Hindenburg(TV 2011) ADR from Hell.

[BRANDON JAMESON]

Just had the pleasure and misfortune to sit through "Hindenburg"(TV 2011) .

The pleasure was ALL visual..the costumes,sets and cinematography were all a delight to behold, but the impossibly bad looping of most scenes made "Hindenburg" unviewable.

One wonders if the entire production's original on-set audio capture was lost or blew up with the ship.

 

[Marc Wielage]

My guess is because of the use of vast amounts of green screen VFX work, a lot of the production sound had to be used only as reference for ADR. Another movie that did the same thing was Avatar and I seem to recall they were nominated for an Oscar for Best Sound and Best Sound Editing. ADR is a necessary part of filmmaking, even under the best of circumstances, and it can be done well or done badly, depending mostly on time and money.

 

[BRANDON JAMESON]

My guess is because of the use of vast amounts of green screen VFX work, a lot of the production sound had to be used only as reference for ADR. Another movie that did the same thing was Avatar and I seem to recall they were nominated for an Oscar for Best Sound and Best Sound Editing. ADR is a necessary part of filmmaking, even under the best of circumstances, and it can be done well or done badly, depending mostly on time and money.

IMPO: This ADR was done badly and made the film unwatchable.

 

[Bruce Allen]

Hilarious! Yeah, green screen work confuses me.

With green screen work it is really easily to get the mics super close: just put them in the shot and cut them out later!

A lot of people don't seem to do that though. Instead you just have greenscreen stages with awful acoustics, buzzing lights... and of course mics that for some reason have to be out of camera frame so they are too far away. So folks use lavs. Sigh.

Since I come from a VFX background but I understand sound too: if I'm doing both directing and am on the post side too (EG most of the time I move the mic way into the shot to get better sound.

if I'm shooting green screen or locked off - eg as long as it's not in front of something moving, all good.

It costs way less to paint out the mic with a clean plate (or just cut it out if it's green screen) than re-record the audio - and trying to recreate performances after the fact just sucks!

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Vince Sweeney]

ADR is a necessary part of filmmaking, even under the best of circumstances, and it can be done well or done badly, depending mostly on time and money.

Not 100%. Much of Kubrick's work had little to no ADR.

My own feature had 0% because of good location scouting, a careful sound mixer (who also boomed himself, doc. style) and maybe some luck.

 

[Marc Wielage]

With green screen work it is really easily to get the mics super close: just put them in the shot and cut them out later!

You gotta wonder why they chose to do so much ADR on Avatar. The answer is: if the actors' dialogue is supposed to be in a vast, CG forrest, but they're really in a vast warehouse with a concrete floor and green walls, it's gonna sound like a warehouse no matter how you mic it. The best you can hope for is getting a good guide track.

Many of the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings films are the same way: wall-to-wall ADR. Sometimes, it's done for performance, sometimes for consistency. There's tons of ADR in the recent Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz -- same deal. It's not a question of using garbage mattes to remove the mic -- it's a question of sound tonality, performance, and consistency. There's much more to getting good sound than just sticking the mic in the right place, since the environment ​affects sound quality so much.

Not 100%. Much of Kubrick's work had little to no ADR. My own feature had 0% because of good location scouting, a careful sound mixer (who also boomed himself, doc. style) and maybe some luck.

Percentages were not a consideration of my original statement. Every movie is different, and much depends on available time, budget, and the expectations of the filmmakers, as well as the challenges of the specific locations and stages used during production.

My contention has always been that a location sound mixer cannot mix and boom simultaneously and achieve great results. I think it can be acceptable for documentaries and reality situations, but it's not ideal. I think it's very foolhardy for scripted projects to avoid a good boom op, since having one will easily save you 30-40 minutes a day (minimum), which is generally worth far more than their daily salary. I have heard low-budget indies that had zero ADR that were all over the place in terms of sound quality, but the filmmakers were ignorant of the methods available or were short on time and money. I hear a lot of very dodgy dialogue getting "saved" in current network TV shows, and that's more a problem of time than money. If you can get a location line to work even with 1/3 the quality, at least that saves a day or so of ADR. Many re-recording mixers now have the tools to make this happen, but it's still a compromise.

 

[Doug Beatty]

I always think of the 'Good-Fast-Cheap' mantra when I'm called on to do sound. In production life, you can only achieve two of these things, but not all three.

Unfortunately in my case, 9 times out of 10 it has already been decided that cheap is one of those two, and it never fails that some of those producers expect good and fast to come along as well.

The worst part is when they realize after the fact that it will cost more money to fix rushed set-ups on noisy locations with a one man sound department. At that point it's in the producer's hands to opt for fast or good. And it's obvious what wins out the majority of the time.

I can't tell you how many time my scratch tracks have been used in a final edit just because they don't want to spend any money on audio post.

How would you feel if you were the DP and production 'didn't have the budget' for an AC and then went ahead and used your ungraded dailies for the the on-line edit? Also, you are expected to bring your own camera, lenses, and support and just maybe they will give you a third of your asking price for your kit.

 

[Vince Sweeney]

Good thing I didn't have to rush anyone and I thought ahead = great, usable sound with surprise and compliments from the sound designer.