Bad Location Sound Vs Pre-Planned ADR

98% of the LOTR trilogy was ADR'd since they were shooting next to Wellington Airport!

VOCALIGN PRO, at $600, is the best money I have ever spent on audio. It's fairly easy to get your dialogue to a 95-98% match of the original, but very hard to get it 100%. VLP does this without altering the pitch of the audio. Everyone should check out the free 30 day trial.
 
Zak Forsman said:
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)

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Thanks for that invaluable advice Zak!

Could you please tell us what audio equipment you're using? eg. mics, mixers, recorders?

Is there a hypercardioid you'd reccomend for interiors? Looking at the AT4053b at the moment...

MANY THANKS
 
dvxhutch said:
98% of the LOTR trilogy was ADR'd since they were shooting next to Wellington Airport!

VOCALIGN PRO, at $600, is the best money I have ever spent on audio. It's fairly easy to get your dialogue to a 95-98% match of the original, but very hard to get it 100%. VLP does this without altering the pitch of the audio. Everyone should check out the free 30 day trial.
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Hey thanks for telling us about this. I remember seeing that the new Adobe Suite would allow you to do this as a built-in deal.

Can you post any examples of ADR'd stuff you've done as a frame of reference?
 
Kholi said:
Hey thanks for telling us about this. I remember seeing that the new Adobe Suite would allow you to do this as a built-in deal.

Can you post any examples of ADR'd stuff you've done as a frame of reference?
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No worries Kholi! I won't have access to my stuff 'til I go back to work mid January, but here's a tutorial DVX member Chadfish did:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLaslm2kPyM

You need to get your replacement tracks to at least 90% of the original (pretty easy), and it works better if your track is slightly longer rather than slightly shorter than the original recording. If you do those 2 things, it will give you perfect sync, just like the pros.
 
I think you've gotten the best advice from other posters already, but what the hell i'll throw in my $.02

in my experience, what I've noticed is:

firstly, it depends on how bad the sound on location is going to be and how good your ADR can be. If the location sound is just going to be absolutely unusable, then why bother? Of course, only you can decide how good your actors can be at ADR and how much you can clean up the location sound.
Actually, scratch that... get a second opinion from a sound guy and a post guy. They're the ones who will have to be dealing with it... ask them how much they can clean it.

if you decide to go with the location sound...
Depending on the problems, room/world tone probably won't cover it enough to even it out. I've done some location shoots in outside locations and had problems with lawnmowers or kids screaming or planes going by... not enough to wreck the audio, but certainly enough to wreck it when there's a plane in the background of one guy's dialogue, which cuts to the kids' screaming in another guy's dialogue... meaning I couldn't make that cut. Be creative on how to handle this, but it might be best to try and get audio for both people and go for one take, even if only one guy is on screen... that way you won't have to cut in the middle of a tractor starting up.
OR... have VERY long pauses in between characters' dialogue. That way you can overlap it and let that chainsaw finish revving while the other guy is talking.
OR shoot everything in a two-shot so you don't have to make those cuts.
And back to room tone... if the location is noisy and varies, get it often. Very often.

Good luck.
 
Painting out mics and booms is genius. I don't remember seeing that in the Sound DVD. Perhaps I need to rewatch it.
 
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