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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

if you could ADR everything, would you?

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Simon Lok

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If you could ADR everything (without changing budget) in an environment without noise on a Neumann U-87... would you?
 
The results would be optimally awesome, but that sounds really time intensive. Does the budget allow for that much studio time? Distant perspective or outdoor stuff is tuff to generate artificially and some sound effects are less natural during real dialogue takes. Also, there is the performance issue. On set, voice projection naturally accounts for ambient noises.

Voice resonance and reverb are tricky to duplicate, which can add sound engineering costs. In the booth, the talent really has to stay on point with the scene direction. Also, if the booth audio needs to match any production audio, it may affect which microphone(s) should be used. That's where the field notes of the mixer/sound person will be handy.

Those would my early caveats. against 100%. But of course technically, not is impossible.
 
No, I like to work from the production audio. The performances are always better than ADR. The actors have each other. Nothing honest ever happens in an ADR performance. Some actors are better depending on experience but in any case, ADR is a hack. If you do a good job on set there's no need and the ambient sound, even if it's just room tone, is better than starting from silence.

When I do have to ADR I use the hyper I shot with, not my large diaphram studio mic. It's too rich. It'd take too much effort to EQ them to match and get the right ambience.

Dialog edits take enough time as it is. For me, ADR is a costly fix to a mistake on set.
 
Bob Gundu said:
Ha ha. India style. Everything is ADR.
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Agree, a trick I'm doing with indie ADR is I normally have very few set locations, so can setup time to do the ADR in the same room that the shot was done at but with just minimal gear (i.e. so the reverb sound is just perfect, makes my low budget film sound high budget). For indie I work with C level actors, so really like to mix the shot performance to the audio performance (i.e. it's rare the good shot has a decent audio performance).
 
PatrickFaith said:
Agree, a trick I'm doing with indie ADR is I normally have very few set locations, so can setup time to do the ADR in the same room that the shot was done at but with just minimal gear (i.e. so the reverb sound is just perfect, makes my low budget film sound high budget). For indie I work with C level actors, so really like to mix the shot performance to the audio performance (i.e. it's rare the good shot has a decent audio performance).
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Clever
 
Simon Lok said:
If you could ADR everything (without changing budget) in an environment without noise on a Neumann U-87... would you?
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No. Not unless I had millions of dollars in post to sync it up perfectly.

I worked on an indie comedy where a decision was made to ADR the main character...and it never flowed/looked as good as the original voice. It was a major dissapoinment and learning experience.
 
Nick Morrison said:
No. Not unless I had millions of dollars in post to sync it up perfectly.

I worked on an indie comedy where a decision was made to ADR the main character...and it never flowed/looked as good as the original voice. It was a major dissapoinment and learning experience.
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Well one cheat I have seen you using a lot Nick, is blending the "interview" with the live shot sound(it's not exactly ADR, it feels even more natural). You've aligned the sound eq so perfectly where I forget if the person's is talking from the interview or if the sound is coming from the live shot. Also the interview location sound I bet is 90% of the time not on the same day, and/or even location ... but it sounds like some one just walked in from the live shot and sat at a table in the same environment.
 
No..................
 
Simon Lok said:
If you could ADR everything (without changing budget) in an environment without noise on a Neumann U-87... would you?
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ADR is most commonly not chosen before the shooting but during or after, if the set dialogue sound is crap or cannot be shot.

If it is a lower budget production that route is overly optimistic. For this to be done right proper sound post and experienced actors are a prerequisite.


Regarding mics, they typically match the ones used on set.
 
PatrickFaith said:
Well one cheat I have seen you using a lot Nick, is blending the "interview" with the live shot sound(it's not exactly ADR, it feels even more natural). You've aligned the sound eq so perfectly where I forget if the person's is talking from the interview or if the sound is coming from the live shot. Also the interview location sound I bet is 90% of the time not on the same day, and/or even location ... but it sounds like some one just walked in from the live shot and sat at a table in the same environment.
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Oh totally - you can layer music under an interview, and compress/eq their voices so they cut through the piece dramatically (so much so you forget when/where interview was done...)

But ADRing and replacing someones on camera performance...so it lines up....is SO hard in my experience...
 
I often wish I could but it's truly harder to replicate the exact performance. Harder for the actors, harder for the editors, harder to look and sound real. It's not impossible but it's no fun. Last resort for me.
 
Nick Morrison said:
Oh totally - you can layer music under an interview, and compress/eq their voices so they cut through the piece dramatically (so much so you forget when/where interview was done...)

But ADRing and replacing someones on camera performance...so it lines up....is SO hard in my experience...
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This.
 
Simon Lok said:
If you could ADR everything (without changing budget) in an environment without noise on a Neumann U-87... would you?
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No, because it would sound phony and lack the perspective and organic quality of real life. More importantly, the actors have a completely different kind of emotion when they're sipping a Starbucks and relaxing on a stool in a comfortable Hollywood VO booth compared to running ragged on a film set when they've been there for 12 hours and everybody's about to go into overtime. I would equate it to doing an entire movie without sets and shooting it 100% greenscreen. It can work under extraordinary conditions (I would point to Jungle Book as a recent example), but it's hard to beat real locations and sets that actors can see and react to.

There are actors who are said to really enjoy ADR, to the point that they literally create the performance in post. Johnny Depp is one of them. But I think actors like this are few and far between, and a lot of them are frightened of the ADR process, plus they can't necessarily recreate the performance they did live on camera 6 months ago because they're now in a completely different emotional place.

If you're just trying to get great dialogue, the rules are: shoot in a good location optimized for sound (without distracting background sound). Use top-quality mics and recorders. Get the mics close to the actors. Use experienced people to record the sound. There's more to it than that, but that's a big part of it.

BTW, note that ADR is almost always part of every decent-budget film ever made, because there are always situations that demand it. The director may choose to rewrite a scene long after it's shot, and if two lines will cover that change, it's possible to record those and match them to the location material. There's also times when the actor's performance is just not very good on set, and the actor and director realize they can improve the reading later on.

There are also options to ADR: 1) record every actor on an isolated wireless track, which is often done for TV these days, giving you the flexibility of using the overhead boom or a lav depending on what you need in terms of position and sound quality; 2) record alternate lines on set while the actors are there but under better conditions for sound. I've grabbed actors and dragged them into a closet just to get their lines when they were standing next to a lawn mower or a water fountain or some other noisy situation, and more often than not, these lines wind up getting into the project. You might call it "ADR on location," just giving the editor more choices to carve out a better performance for the actors.

John Purcell's Dialogue Editing for Motion Pictures: The Invisible Art goes into a lot of this in great detail.
 
Julio Quintana said:
Performance performance performance. If you're trying to capture emotional performances, do your best to capture good audio on set. If the most important thing is clean audio, make radio commercials.
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This

While impossible during intense scenes with practical VFX etc. for pure performance scenes NEVER use ADR if it isn't to change the acting by purpose. Maybe the physical performance in one take was better than the one with the best voice performance. Sometimes you could use the sound from another take, but sometimes you need ADR to manage it.

The worst part of ADR is that it's very hard to get it sounding right, most of the times you can hear that the voice doesn't exist in the environment it was recorded. I would actually recommend using the same gear as on set, finding a location that has the same acoustics as the original location and do ADR for that scene there.
 
Ever see one of those commercials when they ADR the whole thing? They just always seem fake. The last thing you want is great sound and the feeling of a fake performance.

My secret wish is that ADR is for emergencies and off camera dialog. The eyes, the face and the sound "on the day" matter as a complete performance package.

David
 
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