Help! Suggestions for editing cars passing by through takes

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finklefilms

Active member
Hi folks. I have a few scenes in my film where we were unable to control the traffic going by. Having only one camera the sound of a car going by sometimes gets abruptly cut off when I need to switch to the other angle. Any suggestions for continuing the sound into the other take?

I would just extend the sound from the other clip but the actor begins talking right away. Any suggestions would be great. Thanks.
 
Go back to the location and record sounds of cars coming by with the same mic. Then overlay the background track over the entire scene.
 
What Huy Vu said. Plus you might want to consider doing ADR for that scene and then just add the BG track. Can be really effective if you get a relatively 'dead' room for your actor's voice work even on a small/non-existent budget.
 
More importantly if deciding to do ADR, make sure your talents are lip-synced. A quiet room would be ideal, but getting the right tone and sync is less forgiving.
 
True that! Lips which aren't in sync are going to really put a downer on things, not least because you'll have to get your talent back in. Plus, when doing ADR make sure you equalize the right frequencies to match what your viewer is watching. Voices outside usually lose some of the bassier frequencies (and by 'lose' I mean the listener doesn't percieve them as much) A quiet room is fine but make sure it is a relatively dead room. One of the tell tale signs of bad ADR is reverb when there should be none (or the wrong type).
I hope this helps a little.
Cheers
 
is there somewhere on another take the sound of a car passing, without dialogue over it. use the sencond half of it.
 
I had exactly this situation with a film I worked on a while back. Our first pass I just extended all the car by's and it smoother all the cuts but it was too busy for the mood of the scene so I ADR'd the scene. I recommend that you do the whole scene if you do any of it and don't worry about the same mic and DON'T EQ while you record. Matching and fitting is posts job (even if it's just one person doing it all). Your job recording the ADR is to get the best performance as cleanly as poss. Also with in reason don't sweat sync. I mean try to get it close but performance is crucial and sync can be adjusted in post. Also it is not all that important to have the same mic to go out and record car by's if you opt to just fill. They won't be the same cars anyway. When I did the fill they were with cars I recorded about three years earlier for a completely different film. It was a totally different rig and the recordings were stereo. Your creating a reality not trying to document it.

Anyway I have before and after clips of this scene on my web site under film clips.
askinc.net

After doing the ADR it was very intimate and "classic movie" sounding, nice but it we decided that as nice and romantic as it was it really needed to get dirtied up a bit to fit the rest of the film. So I added a touch of slap-back echo to the dialog EQed the dialog to thin it out a bit. If you go this route it's important to also Foley the scene.
 
I really really want to avoid ADR. The recording I have is great and the actors come in super clear. How would you recommend tagging the cut off cars goign by with ones from other takes in the same environment. Any things I should make sure I do/don't do. Thanks a lot for all your suggestions.
 
finklefilms said:
I really really want to avoid ADR. The recording I have is great and the actors come in super clear. How would you recommend tagging the cut off cars goign by with ones from other takes in the same environment. Any things I should make sure I do/don't do. Thanks a lot for all your suggestions.
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It's pretty straight forward sound editing. You have a car come in and it gets cut off. Find a car by that sounds like the car cut off the beginning and fade it in just before the other one gets cut off. If at all poss fade the audio on the outs, not always poss if actors are stepping on lines. Mix till the levels flow smoothly and move to the next one. Might also help to slather a little appropriate background around to smooth the BG jump on the cuts.
 
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