All sound in post...

This is a really interesting discussion: people seem very polarized on this ADR issue, on this board and all over the industry. I'm now a little shy to admit that I'm also currently starting on a project that is nearly 100% ADR, on a 6-page script with a <$500 budget. Shooting began last week.

We decided to do a lot of ADR because the script calls for about 75% of our dialogue to be shot on a bus. We have a cooperative and friendly network of transit service support for this project but no closed sets. So, we chose ADR because:

1) We need to shoot at the back of the bus. The diesel enginge noise there is unbelievable, comes from every direction, no mic pattern will exclude it.
2) There are constant automatic announcements over the PA that announce the name of the next bus stop. Every 2 blocks. Very loud.
3) We need a small footprint. 2 Actors, director, DP. That's it. Audio guy would make it 25% harder to get away with our open-set shoot and then we've got to add wires, boom etc. We have a limited supply of goodwill, and audio gear would spend it fast.
4) We've got all the time in the world, and no money. That means wireless lav mics and other solutions that may solve some of the problems above aren't available to us, but painstaking audio editing hours don't cost us anything.

We've devloped a couple of strategies that we're hoping will sell the ADR in these scenes better than the average indie film:

1) Record the dubbed audio in an acoustic environment similar to a bus interior, not in a studio.
2) Use a microphone type and distance that we would have used had the shoot been on-location sound, even if that "degrades" sound quality.
3) Get the best-on-camera shotgun sound we can manage, as reference and as back-up foley
4) Pay a ton of attention to foley, and always record that foley using a microphone placed in nearly the same position as the talent's boom mic would have been had we recorded on-location sound.

Do you think we're on track to pull this off? ADR was never our first choice, but it's something we didn't want to be frightening away from doing. Any MOS-sound suggestions from the experts here would be greatly appreciated.
 
Eric Ferguson said:
This is a really interesting discussion: people seem very polarized on this ADR issue, on this board and all over the industry. I'm now a little shy to admit that I'm also currently starting on a project that is nearly 100% ADR, on a 6-page script with a <$500 budget. Shooting began last week.

We decided to do a lot of ADR because the script calls for about 75% of our dialogue to be shot on a bus. We have a cooperative and friendly network of transit service support for this project but no closed sets. So, we chose ADR because:

1) We need to shoot at the back of the bus. The diesel enginge noise there is unbelievable, comes from every direction, no mic pattern will exclude it.
2) There are constant automatic announcements over the PA that announce the name of the next bus stop. Every 2 blocks. Very loud.
3) We need a small footprint. 2 Actors, director, DP. That's it. Audio guy would make it 25% harder to get away with our open-set shoot and then we've got to add wires, boom etc. We have a limited supply of goodwill, and audio gear would spend it fast.
4) We've got all the time in the world, and no money. That means wireless lav mics and other solutions that may solve some of the problems above aren't available to us, but painstaking audio editing hours don't cost us anything.

We've devloped a couple of strategies that we're hoping will sell the ADR in these scenes better than the average indie film:

1) Record the dubbed audio in an acoustic environment similar to a bus interior, not in a studio.
2) Use a microphone type and distance that we would have used had the shoot been on-location sound, even if that "degrades" sound quality.
3) Get the best-on-camera shotgun sound we can manage, as reference and as back-up foley
4) Pay a ton of attention to foley, and always record that foley using a microphone placed in nearly the same position as the talent's boom mic would have been had we recorded on-location sound.

Do you think we're on track to pull this off? ADR was never our first choice, but it's something we didn't want to be frightening away from doing. Any MOS-sound suggestions from the experts here would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...


This is a situation were ADR is needed. And it's good you thought about it from the start.
 
There is always a way to do it "not right" and there is always someone who celebrates their way of "making it work." Regardless of how different it would make the dialog sound by not recording it in an actual location, the loss of emotion due to the ADR takes a toll. Getting actors to hang out and redo an entire film......what were you paying them? I'm guessing not SAG scale.

Bottom line: if Hollywood could save money doing it this way, they would. They don't. But don't let that stop YOU. You may eventually create a new workform.

However, if you have the right gear and people who know how to use it, the job gets done easily and sounds great.
 
In situations of buses, cars and other motorized vehicles you can always pretend driving. Or using a sort of "truck" (trailer).
 
My philosophy is to make the best final product I can. If I can't make a bus scene work with location sound, and if ADR will end up looking like dubbed Italian film, then I bend the parameters of the film to play off my strengths. Will the story suffer if there is no bus scene? How about putting them in a nice quiet rickshaw? That's right - do the scene where it will actually work for all the elements. It's only art - you can make it work. If you only work within your strengths (on the real projects - of course experiment on the fun stuff) then you come off looking more masterful, which in turn will make the film look professional all the way through.

I would try some test ADR sessions with the actors involved and see if they can even do it. Then decide if you need to try a different approach.

I think the polarization on the ADR issue is that the "anti" adr people are being realistic about what the final product will be. If you don't have the budget to do it right then it won't look right, so don't attempt it unless it will pass as natural looking/sounding.
 
I defintiely agree that for a low-budget/no-budget production the best way to get a result that will make you look masterful is to design a film around the resources that you've got; make your rodriguez list or whatever, and work within it.

But when it comes to short films--learning projects--I think it's valuable to do all that but throw in one, or two high-production-value tricks that probably don't belong in your tiny film, and just put a ton of energy into doing that one thing right. For some films, that means a gunfire scene which you carefully choreograph to use digial squibs and easy practical effects, ending up with a meticuliously executed action sequence that elevates your film to a new level. Or it flops. Lesson learned either way.

For us, our one thing the bus dialog. In every other way the film is technically simple, but we were told from the get-go that bus dialog on open sets would be next to impossible, because of the noise and because of those PA announcements. But we're going to do it anyway, and ADR is our movie-magic trick to make it happen. We're committed to doing the best possible job, and with only a few pages of script to loop in post, we can really focus on making it work.

Actors are non-union students. Their time is valuable, but they knew about this from the beginning, and are committed. It's a 5-minute film. No one's time is being wasted.

You know, it's worth noting that this holy grail of "in-the-moment" location performance may be a little generalized: it's not impossible to imagine a scene in which the actors actually give a better performance in studio than they did on set, and indeed many actors talk about ADR as a second chance at the delivery that they're glad to have. Not saying ADR will save all your bad performances, but it seems short-sigted to insist that it will ruin all your good ones.
 
Well they do a lot of ADR in Bollywood (not Hollywood) and no one seems to mind, but I think it depends on where you want to draw the line. I don't know many actors who like doing ADR for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is getting anywhere near the moment they were in when they performed the line. Actors aren't Pez dispensers, there's more to it than that and micro timing of a line is pretty important.

You may be more successful at it than some i have heard, (and if I had heard one of your ADR scenes and couldn't tell it was ADR, then good for you. There is frequently a disconnect between the actor on screen and the actor's ADR voice that yanks my ear.
 
Eric,

First off good attitude and I agree totally with the short as an experiment. You are NOT going to get your production costs back on a short, there just isn't a market. So you either need to do it for fun, completely acceptable (as long as you don't get delusional), as a calling card, or as a learning experiment. The last two sort of go together since what good is a calling card if it doesn't push the edge a bit.

ADR is doable and with high quality even on a low budget. But it isn't easy. As a learning experiment this is a good situation to do it in because folks were correct. Getting decent dialog in a moving bus with non actors on the bus would be next to impossible. Get LOTS of coverage (sound wise) on the bus. Have someone ride for an hour or so and just record the bus and the people.

Also good idea to record ADR in situ so to speak. I have done something like that on a bunch of low budget films and it is much easier to make it sit in the scene. Since this will be a relatively quiet place make sure the actors talk as loud as they would have to to on an actual moving bus. The inappropriate speaking level is one of those dead giveaways for ADR.
When shooting limit the amount of time when you NEED tight lip sync. If you only need a few words at a time with tight sync your saving a lot of grief.

And a lot depends on the actors. You never know who will be a breeze in ADR. Some actors you would never suspect just nail ADR and others you would think could do it in their sleep never get it right. With the right software and plugins you can get amazing results with ADR. With none of that and a lot of luck you can also.

Also make sure the actors react to the bus movement. If the bus jerks in the shot have the actor jerk when they talk, it sounds different. Those little touches will help a lot.

And Finally this isn't just about ADR. If you ADR a scene you NEED to Foley it also. You need cloth, and well everything that isn't dialog. The lack of all the "other sounds" that would be there if you recorded it live NEED to be there or it will never ring true.

BUT if you pull it off it is VERY cool. If nobody picks out the ADR you feel like you just pulled off a great magic trick. Well actually you did.


Eric Ferguson said:
I defintiely agree that for a low-budget/no-budget production the best way to get a result that will make you look masterful is to design a film around the resources that you've got; make your rodriguez list or whatever, and work within it.

But when it comes to short films--learning projects--I think it's valuable to do all that but throw in one, or two high-production-value tricks that probably don't belong in your tiny film, and just put a ton of energy into doing that one thing right. For some films, that means a gunfire scene which you carefully choreograph to use digial squibs and easy practical effects, ending up with a meticuliously executed action sequence that elevates your film to a new level. Or it flops. Lesson learned either way.

For us, our one thing the bus dialog. In every other way the film is technically simple, but we were told from the get-go that bus dialog on open sets would be next to impossible, because of the noise and because of those PA announcements. But we're going to do it anyway, and ADR is our movie-magic trick to make it happen. We're committed to doing the best possible job, and with only a few pages of script to loop in post, we can really focus on making it work.

Actors are non-union students. Their time is valuable, but they knew about this from the beginning, and are committed. It's a 5-minute film. No one's time is being wasted.

You know, it's worth noting that this holy grail of "in-the-moment" location performance may be a little generalized: it's not impossible to imagine a scene in which the actors actually give a better performance in studio than they did on set, and indeed many actors talk about ADR as a second chance at the delivery that they're glad to have. Not saying ADR will save all your bad performances, but it seems short-sigted to insist that it will ruin all your good ones.
Click to expand...
 
Thanks. This thread has been so helpful, I hope I haven't hijcaked it from the OP too extensively. "Cloth" gave me something to google and I now have a whole new category of foley to record, although our sit-and-talky bus scenes probably won't require too much of that.

I read that Orson Welles put his actors on a plank and yanked the plank up and down as his actors delivered their ADR car scenes; maybe we should do the same!

I would love to see examples of another low budget film that has some ADR dialogue, whether it's good or bad. Searching "ADR test" on Vimeo turns up some examples that mostly fall into the mic too close/no foley category.

Just occured to me that every musical sequence I've ever seen in a film was almost certainly ADR. Maybe audio feeling "out of place" in that situation is expected though.

If you listen to Rodriguez's director's commentary on El Mariachi he tells you how he did the dialog on set, which had to be non-sync because he was shooting 16mm on a very noisy camera that had no sound. He had a tape recorder into which he had his actors repeat their lines right after they delivered them. They didn't get to watch it, or hear it back, just "do it like that, again!" as he passed them a cheap radio-shack mic. Any other action happening in the room like walking or gunfire was also repeated during the "sound take", and that was his foley. He made sure to shoot at least one take of the scene with no mouths visible, as an emergency cutting room bail-out strategy.

My spanish is not great, but I never stopped and said "HEY! That dialogue was out of place!" the first time I watched the film, because the story was strong and the environment of the audio was right. That's what I'm going for: a bit of magic that doesn't take the audience out of the piece.
 
It's interesting you mention Orson Welles. I remember reading he preferred ADR to get it right. And supposedly Marlon Brando mumbled his lines so he'd be forced to do ADR, where he could do it right.

On another note, most Hong Kong films made from the late 90s and earlier use 100% ADR. They often didn't have location sound equipment, and Hong Kong is extremely noisy. That, and the fact that all films were dubbed into mandarin by the original actors for mainland release, so they had to redub all the lines anyway - so why not just do it twice, was the train of though.

I don't think the actual way ADR sounds is the biggest problem. Getting perfect synch while retaining the original emotion of the vocal side of the recording is. Some actors can do this very well, while others can not. And, for small productions, you often won't KNOW which actors can manage it until it's too late. So, yeah, I try for synch sound except when impossible.

As one example, I remember Kurt Wimmer stating William Fichtner is one of the best loopers he'd ever heard, and he says he can no longer tell for certain which of his lines are dubbed in Equilibrium.
 
Eric, as long as we are on the subject it's Foley, it's always capitalized because it's a persons name, and well out of respect. You can go to my site and in the film clips section there is a scene that is completely ADR'd, it has a before and after. This was a no-budget feature (actually the first feature shot on the DVX100). The picture is way too small, whenever I get around to finishing the site update I'll use a bigger image.
askinc.net

There are a fair number of films with all ADR. But almost all were out of necessity. In Hong Kong action films not only were they going to dub anyway but with all that action it is MUCH easier if the director can shout instructions AND your not going to get usable dialog anyway. In Italy after WWII they had a LOT of news reel (16mm) cameras around but very little sound equipment. Remember that magnetic recording didn't become available till the fifties, really late fifties for most of the world, and it was EXPENSIVE. Orson was a maniac so.....

On the fun side Leonardo DeCaprio, whom one wouldn't think of as a good controlled ADR actor would sit around )ADR sessions) reading books etc and then just nail it in one or two takes. This is Titanic days when he was really just thought of as a light weight pretty boy. I have done a fair amount of micro/no budget ADR and the biggest factor I have seen is musical ability. If the actor can play or sing they are usually very good at matching their delivery and timing.
 
Noiz2

I have to stick up for Leonardo DecCaprio. That guy is an awesome actor, even back then. Didn't he get nominated for an Academy award as a kid in "Who's eating Gilbert Grape"? The dude commits. He is pretty, and that gives him a bad rap in some peoples eyes, but I've always loved his work. The guy is intense. Basketball Diaries, Romeo & Juliette, The Aviator - just about anything that guy does exhibits a great range of emotion. I'm a fan for sure.
 
I did miss the capital F on Foley... I must have seen it misspelled by Leonardo DiCaprio ;-)

Both of our actors have musical backgrounds, so it's encouraging to hear that that is sometimes an advantage! Principal photography on Bus Stop finishes on friday, I'll post some ADR'd clips in this thread once we have an edit locked for some of our scenes.

Thanks everyone for your thoughtful posts. If anyone needs me, I'll be riding around the city on a bus for the next week with headphones and a Zoomh2.
 
Eric, my spelling is atrocious so I'm not surprised... I only point out the Capital F because lower case is used a lot by folks who don't know so I try to educate, not trying to pick on you. Good luck on the film.

Chadfish,

I didn't trash Leo, I like him a lot. But the perception is that he would not be ab ADR ace. And when your actor is cooling his heels reading comic books you sort of get surprised when he nails it every time. I wasn't knocking the person just making the point that it's hard to tell who will do it well and who won't. As I sort of eluded to, my experience is that the ones who can pick up on the rhythms do well and the ones who try to recreate the "moment" don't.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top