Post-Production : Is dialog sound always done with ADR in features? by Vital Butinar

Every sound guy I know would say "YES, absolutely, every feature film uses ADR", but I've heard some filmmakers mention that they try to get clean takes on set - just have them repeat the line to the mic instead of to the camera. And then any lines that you have recorded that don't match the mouth moving, you just cut away to something else so the line is delivered "off-screen". But that's basically on-set ADR LOL!

Hey Karen "Kay" Ross that's a good point. I was actually thinking of that before we shot everything but at the same time it can be a problem if the talent isn't constant with the dialog and it wouldn't match up anyway.

As for getting clean sound that would always be my preferred choice but it's so hard to do that. The last three shoots we had planes, trains, farming machinery and facbook dings from people passing by anytime we were shooting but never in between takes. If it was none of those things the talent touched the exact area where the mic was or moved too much and we had cloth sound again.

So clean sound as much as you want it is a really hard thing to do.

Thankfully ambient sound fixes a lot of stuff but if what we're shooting is set in 1930 we can't exactly have a jet plane in the background or a beeping dump truck.

I guess ADR is an unavoidable fact of life in film.

Thank you for pitching in.

Hi Vital! Yes there’s plenty of ADR done on features. For low budget , no budget shoots grab a recorder , your mics and record new audio. You must have a video of what the scenes are so they can watch it a number of times to get the feel and rhythm, and then record the dialogue: just make sure you have a quiet place w no external noises: believe it or not if you have the video on a laptop one of the best places to record is in your car away from everything:

Hey Lindbergh E Hollingsworth thank you. I did actually know about using your car. I've done a couple of voice overs like that and it was really funny too because my neighbors kept checking what was going on. They should be used to the crazy stuff in our house by now.

But yeah I could really do that, put footage on a tablet and use the recorder to record stuff and the talent can even listen to the recording with headphones from the tablet.

I thought so that they used a lot of ADR because there's now way you can get that clean sound on locations.

Vital Butinar sound is just a different animal and I always have the hardest time with it. It seems like the only way to catch the crispiest audio is to put the mic directly in the actor's face (not really), or do the car trick (which was one I did not know). All tricks of the trade I suppose.

Oscar Ordonez It is indeed another beast. I'm not sure I would recommend putting the actor in a car when you have the option to record on location. Silly as it seems, I would rather get room tone for that location, then get a few takes with just the director, sound, and talent in the exact same spot they did the scene/room tone - maybe throw up a few sound blankets on C-stands around them to cut down on surrounding noise - but I say that because the room tone changes when you go from say outside to inside. But I'd love to know from other sound guys if they would agree!

"Mic placement is more important than dampening audio", says one sound friend. "Doubling up on mics is another option. You can also build a sound booth on set to grab those lines" (again, blankets, C-stands, etc.) "If you record in a car, you'd still have to pad it with blankets and then some".

Karen "Kay" Ross Ahh old tricks of the trade hehe. Thank you!

Oscar Ordonez you're right but I've never looked at sound as something detached. I just haven't had much experience doing on set sound. But once upon a time I used to be a sound engineer at a recording studio and even before that I used to work on a radio station. But back then I was the only one playing around with digital technology and digital recording but then got out of it competently.

Found this video on ADR from Filmmaker IQ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lP_673W270Y

Thank you Karen "Kay" Ross . I've watched that also some time ago. Very interesting.

The history of cinema is really a "Grand Illusion". The more you break up the components of a film (sound, image, etc.) the greater control for sure. As tech gets better with location sound (a $100 Zoom recorder replaces a $5000 nagra!), it can work. I would guess that television with crazy turn-around schedules would need as much location sound as possible, at least indoors. Outdoors, is probably always going to be a battle. Any ambient sound changes you get can screw up the editing. As a composer, I've worked on a number of films where the audio was not great. Air-conditioners, planes, etc. all got in the way of editing from scene to scene. I can recommend this software for audio fixing, though. It's a great company, and this will likely take some time to learn. I use their plugins for mixing. https://www.izotope.com/en/shop/rx-8-standard.html Watch for holiday specials. This type of software is for DAW (Digital Audio Workstations like Logic, ProTools) not sure if it is something that can work with video editing software. https://www.izotope.com/en/shop/rx-8-elements.html - $29!

Amer Darwich thank you very much. Yes I know onsite audio is a problem especially out doors where you have a lot of ambient noises. But with this pilote we were fortunate to have shoot in secluded locations and only had two shots that we had to wait for a propeller plane to pass and another one for some machinery to stop working. No biggie.

Foley studios can be expensive. Unfortunately we don't really have the budget for anything with this pilote episode since we're producing it out of our own pocket. Which means a lot of work but at the same time presents some really cool opportunities to learn a couple of things in the process.

As for room ambient noise I believe you that it makes a difference. Many years ago I used to work at a sound studio that did band recordings and there was this internationally renowned sound engineer that used to record with some big names. The studio had like 5 mil. worth of equipment but he always brought his own Yamaha speakers and said I use them because they're just as bad as most headphones or car radios speakers. He said that if it sounded good on those speakers it would sound good on anything.

Ed Hartman yes problems with ambient sounds are a big issue. Last year we did a short film and in a time crunch when we were loosing darkness we were in a hurry and shot a scene in front of as a metal door that was hiding an AC air outlet with the microphone pointed directly towards the AC vent. There was so much noise that I wasn't even able to filter it out all the way.

But with this TV series pilot we were really lucky because we had lavs on the talent most of the time and shot on secluded locations outside. The only regret that I have is not shooting ambient sound which would make my life right now while editing a lot easier.

Hi Vital Butinar

I’m a production sound mixer.

Generally, filmmakers strive to AVOID using ADR as much as possible! Firstly, it can be prohibitively expensive to call talent back, book studio time and get the ADR to match the scenes in the edit.

When you wrote:

“I mean I keep thinking to myself why don't we just ADR everything and have clean sound” it was nearly heartbreaking! To sell the realism of the picture and preserve the original performance, the sound captured on location will be the most natural sounding.

Some directors think that wiring up everyone will help, but then your film will sound like television...lol.

Hiring a professional sound mixer AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE when crewing key departments can help you prepare to get better sound.

We always ask why are sound crew positions getting filled AFTER camera, lighting, art, wardrobe, etc?

Have them on at the beginning, bring them on location scouts, have them consult with wardrobe and allow them input on how to get the boom as close as possible so it sounds good BEFORE the DP chooses the widest lenses for critical dialogue.

Hope some of this helps!

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk...

Thank you Amer Darwich . Actually all the post is being done in Resolve anyway because everything was also shot in BRAW on the Pocket 4K with Rokinon and Canon lenses. The sound was actually shot on an Tascam DR60 MK2 and remote lav mics. So I'll try to do my best in Resolve although it's been many years since I've done sound and eve when I did it was for band music recordings.

Carl Welden thank you very much. I agree it's best to bring in the sound as soon as possible. In our case the producer who has some experience with it recorded the sound because of two reasons. The 1st one was because we wanted to keep the body count low due to corona rampaging around and the 2nd was because we basically didn't have a budget for the pilote episode and myself, ma girlfriend the DP and her sister the writer put up the money for transport, food, wardrobe and costumes. Thankfully we had all the equipment we needed or we could borrow it.

Recently my girlfriend and I worked on a project where we were camera operators and I see your point because the lighting was put up before deciding the blocking and a couple of times we had a lot of problems getting the shots. I'm guessing it's the same with sound so it really does make sense to get the sound engineer on it as soon as possible.

Vital Butinar

Countless postproduction sound problems can be solved during pre-production, or on set if given proper consideration. I urge you and other filmmakers to always bear in mind that the #1 reason most films get rejected from festivals is (you guessed it) bad sound!

If every location scout had something as simple as this handy PDF checklist (courtesy of Gotham Sound) you could get a head start on avoiding ADR!

www.gothamsound.com/pictures/docs/Locchecklist.pdf

Sometimes a little forethought can go a long way...

Carl Welden I agree with you completely and thank you.

I was really happy with our situation for this TV series pilot since we shot at really secluded locations and had them all to ourselves. The biggest problem we had was on top of a hill when we were shooting a high mountain scene and there was a plane that took off from a nearby airport and the other one was floorboards creaking if they shifted their weight inside. But both of them were minor problems.

Right now my biggest problem is that our producer who also shot the sound missed a couple of small things like a transmitter cutting out a little so I had to borrow sound from the other lav and the sound peaking when the actor shouted which I tried to fix but it didn't work. I guess I'm still looking for a solution for that. Other than that I thing everything else will be OK since I've stared laying down background noise, music and sound effects. It always surprises me how these things change the feel of the whole project since you've been watching the images for months but now there's suddenly color grading and sound added.