Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1436283
24 I m ps e . o rg from a lav mic because a lav mic is usually always "on mic." With the pandemic, more production mixers are returning to boom mic'ing. Laving up actors leaves them too susceptible to exposure, so booming has become the more prevalent recording choice. Booms, if done well, sound richer because they have some natural ambience in them. They might even pick up footsteps and other movements. Again, if properly done, booms just sound more natural. Remember, you can always ADD sounds, you can't always take them away! Because we editors often are also the mixers, we still want to follow good arrangement practices for laying out a session. Back in film days, I remember my mom writing cue sheets late into the nights before we went to the dub stage. We actually used to use cue sheets! Before digital, we handwrote out sheets which tell the mixer what "units" had what tracks on them. When Digital Audio Workstations (DAW) came into being and mixers could see all the "units" or tracks as we now call them, the use of physical cue sheets dwindled. My mom, Kay Rose (first woman sound editor to win an Oscar!), would pore over the arrangement of her edited tracks which she did on scratch cue sheets. She was very proud of her cue sheets and the mixers loved them. Here's a cue sheet made from a DAW session. Sheets indicate contents of mix for use by the mixer(s). Usually read up to downtime and left to right (individual tracks). There are specific graphic conventions to convey information such as fade in, fade out, track contents, scene, and take number. Here is a dialogue cue sheet from For the Boys (1991). Here is a close up of that same cue sheet. Notice the "fade in" at 71-74 feet on Dial 2. Notice at 43 feet, there is the dialogue "Comere" that happens within that section. Notice the label of the scene and take above the words "Who did this" on Dial 2 at 74 feet. You can see right away where things overlap—notice at 76 feet on Dial 3 there is a one foot overlap between that and Dial 2. This sheet is one of seven and goes from 12 feet (the start of the reel) to 77 feet. Reels were about 10 minutes each. This was Reel 11 from For the Boys. Today with our Pro Tools sessions, the mixer can see what overlaps, what tracks are happening at the same time. They have to trust us that we will put the same scene and takes on the same tracks. It was a lot easier to see that on a physical cue sheet. Here is a session of seven dialogue tracks. Even though all of the mechanics of editing evolves and is ever-evolving, the principles of how we edit are the same. We use our ears, our brains, our talent, and our objectives of making the movie sound and feel seamless. IF IT SOUNDS GOOD, IT IS GOOD. QUESTION #3 Stacy Soler from Los Angeles asks: "How do you give more depth (in post) when you have an old man who is very nice, very good cop, however, his voice is just weak and puts you to sleep and adding volume isn't enough. (Avid) DIALOGUE DETECTIVE: You mean you want to beef up his voice? There is amplitude, projection, and volume. You can add volume (up is louder!) but that doesn't make it sound more projected. It will also increase the level of the ambience that is under the words, which may make it hissier. The director should have tried to have the actor project more. The re-recording mixer can try and beef it up using EQ and other "beefier" tools! You can also look for other takes where he may have had more energy in his dialogue. Sometimes you can steal dialogue from a master take when the actor may have been projecting. It's a mind thing for some actors when the camera is physically farther away from them that they project more than they would if the camera is closer! Especially now, when we're all so used to our phones being our camera and sound recording devices. Apart from that, there is ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement) to do! And if you do ADR, then that original dialogue needs to be cut out and moved to a DIALOGUE X track. The ambient noise floor that resides under that original take needs to be "filled" for the words you just moved to the X track. You don't want the ambience to just disappear, because you'd notice that! Where do you find this "fill"? The best place is in between words or sentences from the same scene and take that you need the fill for. You should be able to cut the fill right in so that when the ADR (which has no inherent ambient noise floor) is played in conjunction with the edited and filled track, you won't notice that it's ADR (unless the sync is no good!). ADR is a whole different column. For next time!