Super Clean Sound Film

[Stephen Mann]

In movies you see in the theater, all dialog is in the center channel only.
Music and some sfx are in the L-R channels.
LFE and some sfx are in the rear channels.

Play a DVD on a Hollywood DVD and pull the center channel – dialog is gone.

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[Debbie King]

Hi Stephen:

How do they get the dialogue so clean where you don’t hear any ambient sounds, except for those that are on the other channels. For instance, I used Audacity to clear some ambient sounds surrounding the dialogue. When I tried to clean it up completely, it affected the dialogue. The more I left on the audio the more natural the dialogue was. So I am not clear as to what they use to get it so clean; just dialogue.

Many thanks,

Debbie

[Colin Morris]

Hi Debbie,
One of the methods used in film is ADR (Automatic Dialogue Replacement) The actor goes into a studio and re-records his/her audio in sync while watching the video/film scene. Vegas is very good for this because you have full featured video and audio in the same application. The set up is very similar to recording voice overs. The actor wears closed back headphones to hear the original audio and you record clean new audio while the actor watches the scene. The final dialog is usually a mix of real sound and ADR.
Another method that helps to get clean audio is to use a digital recorder that can record 2 different input levels at the same time. You set one channel to record a lower level and another to record a hotter level. This way, if your hot level distorts, you can use the lower one. I would highly recommend buying a book on film and video sound recording techniques. It will list all of these techniques in detail.
Good luck with your project!

Colin Mendez Morris
ArsMusica
http://www.arsmusica.ca

[Mike Kujbida]

Debbie, an excellent book that I’ve recommended several times is Producing Great Sound for Film and Video by Jay Rose. He has a new edition coming out next month.
The details are at https://www.greatsound.info

[John Rofrano]

[Colin Morris] “One of the methods used in film is ADR (Automatic Dialogue Replacement) The actor goes into a studio and re-records his/her audio in sync while watching the video/film scene.”

Yea, they are not using the dialog from the location recording. All dialog is re-recorded. That’s how they get it so clean. It’s done in a controlled studio environment. I would bet that almost none of the audio you hear in a movie is from the set. It’s all Foley and ADR.

Even when Robert Rodriguez shot “El Mariachi” for $7,000 he had the actors redo their lines at the end of every shoot so that he had clean audio to work with. If you are doing gorilla filming and haven’t read “Rebel without a Crew” you should. It’s a very interesting read.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Stephen Mann]

As Colin and John said, it’s almost always done in a sound booth after the editing is finished. It’s also not easy, which is why the ADR gets higher on the credits list.

On a low budget film you may be able to record an ambient track in a location that hears the ambient noise but not the talent. Mono only, stereo is a consumer term and no director is ever thinking about the final sound mix. Then you can invert that track to subtract the ambient sounds from the dialog. I have had good results on an indie film with wireless mics on the talent – it’s not hard to hide the microphones under clothing , hair or a prop. We also had a boom mic if we needed some audio that was muffled by moving clothing.

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[Debbie King]

Hi Mike, Stephen, John and Colin:

Thank you so much for your responses. I am in a bit of a dilemma. The film has already been produced and I am in post currently. I used a very sophisticated mic and recorder, but I still hear ambient noises, even though they are much cleaner than a few other clips of the film where I am forced to use the camera audio. I am relieved to know that the studio gets the clean sound from ADR, but would like to find a software that could at least take some of the ambient sounds out so that I can bring the voices forward. The dialogue sometimes get lost in the other noise, because raising the volume also raises volume of the noise I don’t want to hear. As mentioned, Audacity was able to get close, but it also affects the quality of the dialogue.

ADR is not an option currently, because most of my actors live in different locales. So even though I’ve had a few successfully record on their Iphone in a closet a few lines that came out very clean, I am not financially in a position to bring them back nor have the entire cast record for me. Micro budget film for sure.

Any suggestions on what you would do in this situation?

Many thanks,

Debbie

[Stephen Mann]

First, don’t try using ADR on just some of the dialog. That will be much worse because it calls attention to the background noise.

Post a minute of the problem audio and let some of us have a go at it.

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[Angelo Mike]

I know it’s too late now, but don’t skimp on getting good audio and having the budget for it in the first place. Christopher Nolan supposedly puts a big emphasis on it to get the actors’ performances since that’s harder to do in ADR. 90% of The Dark Knight uses the location dialogue, though all that gets mixed, EQ’d, etc., before completing the movie.

[Debbie King]

Thanks Angelo and Mike:

Most of the audio in the film was good, but some scenes are missing audio from external mics, so I had to cut in the audio from the camera. In a couple of scenes the actors’ voices were low during recording, and even when I normalize it brings up everything else. When I clean up the surrounding noise, it changes the quality of the dialogue. Can RX3 help with this?

Many thanks,

Debbie