What's the point of getting sound in a difficult situation?

C

c.g._eads

Veteran
I'm going to be shooting a lot of dialogue scenes in a car. People keep telling me things like "get a lot of room tone cause you're going to be doing a ton of ADR". And I just thought, "what's the point?" I mean, I might as well not shoot any sound at all and just ADR everything. That way I don't go through the hassle and time of making sure the audio is recording since a bunch of it isn't going to be useable anyway and even the stuff that is useable probably won't sound right next to my ADR'd dialogue. At what point is it just not worth recording sound?

Chris
 
When you do the adr later, you need someting for the adr software to "lock" to. You should try to get the best sound possible.

It is not too hard to get good sound inside a car either.

Frankly I think you are being kind of lazy,

Sorry, I probably shouldn't have said that.
 
Yes, of course I would get SOME sound so it's easier to sync to later. But I mean, how much sound, on average, is useable if you're shooting on location? Your experiences?

I heard Star Wars' audio was 85% unuseable.
 
Use the dialogue you capture live as a reference track (for ADR) if it's not usable itself.
 
ADR costs $250/ hour here in Seattle. You can spend hours and hours doing minutes of film. With a minimum investment hiring a sound person with their own gear, you can save tons and tons of money.
 
saneproductions said:
ADR costs $250/ hour here in Seattle.
Click to expand...
Plus, you'll have the additional expense of bringing in the actors for the loop session. Not to mention the cost of recording foley for the scenes in question.

Micing two people having a conversation in a moving car is pretty straight forward, you're just unlikely to be able to use a boom. Try mic'ing the talent with wired lav's. I've even known people to attach boundary mic's to the sun visors, although I haven't tried that myself. You're dealing with a tight space with very little reverb, and all sorts of places where you can plant mics. Watch out for reflections from the windows, though, since you can run into phase issues that way.

Of course, unless you're towing the car you'll have to work around engine noise, but even that should be altogether manageable. Whenever possible, get the actors to mime actions such as switching on the radio or starting the car: its much easier to cut in a radio click or an engine startup than it is to ADR around it.

If you're shooting with the windows down or in a a convertible you may have to put some extra wind protection on the mics (eg. the microcat), but the actors will tend to speak much more loudly.

I daresay its a heck of a lot easier to record dialogue in a moving car than it is to frame, light and shoot in one.

Plus, even if you choose to ADR all or part of the scene, you'll benefit greatly from having well-recorded production sound as a guide.

On the topic of room tone: grab that tone whether or not you're expecting to record ADR. Even without ADR to patch up, that minute of room tone recording will probably save your dialogue editor hours of scouring the production rolls to find that perfect 1/4 second of RT.
 
every shot is different but there are some rules you can follow get usable sound on moving car .
close the windows as much as possible , use cars with benzine engine not diesel , close the air condition during the shot .
if you work with open windows , mic the people or use directional mics from the visors or place directional mic from bellow on the passenger sit
tell the actors not mumbling
if you mic them with lavalieres , check if the sit belt doesnt add extra noise
lock the gear box on 3rd gear ( automatic gear box) so there will be no change on engine sound .
clean the car from any junk which makes noise .
check the roads you are going to shoot , some have more noise from the tieers and some less , of course less bumps will be grate ,
if you have possibility for extra channels - place as much as possible microphones ( the driver s turning heads inside the car if he speaks with the back sits ) ,
its not 100 on every shot but you can get enough if you working right way

remember you can clean allot of dialog later , you can add radio in the back ground to masquerade and you can save quit allot of money not doing adr
the best if you not sure you can make these shotes alone bring experience sound man with extra gear
if you plan side shotes from the side windows , you can make plexi glass with lens hole to minimize the wind noise .
check that your nd gels are tights on the windows not to make aditional noise ,
the same is for the constructions and floppy you put on the front window not get flar .

the sound is not only depends on the sound man alon , it more about how much your grip is working with you and cooperation with others departments .
when i say people that flexibility in different mics is much important then small number of extra good mics i meaning exactly your situation .

pzms for people on the backs sits working quit well with close windows
 
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never dont record sound. its obvious you've never attempted ADR without a guide track. its hell and it never works out as nicely as you'd hope. even if it DOES work, its gonna take more than twice the time of ADR with a guide track.

oleg has pretty much given you every tip going for cars.

whats worked for me before in situations where I didnt have a bunch of mics was two hypers in an X/Y configuration crossed on the dash behind the gearstick pointing up at the actors. worked great.

I've also used that technique in combination with a CUB-01 on the roof to fill in for head turns etc etc.
 
Why not rent one of those low trailers from U-haul that you just put the front wheels of the car on and tow the thing. Leave the engine, radio and everything else turned off. If they need to drive the car so you can get a shot from the backseat looking out the windshield, then you can put a lav on the actors collar as it wont be seen from that angle anyway.
Always record sound in dialog scenes when you can see the actors lips moving or you will be screwed trying to get good adr.
 
I agree with everything said above, but want to reiterate a couple of things -

As an actor and a sound guy, there is nothing worse that trying to ADR without any scratch track to match to. Often ADR happens weeks or months after the shoot, when the actor has moved on to other projects and may not even remember your project.

As a sound guy, getting sound in an auto is not that difficult. Many good suggestions have been offered above. You might also want to check out Matt's clip from a few weeks ago showing the performance of the G2 - with a earth-mover type of tractor running behind the person talking. The lav audio track was very usable.

Finally, your comment about Star Wars. Often on these large budget, special-effects laden movies there is so much noise generated by the effects that it can make the dialogue un-usable. If you ever get a chance to watch the WOW video from THX, you can see how they had to layer a scene from Indiana Jones together because all of the on-set recorded dialogue was drowned out by all the effects.

HTH,

Phil
 
totally. your ADR to production sound ratio will be radically different from film to film, usually as a result of what genre you're shooting.

its totally normal to have a lot of ADR in big action or effects driven films, but movies that rely on straightforward narrative can be 80% production audio, and even all the way up to 100%.

its a relative figure... it doesnt mean that action movies dont hire sound guys. so there's an answer for your "should I record sound" question.
 
c.g._eads said:
I heard Star Wars' audio was 85% unuseable.
Click to expand...
The "virtual backlot" production methodology introduces a number of sound problems. For one thing, green- and blue-screen studio spaces are often very accoustically live (smooth, hard walls, etc.) This is can make it very difficult to achieve the propper audio perspective when a studio shot is going to be relocated in post-production to an exterior space. since removing reverb is analogous to pulling the eggs out of a freshly baked cake, ADR becomes a neccesity.

Also, very little of the production foley will be useable. Since the actors are generally walking on either cement or painted plywood, their footsteps will have to be replaced as surely as the green spaces they're shot against. Moreover, any situations where innapropriate production foley coincides with dialogue are a problem. Generally, lines of dialogue that have footsteps (or other innapropriate production sounds) during them will have to be replaced in ADR.

Add to that obvious problems of effects equipment such as wind machines, and the ADR requirements start to really stack up. At some point, individual scenes reach a tipping point where its more efficient to ADR the entire scene rather than match ADR with production sound.

Nonetheless, as many have already stated on this thread, poorly recorded production sound will make the ADR sessions drastically more difficult (both for the ADR recordist and editor and for the actors themselves). Furthermore, when production dialogue is missing, satisfactory ADR can actually be impossible to achieve without a skilled lipreader.
 
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