Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1335892
22 I M PS E . O R G compliments I've ever received was from the director who told me that he felt we got better performances from ADR than what was in production sound. Sometimes the struggles of being a dialogue editor is having to convey to the director when it truly is necessary to ADR. You must understand that the director and fi lm editor have listened to their dialogue over and over and know every nuanced syllable. To change that, even if it's to make it better, is an assault to their senses. It's like when you listen to a favorite song over and over and then go hear the singer or band in person. It's different. It's not the same. You notice. What are our choices to fi x a bad production line? We can look for alternate takes but remember: any alternate take is a take that the director did not choose! The advantage of using ADR is that it gives the actor a chance to recreate the performance that the director chose and loves. Ideally, if we had the time to edit all the production dialogue and fi x it, we'd have a lot less ADR to program and shoot and edit. But we usually don't. So choose your battles carefully. 85% of directors and actors don't like ADR. That makes it harder to get good ADR from them because they come to the stage ready to resist doing it! The logic I present to directors in defense of ADR is this: If you can't understand a line of dialogue and you turn to your friend you're with in the theater (when we went to theaters) and ask, "What did she say?" then you've lost their "suspension of disbelief" for about seven seconds. Is that worth it? You always have to listen as if you're the audience listening to something for the fi rst time. We can address ADR stage etiquette in another column. Dialogue editing entails coordinating with ADR. I usually do both. If it's a huge fi lm, I would be both the supervising dialogue and ADR editor. Even if you're a "line" editor (editing—not supervising), you still need to interface with the ADR editor. Anything that will be ADR'd will have to be cut out and moved to the X track and then fi lled with ambience from that same scene and take so that when the ADR line is put in, it will have the same ambience as the rest of the take. (Unless the whole scene is ADR'd, in which case, you don't need any remnants of the scene and will rely on background sound effects and Foley to fi ll the air behind the words). But get this: IF you have just ONE line of dialogue from the original scene, you will have to fi nd (ambience) to use it under ALL the other lines which are ADR'd. That is not smart. Remember that the whole goal of successful production (aka "dialogue") sound editing is to NOT hear any differences when cutting from take to take within a scene. Each scene needs to have its own ambiences, even if scenes are shot on different days. This is why it's important to understand how a fi lm is shot on the set. Using the script supervisor's notes is very useful for us as sound editors. Scenes are shot in the order that is best for moving the camera and lighting, or rather NOT moving them. Meaning … they will shoot ALL the shots in a scene that involve the camera being in position 1. So a MASTER shot (seeing as much of the set as possible) to a MEDIUM shot to CLOSE-UP and OTS (over the shoulder) all take place on one side of the imaginary 180-degree line. All the lighting usually works for each of those camera positions. And, for us sound editors, all the sound is also coming from the same direction. Then they are going to shoot from the other side of that 180-degree line. All the camera and lighting is moved to accommodate that new angle. The mic placements move too. On top of that, the takes shot on the other side of that 180-degree line may be shot on a different day! That's fi ne if you're shooting on a sound stage or an insulated location. If you're shooting outside, a different day and time can make a huge difference in how each day sounds. Different traffi c patterns, maybe school lets out and fi lls the neighborhood with kid sounds, maybe it's windy or rainy one day and not the next. The general adage of writing a fi lm is: IF IT CAN GO WRONG, IT MUST GO WRONG! I think that applies to shooting them too. The fi lm editor edits all those angles, possibly shot on different days, together to make their cut. You will hear all the differences in both sound levels, signal-to-noise levels, and changes in ambiences. It is OUR JOB, as the production sound editor, to make it sound as if there were none of those differences. My MANTRA of sound editing is this: IF IT SOUNDS GOOD, IT IS GOOD. Seems simple enough, doesn't it!? HOW it ends up sounding good is the art of dialogue editing. That is why no one really knows except you, what you have to do to get it to sound good. Pat yourself on the back. Your name and reputation is on the screen. Make it count. This brings up the differences between SOUND EDITING and SOUND MIXING. Studio fi lms are still broken up into editing and mixing teams. The editors EDIT. The mixers MIX. The fi nished sound is the result of two different, yet similar disciplines. Often, though, each of us is doing some of both jobs. Editors do a little mixing; mixers do a little editing. Some editors are also mixers. Who should be doing what? If you are an editor/mixer, I suggest doing the editing fi rst. If you must use plug-ins for noise reduction, EQ, de-noise, de-explosive, etc., feel free to do it but put an untouched, raw copy edited but pre-plug-in, in the X tracks in case you've gone too far. Concentrate on the editing— overlapping ambiences, smoothing out from take to take within scenes, fi lling for ADR, choosing alternate takes if necessary. THEN mix. Don't try to do both at once. In the "old" days, we didn't have all the plug-ins that a lot of us have today. We fi xed the dialogue tracks the best we could. Then we let the mixers use their tools to continue smoothing things out—CAT 43, EQ, Cedar box, and more I can't even