Audio Overlay For DV Short Movie

[David Jones]

You might try a Google search for “ADR” or “dialog replacement”…

I use an audio app for this type work along with the vocalign plug-in.

[Frank Nolan]

The correct term for this is ADR (automated dialogue replacement) or, it is also referred to as “looping” which goes back to the day of film and mag reels for sound, when they would create a loop of the lines in question and load that on the projector so the actor could keep going over and over until they got it right.
Anyway the standard way of setting up for the actor is to have a set of 3 beeps placed at even intervals before the line, so the line would start on the 4th beat. To keep it simple, create a 1khz tone 2 frames long then place that at 1 second intervals before the line, so the line would start on the 4th second. You need to be able to send that to some headphones for the actor to hear so they get the pacing of the beeps, so as to know when to start speaking. You could also create what is known as a “streamer”, which is a visual cue. It is a solid vertical line that travels across screen from left to right. The main thing is to have some sort of reference or count in for the actor so they will know where to start speaking.

[Espnetboy3] “(Perfect Storm I heard was shot with no audio at all until they got into the studio Post)”

That would be incorrect! They would have still shot with audio even though they knew most of it would be unusable due to the large fans and water noise on set. If you dont record the sound, no matter how bad you know it will be, you will not have any reference audio to sync up the ADR to later in post. Also the editorr wouldn’t know what the hell was being said if all they had was a set of moving lips. Unless of course they could lip read-:)

[Espnetboy3]

Well I also heard the editor wanted a challenge and was a great lip reader. Hhahaha, Just kidding. Thanks for the help Frank. I will have to try this when the actors come over this weekend. As far as levels, should i try to recreate about what it sounded like. For instance if it was a further shot make it lower and so forth? I will def need to add ambience sfx when they are outside and or in this one persons house we shot it echoed a bit.

[Espnetboy3]

Sorry It says the page wasnt loading when I tried to post now it posted a ton of times.

[Frank Nolan]

[Espnetboy3] “As far as levels, should i try to recreate about what it sounded like. For instance if it was a further shot make it lower and so forth?”

Well you want the “sound” to match as close as possible to the other lines around it. So as far as levels goes make sure you capture a good level. You can always turn it down if need be later but if you capture too lower level it is hard to turn it up later. The main thing technically is mic choice and placement to get the sound to match. You want to try and match the adjacent production sound as close as possible, so the ADR doesn’t jump out at the viewer and sound like it was recorded somewhere else. Then you would also need to add “fill” later, which is the ambient room tone of the scene. Otherwise it will be hard to have the ADR blend in with the surrounding production dialogue. The next challenge is “the actor”. To get a good reading from them you need to try and make them feel as comfortable as possible in the studio. For new actors especially, recording ADR can be a very daunting experience. I found one of the best things to do before you record a cue is to loop the playback of the line with the beeps at the start and let it play about 10 times so they can rehearse and get into the rhythm of it. Also if there is a large amount of dialogue in a row, you may want to break up each cue into a sentence or two at a time.
Good Luck!