ADR help

Lake Films

Lake Films

Veteran
Hey guys. I shot a scene in a diner and when editing it, I realized the sound was just too bad, machines in B'grnd etc... So, I had the 2 actors do ADR, and it worked out great, lips match up perfect. By, the way, I used a H4n, worked like a charm. Crisp, clean dialogue. But, the thing is, when I laid in the dialogue, it seems strange, unnatural. I went back to the diner today and got some ambient sound, and that helped a lot. Should I be adding a filter to the dialogue, reverb, etc.. Or lot's of sound effect tracks? Thanks for any help.
 
The problem is a a proximity effect. The closer the spoken voice to our ear / a mic, the more low resonance and the more crispness in the consonants.

When recording use a mic you'd use on location and don't put it closer than 2 feet or so if your in a quiet enough environment.

to EQ:
Drop off 100 hz entirely

experiment cutting back in 250 hz to 500 hz, the further away you want it to sound, the closer to 500 hz

if the consonants are too crisp, cut back in 3K to 4K. Often in location dialogue you boost here for clarity. With ADR, you may have to cut back here some.

if it's too harsh cut back around 12K

...

Reverb.

Use reverb sparingly on the voices and apply the same reverb to everything else to place them all in the same room.

Recently, in FCP for a scene taking place in a bar in early evening (so not very crowded), I used FCP's reverb "medium room" set to "5" (on settings of 1-50 ( think). All ambient noise had the same reverb applied to it but cranked up a bit more, 12 - 20.

And yes - foley helps a lot. Every misdirection you can give to the viewer that this was recorded on location helps.
 
Also ... forgot pitch. In a noisier environment our voice tends to be slightly higher pitched. So on location with refrigerators or traffic or whatever, or even when it's quiet but that would be there in the scene in real life, actors may pitch up. In the recording booth, in absolute quiet and relaxed they may pitch down. So ... it may help to raise the pitch slightly. In soundtrack pro, I used the pitch tool set to 0 semitones, "cents" to 50, mixed to full. This is less than a "half step" in music terms, but can help.

Also this:
http://www.digitalprosound.com/2002/03_mar/tutorials/mixing_excerpt1.htm

OH ... and try to monitor on a good pair of reference speakers as opposed to headphones. Reason being that with headphones ambient noise will be much louder / seem more present than on speakers. So when you take your cans off and monitor on speakers or hear it for the first time in real world conditions - that ambient noise that you thought you might have been overdoing or had just a touch too loud, will fall off and just disappear on speakers, leaving your voices sounding nakey again.
 
Lol, 'nakey' that's the word.
This was my first attempt at ADR and I have to say I enjoyed it. To know there's always a 'solution' is a good thing. Years ago, we'd be screwed unless we were hollywood...
 
Add a TOUCH of reverb. If you can tell its there without soloing the dialog, it's probably too much.
 
Hey Jack, just wanted to also chime in with a big THANKS. That's some very helpful information for my own ADR attempts.
 
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