Bad Location Sound Vs Pre-Planned ADR

K

Kholi

Section Moderator
Pretend I'm audio retarded (because I am) and solve this scenario for me:

On a low budget shoot, where you may have to either run-n-gun a location and/or will have bad sound no matter what you do on a certain day, is it better to put that day's wage into ADR or hire the sound team anyway, then try to further fix it in post?

Of course, you still capture location sound with say a boom or something like that, but can someone throw out the pros and cons and the best approach -- with kid gloves.

Oh, and also, assume that I would have access to an ADR booth, finishing etc, and would also be willing to do poor man's ADR for certain scenes.
 
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This is an excellent question.
Tough thing is if you're self admittedly saying you don't know a lot about sound are you still 100% sure good sound is unachievable on location?
If the answer is still yes..
then I personally see no reason not to save the money and put it towards ADR you know you'll need anyway (and I'm a production sound mixer).

If you do go that route, just as you said, make sure to get the best possible reference tracks as you can.
 
so many variables. First one that hits me would be - are the people in question available for adr afterwards - you want to lock that down 100% before considering skipping out on a sound crew
 
Rippie said:
This is an excellent question.
Tough thing is if you're self admittedly saying you don't know a lot about sound are you still 100% sure good sound is unachievable on location?
If the answer is still yes..
then I personally see no reason not to save the money and put it towards ADR you know you'll need anyway (and I'm a production sound mixer).

If you do go that route, just as you said, make sure to get the best possible reference tracks as you can.
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Well, here's my reason for asking this: I shoot in Los Angeles, noise pollution is just part of the game here. You could be inside of a studio and still have to pause for airplanes or semi's blasting by. In those cases, though, it's cool to just hold out for sound. We shot near LAX twice, and those scenes were pretty much boned, and man we spent SO much time just waiting for planes to pass or noise levels to drop.

One of the biggest lessons I learned, for sure, and I thought man, we're pretty much only grabbing reference sound at this point... there's no reason to hold up, let's just move and get what we need to get before we lose the location.

I'm pondering doing this for exterior shooting, because without a lot of money I can't control those situations and we'd might as well put it into a process that we're gonna do, anyway. However, I need to converse on it with more experienced people because I don't want to hose myself. Haha.

J Davis said:
so many variables. First one that hits me would be - are the people in question available for adr afterwards - you want to lock that down 100% before considering skipping out on a sound crew
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Valid. I wouldn't worry about it for the main actors, but what about others? Have to take this into consideration.
 
im just glad you are not one of those guys that just yells "why cant you make it sound better!" and actually understands that sometimes, there is just nothing you can do.

If you know you will have to adr it, get the best guide you can and plan accordingly with your actors. that is the best you can do.
 
Unless you're shooting a tender scene that's supposed to be quiet, or in a quiet place, then show some shots of your noise sources and do the best job cleaning up the audio that you can. Usually, there's a lot more that can be done to clean up audio than people think. It is more work and more time, but I prefer it to the performance killing ADR.
Some well-placed Lav mics will isolate pretty darn good and I'm always surprised how clean they are versus what I heard coming in around the headphones.
As long as you can hear what they're saying and the character and story is interesting, then your audience will forgive you. :)
Definitely lots of variables though, So I think this is a great thing to talk to your sound man about.
 
ADR is something you want to try to avoid. But there are cases where you probably can't avoid it.

I would talk to your sound guy and bring him/her along on location scouts. The first thing to do is see if you can find a better location for sound. As in do you actually NEED to be next to the airport? If it's not constantly visible in the background then probably not. An establishing shot maybe all you need.
There is a lot of area around LA and it's not all traffic intense. If you don't NEED to be in the city head to the burbs.

Now all of that adds some logistics to the shoot but so does ADR so you have to figure out what the right balance for you is.

If you know you are going to ADR a scene think about the cuts before you shoot.

If you cut to the person listening you don't have to worry much about sync. Now it would probably be weird to always be reversed but it's fairly common to not be on the speaker the whole time. If you think it through and get yourself the right coverage you can make life easier in post.

You can also make the shots in the worst locations action heavy and dialog light. Maybe, really depends on the film but think about shifting a scene if you can.

When scouting locations remember you are not going to see the entire place. A small private airplane hangar away from the city is going to look pretty similar to a private plane hanger at LAX. Actually a big warehouse probably also looks pretty similar.

A little pre planning could save you a LOT of time and work in post.

When you get to the ADR take the time to get it right. It doesn't have to be a performance killer, but it can be.

It will also take a lot of time. A lot more if we are seeing all the flapping lips. It's very actor dependent but I would figure in the zone of 1/2 to one hour perline for recording and syncing and fiddling so it sounds like it was original. That is generous if your actor is a natural and not very generous if they are not good at ADR. You need performance and sync. You can adjust sync a bit after he fact if you have the right tools but you can't fix performance. I have had actors nail it in one take and ones that after 45 min on the same bit never made the director happy.
 
I think Noiz stated my opinion as well.
ADR is done everyday in this business so don't be afraid of doing it to make your product better.
If you do decide to go the ADR route just make sure you do it correctly.
I'd rather hear compromised location sound than poor ADR.

Scott, changing locations for sound does happen but it's a rarity. The sad reality is 98% of the time
if a location is scouted and they love the imagery the sound dept just has to deal.
 
Excellent thread!

I don't do any feature work and have limited ability and budget (time) for audio cleaning. So, I always try and get the best audio I can at the time with the hope that it might just be good enough. Here is a thought about outdoor locations, and losing the location do to slow production issues for whatever reason. As the day progresses, the sun angle, and thus the quality of light and shadows change. A partially cloudy day further complicates this. So if many takes are needed to get decent audio, mixing different takes with varying light is a nightmare in post.

Grant
 
The few responses to this have been perfect. Thanks everyone, it's helping a ton.

Ggrantly that's exactly what I mean about losing light, but with the info I have now I think if we combine a solid location sound mixer with the wild line mentality, we may fair far better than cutting the audio guy completely and trying to ADR. So for those days I know it will be impossible, the workflow must be to first make the day before the sun goes away, then second to spend another thirty minutes running through lines with mic placement in its best position.

It'll add a bit more time but I imagine the likely hood of needing ADR will decrease drastically. Thoughts?
 
Something i did on Down and Dangerous when I wanted to shoot in a noisy location was to break the location into two. Wides shot along the street (traffic, etc) and CUs shot elsewhere with reasonable substitute or a background thrown out of focus... that sort of thing. Then anything we used from the wide would have the DIA from the CUs cut in under it instead of the actual sync. Usually works. No ADR required so far. Fingers crossed.

Also, I agree getting clean sound in LA is tough. But I was vigilant and chose locations not just on look, but also for sound. Further, I probably shot more than two dozen "plates" so we could drop the booms in very close and matte them out in post. Fortunately, they've all worked very convincingly.

(keep in mind these have not been graded)

dadbefore.jpg


dadafter.jpg
 
Well, to give credit where credit is due... I learned this tip and a kajillion others on Barry and David's SOUND For Film & TV DVD.
 
I just wrapped a feature where because of poor locations for sound will result in a majority of the movie being ADR'd. At the end of the production the director (Who I'm friends with and worked with before) said sorry for messing up your sound. I replied, it's your sound now... Here's some examples of poor planning etc. They tech scouted a location on a sunday.. You guessed it, the construction guys were off, we show up on a weekday.. bang. Primary shooting boat owner get's pissed, pulls the boat.. Company get's a second one without running the engines. If they would have the 10 Harley motorcycles hiding in the broken muffler system would have been recognized. Here's a jem.. Shooting on a street located 50 yards from a park of some kind.. IT"S BLASTING CHRISTMAS MUSIC through speakers mounted in the ground.. Bad sound is bad sound.. My boom op and I tried our best but felt like we failed. The kicker was my hearing has been damaged by an incident on set. I have Tinnitus in one ear and a hearing test showed problems in certain areas that if permeant will put an end to my post work..
 
Kholi said:
The few responses to this have been perfect. Thanks everyone, it's helping a ton.

Ggrantly that's exactly what I mean about losing light, but with the info I have now I think if we combine a solid location sound mixer with the wild line mentality, we may fair far better than cutting the audio guy completely and trying to ADR. So for those days I know it will be impossible, the workflow must be to first make the day before the sun goes away, then second to spend another thirty minutes running through lines with mic placement in its best position.

It'll add a bit more time but I imagine the likely hood of needing ADR will decrease drastically. Thoughts?
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I'm out of my depth here since I am trying to do corporate - commercial work. Realizing the dilema, if audio holds up the show too much then cut your losses and plan on the ADR. But my first thought is to get as much audio as I can on set. I also scout my own locations and if it won't work, I just figure something else out.

Grant
 
So for those days I know it will be impossible, the workflow must be to first make the day before the sun goes away, then second to spend another thirty minutes running through lines with mic placement in its best position.
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I would do the wild lines right after the printed take. If you wait till the end of the day the performances won't come close to matching.
 
Have to clean up some boom shots in Superseeds as well, maybe like three, using the same method... it's just sort of annoying to have to add that step in post but that versus ADR... hmm. Also not being able to move the camera, but it can definitely work for material. I imagine doing it the most on wides, then the rest wouldn't matter too much. Gonna consider it for sure. Thanks for sharing, Zak.

I think what's really gonna have to happen is wild lines, and whatever needs to be ADR'd will just have to be ADR'd in the end, but I won't go without Location Sound Mixer.

The other thing, too, is performance. Without the booms there that's one less "mental blockade" for actors to really get into what they're doing. Performing, you know? So at the end of the day, I'll just have to not let it slow us down but make sure we stop afterward to get the necessaries.

Good stuff in this here thread. ayup.
 
Kholi said:
Have to clean up some boom shots in Superseeds as well, maybe like three, using the same method... it's just sort of annoying to have to add that step in post but that versus ADR... hmm. Also not being able to move the camera, but it can definitely work for material. I imagine doing it the most on wides, then the rest wouldn't matter too much. Gonna consider it for sure. Thanks for sharing, Zak.

I think what's really gonna have to happen is wild lines, and whatever needs to be ADR'd will just have to be ADR'd in the end, but I won't go without Location Sound Mixer.

The other thing, too, is performance. Without the booms there that's one less "mental blockade" for actors to really get into what they're doing. Performing, you know? So at the end of the day, I'll just have to not let it slow us down but make sure we stop afterward to get the necessaries.

Good stuff in this here thread. ayup.
Click to expand...

our sound person (who was also our editor so she had a unique point of view on what to listen for) was careful to ask for wild lines of anything she couldn't get clean, right after the take. Many times, this was if an actor dipped their head for a line, or walked in speaking and we couldn't get the boom to them, that sort of thing. Grabbing lines WILD on set will keep us from doing much if any ADR, thankfully.
 
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