Help with sound replacement ADR

C

crortega9

Member
Hi, I'm planning to shoot a short soon that takes place inside a parked car and I want to do ADR for the dialog. I have audio recording gear since I'm in a band, what I want to know are ways to make to process easier. I did some test shots and tried to re-record some of my dialog (I'm in the movie) and it seems kinda hard to repeat all the lines the same way you did while shooting. If this is the way it's done I'll stick with it but I wanted to ask first!

Another question I have is about ambiance sound. I muted the on location sound tracks and left only the few lines of dialog I managed to do ADR to and it is obviously very quiet. Should I make a recording of the sound inside the car without anyone speaking for the duration of the scene and then throw that into the mix? Is that how it's done? I also plan to have music playing in the background while the dialog takes place.

Any help is greatly appreciated!
 
I don't get it, if the car is parked then why should you have problem recording sound? It's much easier than spending hours trying to do ADR.
 
Huy Vu said:
I don't get it, if the car is parked then why should you have problem recording sound? It's much easier than spending hours trying to do ADR.
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The scene will have two people in the front seat, I'm on of them. I have a Rode Videomic and no help. The camera will be on a small tripod in the backseat or on the hood of the car or both. If on the backseat I guess I can try to get good sound with the Rode Videomic mounted on the camera but if on the hood I don't know how I would pull it off. I also just kinda want to do ADR as a learning process. I'm a total noob :)
 
Yes, 10s is right. ADR is no joke. It involves watching the recorded footage over and over while trying to repeat the line exactly the same, then recording the BG and looping it over. Hard enough for professionals to do, nearly impossible for a newbie to make it sounds good.

What I would do, is at least get a camera man. Seriously, is there not one friend that you can get to hold the camera? Then buy an extension cable for the VideoMic, then place it on the dashboard, getting as close as possible to the actors. It's an unbalance line but it should be fine for a few feet's run.
 
i agree with all of what 10s said above except for one thing: don't put your project on hold. Continue it.. you'll eventually learn from it.
 
10s? I can't see his response for some reason? All of the other ones show up... weird. I totally agree in that ADR is a very hard thing to do. I just wanted to make sure that you do have to watch the footage and try to sync up your lines with it and that there isn't an easier way. I'm going to try and get the best possible sound I can on location but I think I will still try and do ADR just for fun. It's a really short scene so at least I have that going for me. :thumbup:
 
Let me try again.

Suggestion: from your initial post I believe you could use more time learning the tools and processes. Find someone that knows the ropes to show you some ins & outs, also read up, on the basics. With some reading/study effort you'll soon be answering your own questions.

Try this link and enjoy!
http://filmsound.org/
 
crortega9 said:
The scene will have two people in the front seat, I'm on of them. I have a Rode Videomic and no help.
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Easy fix: rent a pair of wired lavalier mics (eg. Sanken COS-11), and tape them to the underside of roof (ahead of either of the actors and slightly towards the center). Record the two mics to sepperate tracks. During post production, use whichever mic sounds best for each particular line.

The cost of the rental will be pretty gentle, and it will save you a great deal of time. ADR is tricky business, and should be avoided at all costs if you can possibly grab useable production sound.

One of the big hidden expenses in ADR recording is that when you strip out the production sound and lay in the ADR, you'll need a foley pass. Even if its simply cloth moves and subtle seat squeaks, it'll be conspicuous in its absence.
 
parked car- hyper cardioid on a magic arm coming in from below, placed just below the frame line.
2nd choice, as mentioned above, a lav in each visor above the actors head.
You're obviously new to sound which isnt a problem, but you're going to struggle looping it
at the stage you're at. Get it right on location and be done with it.
 
OK, it has been well explained how you should shoot it I'll give you some reasons why you want to avoid ADR. To do ADR so that it doesn't stick out like a sore thumb takes a LOT of time and a fair amount of skill and it's twice as hard (at least) if you don't have the right tools. So it's not really a good learning experience because you have almost no chance of success. To do a half way decent job you need a DAW with sync video, A good quiet dead recording booth, a remote video feed to the booth. You will record multiple takes sometimes MANY takes trying to get both sync and performance to an acceptable level. Then your going to spend days fine tuning the sync with plugins like Vocalign and just plain slicing and dicing. After you have this clean dead synced dialog track your going to go back to the booth and do Foley. You will need to cover everything from cloth movement to seat creaks, hands touching things ... EVERYTHING. Because that little stuff is what is going to sell it. Now your going to take all those tracks, your probably up do 15-20, and run them through a convolution reverb, like Altiverb, with a car interior setting so your dialog and movement stop sounding like you recorded them in a booth and more like you recorded them in a car. Now your going to lay in some Background tracks and other FX as needed. That might be three or four stereo tracks and some mono, really depends on what is supposed to be there and what is visible. Do you see a car go by out the window?, well you need to cover that. Is it summer?, night?, probably want some crickets or an owl or...

To be fair you probably should do a lot of the FX work even if you don't do ADR but if you do ADR you don't really have a choice.

All the above gets you back to roughly where you would have started if you just record decent production sound. It's not particularly fun and it's not much of a learning experience if your not using the right tools and that's some pretty serious $$$.

So it's sort of silly to dump all that time and effort into "fixing" something that you don't need to break. You'll get a lot more $ on the screen if you spent that time and effort on something that will improve the film rather than shooting yourself in the foot to begin with.
 
10s said:
Let me try again.

Suggestion: from your initial post I believe you could use more time learning the tools and processes. Find someone that knows the ropes to show you some ins & outs, also read up, on the basics. With some reading/study effort you'll soon be answering your own questions.

Ok now I see it! Thanks for the link, I've been doing tons of reading over the past month or two since I purchased my HV30 and I have to say I have a completely new level of respect for the art of film making. I made a music video saw far: http://www.vimeo.com/2988753 but I really want to make a short. I don't think its likely that I'll be able to find someone to show me the ropes but that would be great. Any of you in the North NJ, NYC area? I'll be your slave! hehe

Thanks so much to everyone who responded!
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To do a half way decent job you need a DAW with sync video, A good quiet dead recording booth, a remote video feed to the booth.

I have Logic 8 and I could use my laptop to view the video in the recording booth. Is sync video a plugin?

Thanks for the detailed response!
 
No sync video means video playing in sync to your recording app. You don't want a computer in the same space as your recording. You need to record locked to picture or you won't have any way of evaluating the sync.
 
Noiz2 said:
No sync video means video playing in sync to your recording app. You don't want a computer in the same space as your recording. You need to record locked to picture or you won't have any way of evaluating the sync.
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I'll have to find out how to (if possible) sync the video with Logic. Thanks
 
JordanBlock said:
The first thing to learn about ADR is 'don't use it unless you have to.'
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Amen to that!

In case you don't yet have enough reasons to avoid ADR, let me add another: actors. ADR means more time with your actors, which'll cost you more money (or else impose on the good will of volunteers). Furthermore, ADR performances often fall short of on-set delivery, especially when it comes to the energy of the original delivery.

... and then there's the difficulty in simply re-performing the lines in synch with the picture.
 
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