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Cowdog
Paso Robles California USA
CreativeCOW.net. All rights reserved.
At Creative COW, many of our audience work in the field of film, from those working with
small budget indie films that have been entered (and won) festivals like Sundance, all the
way up to major films like Hollywood blockbusters that have graced both the library and
the magazine here at Creative COW.
One of the interesting fields used in the production of films is the process of ADR:
"Additional Dialogue Recording" or, depending who you ask, "Automated Dialogue
Replacement." It also goes by names including "looping," and "post-sync. Whatever the
name, it means replacing spoken lines recorded on set or on location with audio recorded
in the studio.
The name "looping" refers to what often happens: actors re-record their lines while
watching their original performances in looped playback.
Dubbing is a more general term for generally replacing audio in post. At the "large" end of
the spectrum, entire movies can be dubbed from foreign languages into the local
languages. Or accents: all of the performances from the 1979 Australian film "Mad Max"
were dubbed for the US release -- except for one.(Nope, Mel Gibson wasn't the exception.
His voice was one of the ones dubbed.)
Sometimes, dubbing adds an actor's voice who didn't do the performance at all. The most
famous of these might be Darth Vader. Although David Prowse was the actor inside the
original costume, the character's voice was provided by James Earl Jones. (Cowdog is old
enough to feel strongly that this is the one and only way that Darth Vader was ever properly
portrayed, and will leave it at that.)
Dubbing has often been used to replace singing. Although actors frequently do their own
singing back in the studio, Mari Nixon is a singer who became famous for the actors whose
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singing she replaced, including Deborah Kerr in "The King and I," Audrey Hepburn in "My
Fair Lady," and Natalie Wood in "West Side Story." (In that movie, she even sings two of the
five voices in the song "Tonight!"
Dubbing is also sometimes used to refer to sounds, rather than voices, that are added in
post, more properly known as Foley.
Speaking of Foley, here's a great piece on the overall sound design of "Wall-E."
But no, ADR is very specific: voices, most often a line at a time. Sounds easy, right? Wrong.
There's a whole set of "gotchas" that are a library's worth of articles by themselves, around
the problem of making words spoken in the studio sound like they were actually recorded
on location.
James G. Stewart, head of post-production at RKO Studios, talks about one such challenge
when working with Orson Welles on "The Magnificent Ambersons."
There were six principals involved in the dialogue, and I recorded each one
separately to the picture. This was done without Orson being on the stage. I
then combined these tracks and rerecorded them with the necessary motor
noise of the old-type automobile.
On running the result with Orson, he said "It's all right technically, but it's no
good from the standpoint of realism. I don't feel that the people are in the
automobile. There's no sense of movement in their voices; they're not
responding to the movements of the car. The voices are much too static."
So I went back to the recording stage and redid all of the lines. This time they
were done with the actor or actress and myself seated on a twelve inch plank
suspended between saw-horses. As we watched the picture I simulated the
movement of the car by bouncing the performer and myself up and down on
the plank. After a week of bumping, I had a track which I then rerecorded and
ran for Welles. His only comment was "That's very good". Orson was not given to
exaggerated praise of anyone's efforts.
(Here's the rest of James's story.)
George Groves worked with Marlon Brando, a notorious mumbler who was also very happy
looping. "He was very affable about it, very nice. He came up in comfortable street clothes.
He lay down on the dubbing console while we were getting ready for the next loop and
was very relaxed and was most accommodating. He really was very nice. Some people are
just terrible, they go into tantrums over it."
It's not just a matter of getting words in sync. Actors also have to get their performances in
sync, matching the rhythms and intensities of their studio re-recordings with what
happened on the set, in context with the actors and events on screen.
As well as being a regular COW poster and the Principal Product Designer at Avid, Michael
Phillips runs Miledia Films. His most recent movie needed about 15 lines of ADR.
"About 97% of the recordings were fine, but some key lines were
over-modulated or off-mike. We tried fixing these in Pro Tools, but felt that
re-recording the lines would be the best way to go.
Because the set was integral to the look and sound of the recordings, we knew
we had to go back to the same location with the same microphones. On-set we
had a software Media Composer with the sections for each of the 4 actors
broken out for a loop play to match the final edit. We had small speakers for
them to hear to get their pacing and emotional level.
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You can also check out, "Dialogue Editing for Motion Pictures" in the COW's Amazon Store.
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And if you have questions about ADR for your own movies, and for anything audio, be sure
to check out the Cow's Audio Professionals forum. It's not just a community for people who
are audio pros. It's the perfect place for anyone to get advice from them, too.
View 14 Comment(s)
Audio Professionals Tutorials Audio Professionals Forum
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Comments
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Rich
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Prince: Musician
There are almost too many stories to tell about Prince Rogers Nelson and his sudden passing at age 57. Stories of the
dazzling star selling 100 million records, the explosive entertainer, the incendiary guitarist, the prolific composer, and
more. Instead, we focus on a story too easily lost in all this: a man who was all about the music, 24 hours a day.
Remarkable previously unseen footage of a playful Prince at an Osaka soundcheck in 1990 by Chainsaw Post GM Steve
Purcell, who worked with Prince for 6 years, sheds entirely new light on an artist you only thought you knew.
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Audio Professionals
Feature
Debra Kaufman
Audio Professionals
Drive garners Oscar Nom for Soundelux's Lon Bender and Victor Ennis Garner
Oscar nominated Soundelux Supervising Sound Editors Lon Bender and Victor Ray Ennis & team take the audience of
"Drive" on an aural trip.
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Review
Ronald Lindeboom
Audio Professionals
Sam McGuire demonstrates the quality and effectiveness of two sE Electronics' products. The USB2200a is a USB/XLR
hybrid microphone which is extremely low noise (I didn't believe it until I heard it.) The "Reflexion Filter" is an acoustics
baffle used to create a studio environment in any room. For a combined price of under $600 this is a relatively affordable,
portable, and high quality solution for all of your VO needs.
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