Because more editors are also their own mixers, try and do only one thing at a time. Edit the dialogue. Edit the sound effects, backgrounds, Foley, etc. THEN mix. Each element in the session affects other elements. If you're turning over your edited sessions to a mixer, make sure it's laid out properly. Keep similar scenes on the same tracks. Overlap backgrounds when you hear differences. Don't think background sound effects will cover up bad production sound (See example Pro Tools session above). Remember, dialogue (production sound) will usually come out of the Center speaker channel; backgrounds will be Left Center Right and Surrounds. I always work on the production sound first. Will it need noise reduction? Does the sound editor do that or do we leave it to a mixer who might have better tools to clean up bad sound? This is determined by what your role is. Are you both the editor and the mixer? If so, edit the dialogue first. I have a trick I use by making tracks that make it evident when sound is added or changed. You have to understand that the director and editor have chosen takes based on performances, not sound quality! If you come along and "decide" to make a "better" choice because take 3 sounds better than take 4, you are going to make the director and the film editor distrust your choices! They have listened to the rhythms and nuances of their chosen takes over and over for months. When you change something, they WILL notice! What I do is to add tracks that immediately identify anytime I've found an ALTERNATE take for a line of dialogue. You MUST respect the film editor's session. Always keep it in your session so you can always refer to it. I keep it at the bottom of my session and I copy and paste in sync and bring it up into the track of my choice. I will have my DIALOGUE UNITS as DIAL 1, DIAL 2, DIAL 3, etc., and then a track called ADD/ALT and another track called ORIG. I move the line I've found an alternate for into the ORIG track (which is kind of like a DIAL X track). Then I put the ALTERNATE reading into the ADD/ALT track. It's called an ADD/ALT track because I also want to alert the mixer that something on the ADD track may not have been heard yet by the director. You don't want to fool them. This way, the mixer can play all the regular dialogue units with EITHER the ADD/ALT track OR the ORIG track. Makes it very clear and easy to mix. In the example above, everything is SOLOed except for the ORIG track. So the mixer can play all the orange tracks (dialogue units) with the yellow track to hear my new choice, OR she/he can play

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