Bad ADR! Simulating spaghetti western audio...help needed!

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Anton Sugar

New member
I have an interesting request: our short film is sort of parodying old spaghetti westerns, ADR and all. We are recording ADR and we really want to get it sounding "bad", as in, old and obvious. See this clip from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAULUqmwN04


Going DELIBERATELY for bad ADR is something I haven't found much info on. Any ideas?
 
Anton Sugar said:
I have an interesting request: our short film is sort of parodying old spaghetti westerns, ADR and all. We are recording ADR and we really want to get it sounding "bad", as in, old and obvious. See this clip from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAULUqmwN04


Going DELIBERATELY for bad ADR is something I haven't found much info on. Any ideas?
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Well, when I think of those films, such as GBU, I think of how the 'dialog' has no setting in the scene, it is clear as a bell, and occasionally one can 'see' lip/sound out of sync. In addition, any 'Foley', is also pretty extracted from the 'scene', with little or no 'room/location' tone.

So, I'd say drop in your pristine ADR, pristine SFX/Foley, and have almost no 'noise' in between sound elements... eh wala... Italian Sound of the 60's at its 'best'...

In addition there is a bit of 'delivery' that needs to be taken into account, and so the ADR 'voice' needs to sound a bit over acted as well. This is often the case for minor characters, but even one can hear it in some of the main characters as well.
 
1) Many years ago I was staying overnight in a home in Darmstadt, West Germany. My hosts were watching the Clint Eastwood movie "Two Mules for Sister Sarah". The actor they had dubbing the part of Eastwood had such a high squeaky voice that I had to excuse myself from the room because my laughing was disturbing their ability to enjoy the movie.
2) Years ago at the "Sound Studio" attraction in Walt Disney Studios" theme park in Orlando, they had a great show where they had a 5-minute movie full of action on the screen and Foley SFX in the track. They had volunteers from the audience come up and try to perform the Foley in sync with the picture. Of course, inexperienced amateurs never get the timing (or intensity, etc.) right, and the results are hilarious. And they gave the audience a much better appreciation for the Foley artists job.
3) I sometimes (tongue in cheek) suggest that people with un-salvagable audio tracks, simply do a "voice-over" running translation voiced by someone with a thick Hong Kong accent (like all those bad dubbed action movies.)

It doesn't seem that hard to do bad ADR. Probably "take 1" would be perfect, wouldn't it? :-)
 
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Part of the "look" your going for is that it's not ADR but dubbing so the lips don't match at all. A lot of those "spaghetti westerns" were shot with out location sound, as were many "Hong kong action films".
 
Richard Crowley said:
1) Many years ago I was staying overnight in a home in Darmstadt, West Germany. My hosts were watching the Clint Eastwood movie "Two Mules for Sister Sarah". The actor they had dubbing the part of Eastwood had such a high squeaky voice that I had to excuse myself from the room because my laughing was disturbing their ability to enjoy the movie.
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I think zee Chermans have gotten better on the dubbing voice selection. But I watched "Parfum"(2006) in Germany when it was in theaters, and for the most part the vocal tenor of the german sort of 'matched' the english actor's voice... but in the case of Dustin Hofman's dub, there was just something missing, the german actor's voice was 'too clean'... too 'little squeaky'...
 
It amazes me how the audiences in the 60s didn't give a s**t whether anything was in sync or not.

I was just reading that Fellini would just have actors saying random dialogue on set, and then do the dialogue writing and dubbing in post.
 
OK, I did this in school in '96. We cut it in my dorm room with VHS VCR's with flying erase heads. It was supposed to be a PSA and I got an A. Your welcome.


 
Matthew Bennett said:
It amazes me how the audiences in the 60s didn't give a s**t whether anything was in sync or not.

I was just reading that Fellini would just have actors saying random dialogue on set, and then do the dialogue writing and dubbing in post.
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We gave a ****... but what can you do... My complaint with Fellini is that he made "Satyricon"(1969) so 'tasteful'...
 
I don't see what you need help with. If it's supposed to be "bad" then just record the new dialog without worrying about what the actor's lips are doing. Record it in a nice dead space so it sounds like a studio, not a location. Bam. Bad. I did this 27 years ago using the "Dub" feature on my Betamax VCR/Camera setup. It was basically a large VCR with a handle you carry with one hand, while you hold the camera with the other. Pretty sweet! We just watched the lips, and started talking over out original lines.

 
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