Dialogue Editing

When you edited your picture you, obviously, cut together your dialogue as well. However, you’ll need to do a fair amount of editing to get your dialogue organized so that it can be easily adjusted and corrected, and to prepare it for the final mix.

Checkerboarding is the process of arranging your dialogue tracks so that one voice can be easily adjusted and corrected. Your goal is to separate different speakers onto different tracks so that you can manipulate and correct their dialogue with as few separate actions as possible. For example, if you’ve decided that all of your lead actor’s dialogue needs a slight EQ adjustment, having all of that actor’s dialogue on one track will make it simple to apply a single EQ filter to all of your actor’s speech.

It’s called checkerboarding (or splitting tracks) because, as you begin to separate different speakers, your audio tracks will begin to have a “checkerboard” appearance as can be seen in Figure 15.9.

Figure 15.9

Checkerboard dialogue editing.

You won’t necessarily separate out every single voice or even every occurrence of a particular speaker. Although you might be trying to split out a particular actor, splitting tracks during short lines or overlapping dialogue might not be worth the trouble. In addition to splitting up your dialogue, you’ll also need to move all of the sound effects recorded during your production onto their own track.

In an editing application, the easiest way to split tracks is simply to select the relevant portions of the sound track and drag them to a new track. Remember to always make a backup of your sequence before you start any major reorganization of your project.

This is where the 30 to 60 seconds of room tone that you recorded during production will come into play. You’ll use room tone to smooth the differences between different speakers, to fill silent areas, and to improve the sense of ambient space in your audio. If you didn’t record room tone, then you can try to build up a sample of room tone by cutting and pasting together quiet moments from your original audio track.

332 The Digital Filmmaking Handbook, 4E

ADR

ADR, or automatic dialogue replacement, is used to replace badly recorded dialogue, fix a muffed line, or insert dialogue that could not be recorded on location.

In a professional sound facility, a projector or monitor shows the scene to be re-recorded and then immediately replays the scene again without audio. The actors then record their lines while watching the scene. Sometimes, a continuous “loop” of the scene is shown; hence the term looping.

The actor is usually cued with a series of regular beeps that count down to the start of recording. The goal is to match the vocal performance to what they just saw on-screen.

Although you might be tempted to rely on re-recording dialogue—you might think it is easier than trying to get things correct on-set—be warned that getting good ADR is hard work. First, you’ll need to try to match the tone and quality of the original recording. Everything from mic selection and mic placement to the qualities of the recording room will affect the tone of your recording. As if getting the actor to match his voice to the lip movements recorded on-screen isn’t difficult enough, consider also that the actor’s performance will probably be at a somewhat different energy and emotional level than what was originally shot. Outside of the scene, with no actors, build-up, or motivation, it can be difficult for an actor to achieve the same performance quality that he delivered on-set.

ADR is most difficult on close-ups because it’s easier to see sync problems. An example of a scene that could benefit from ADR is a long shot of two people having a conversation near a freeway. The production sound will be very bad due to the noise from the freeway. Since the actors are far away, it will be difficult for the audience to see if the re-recorded dialogue is actually in sync with the actors’ mouths. In addition, ADR that appears in sync on the small screen might seem “soft” on the big screen, so use ADR carefully if you’re planning on a theatrical projection of your project.

If you have a sound editing product that supports TDM or AudioSuite plug-ins, then you can use Synchro Arts’ VocAlign to automatically stretch or compress a re-recorded piece of dialogue to match the original production recording. If this sounds impossibly amazing, it is. But it works! If your project requires a lot of accurate ADR, VocAlign is worth the money.

Non-Dialogue Voice Recordings

Most other voice recording jobs will be simpler than ADR. Voice-overs (such as those used in a documentary or in a flashback scene in a dramatic feature), off-screen dialogue, as well as other vocal sound effects will require special recording sessions, but you won’t need all the tools required for ADR recording. Rather, a good directional mic hooked up to your editing software will do.

For example, if you shot a restaurant scene with a silent background (to better record the voices of your actors), you might record the sound of the other restaurant patrons. (Walla is the term for the mumbling, unrecognizable din of a crowd of people.) However, if you can, try to get away with recording walla and other background sounds “wild” instead of paying for a studio recording session.