If all audio is dubbed, why bother capturing it?

D

David Evans

Well-known member
This might sound like a stupid question, but I've been talking with some professional movie makers and they all tell me the sound in movies divide in two major categories: dialogues and foley. Foley is done in a special and controled environment that should replicate that wich we are watching on screen, and dialogues are all dubbed in studio for better sound. If this is true, why even bother with all the boom techniques and good mics to capture sound directly in location, during production?

Thanks for helping!
 
What you heard is not true. Whoever told you that likely isn't really a "professional movie maker".

Foley and ADR are expensive tools with their uses, mainly when clean location sound isn't possible. Unless you have a big budget, you are unlikely to be able to make much use of either one - in which case you better capture clean audio when you shoot or you will be screwed.
 
It depends upon the film. For most films, they do not replace all the sound. But for big tentpole films that have mostly action scenes, yes, much of the audio is re-recorded. The reason is two fold; the sound during production is no good due to the scene logistics and/or because the want every bit of dialog isolated for total control of volume, placement, and fx added to the dialog (reverb, eq).

When dialog can be captured during production, it should and will be. But scenes not done in a studio are likely to have other ambient sounds recorded on them that prevent the sound mixer from being able to control the dialog the way they want. For example, let's take the hero and the love interest. They are outside in the city and there is a tender moment where they talk quietly to each other on the street with traffic and pedestrians all around. Suddenly, the scene goes quiet. The traffic and other noise disappears and all we hear is their quiet whispers to each other and some romantic music. You can't do that with the production sound.

The reality is that the big movies want and have the budget for total control over ever sound and they want almost every sound on a separate track. A typical mix session will have 80-100 tracks for sound, music, and effects and that is after some of the sound has already been pre-mixed. The only way to do that is to have the dialog re-recorded in a studio (known as Automated Dialog Replacment; ADR) so that each character's dialog is on a separate track.

During the mix, sound is divided into 3 groups, dialog, effects, and music. There is typically 3 mixers operating the sound board and controlling the 80-100 tracks. Besides Foley, there is library sounds, sounds captured specifically for the film during production, sounds captured specifically for the film after production, dialog captured during production, ADR, and music.
 
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It's always less expensive and easier to use actual production sound, so you TRY and get it. It's just that depending on how much perfection you want somewhere between 1 and 100 percent of it won't be usable. Where your percentage is on that scale depends on how much you care about the audio, the type of film (two guys talking in a quiet room, good chance most of that audio is usable), and your budget. In any case you'd want still want production audio because you need a "reference" to create the post audio.
 
Paul F said:
It depends upon the film. For most films, they do not replace all the sound. But for big tentpole films that have mostly action scenes, yes, much of the audio is re-recorded. The reason is two fold; the sound during production is no good due to the scene logistics and/or because the want every bit of dialog isolated for total control of volume, placement, and fx added to the dialog (reverb, eq).
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That is a little misleading. On all films pretty much all non dialog sounds are replaced. For big action scenes the production is probably not usable because of what is going on while shooting, like explosions. However even then a good dialog editor is often able to pull up alternate takes that work.

When dialog can be captured during production, it should and will be. But scenes not done in a studio are likely to have other ambient sounds recorded on them that prevent the sound mixer from being able to control the dialog the way they want. For example, let's take the hero and the love interest. They are outside in the city and there is a tender moment where they talk quietly to each other on the street with traffic and pedestrians all around. Suddenly, the scene goes quiet. The traffic and other noise disappears and all we hear is their quiet whispers to each other and some romantic music. You can't do that with the production sound.
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This is a good example when you might do ADR. However that scene, in a big budget film, doesn't have a lot of noise going on. The traffic is all planned, the crowds are not making noise, etc. What happens is that all those other sounds are added in. If it's a whisper, it's probably ADR, but it's probably the wind and "city roar" that is the killer.


The reality is that the big movies want and have the budget for total control over ever sound and they want almost every sound on a separate track. A typical mix session will have 80-100 tracks for sound, music, and effects and that is after some of the sound has already been pre-mixed. The only way to do that is to have the dialog re-recorded in a studio (known as Automated Dialog Replacment; ADR) so that each character's dialog is on a separate track.
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Sound, Music, & effects? Effects are part of "sound", I think you just got carried away or maybe you meant dialog? Anyway the track counts are probably low by todays standards, were hitting 100+ regularly in the late 90's and 200+ on action films. But the reason I jumped in is that all dialog tracks are split and checker boarded, and have been since we were editing on magnetic film AND there is generally very little ADR in films. So the above is just not the case. Professional production tracks are very clean even out in the middle of nowhere. If what you said were the case you would find a stack of ADR editors on a crew and hardly any dialog editors. In fact it's the opposite. I have worked on films with no ADR editor at all. I'm only talking here about $30 mill.+ budget films.

During the mix, sound is divided into 3 groups, dialog, effects, and music. There is typically 3 mixers operating the sound board and controlling the 80-100 tracks. Besides Foley, there is library sounds, sounds captured specifically for the film during production, sounds captured specifically for the film after production, dialog captured during production, ADR, and music.
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I would only add that depending on where you are two mixers are also fairly common.

The point we have all been making is your friends are wrong. There are a lot of jobs in the film industry and you could have a job "in the industry" and have no idea about how films are actually made.
 
whoever told you virtually all dialogue is replaced later in post is dead wrong. The film The Last Samurai comes to mind. I am friends with the production sound mixer from that film, and it was a really tough shoot, but there were only 3 lines of dialogue out of the entire film that were looped. I know of movies where there is no ADR. The objective is to avoid ADR as much as possible. Sound effects and foley are usually added after the fact because you want to minimize those things on production in order to get a clean dialogue track.
 
I worked on a film where we had a scene featuring heavy downpour of rain. We did ADR afterwards with all the cast except for one, who was positioned under an awning. The rain was just too loud and we could barely hear any of the actors.

That's an example of a situation where ADR is really necessary. A scene taking place in traffic, maybe, but sound guys usually have the right equipment to minimize the background noise in a situation like that.

To do ADR for an entire film would be costly, especially with a star or five of them.
 
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There was an interesting BTS of Dr Who with some description of the sound work

It seems that Foley needed to be created for other countries where the english messed it up

There was also 'regular' Foley for some on set sounds and many made up sounds

It was an interesting perspective - creating for multilanguage broadcast

S
 
What is confusing is that A LOT of ADR is done on some high budget films. There are a few lines or a scene that needs ADR. As long as the talent is in the studio they will ADR anything where there is even a remote possibility of a problem. However, even if they do a complete ADR on scene 14 it does not necessarily get used in the final mix. As has been mentioned the Dialog Editor may have something just as good or better from unused/alt takes, and it is always possible that the Re-Recording Mixers can clean up the original take enough to be used in the final mix.
 
Bob makes a good point.

There are really three different routs to the dialog you hear.

The Production sync sound for the particular scene is the one most used and most desired.
Dialog editors will pour over other takes if there is something than they cant fix and find either whole words or maybe just a syllable that can get patched in and "fix" the problem. These are called "alts" as in alternate take. They will be on separate tracks so the mixers will always have the option of going back to the original.

And finally ADR. This is the most expensive option and generally the worst one, least likely to sound like it was said at the same time and place as the rest of the dialog in a scene. On micro budget films I generally will try to ADR a whole scene if I have to do more than a word or two because it will sound more together.

And depending on a number of things like schedules and such a big film may record ADR for a lot of a film. Generally they will not use much of that but if the star is about to go off and work on another project for a year then any line you might need to ADR you need to do NOW. And because of the post flow ADR may be done before the film is finished being edited. Most of the ADR on Titanic was done when the film was still about six hours long, so some of that was for shots that didn't make it into the film.
 
Not to mention that the emotion and performance from production is almost always better that what can be done with ADR as they are in the moment, acting, reacting to what's around them. If at all possible, location sound is used unless like the many posts here, technical and other issues prevent that from happening.

Michael
 
One handy hint with low budget films is to do a dialogue wild track on location.

If you have a scene that has background noises that may be problematic in post then get the actors to run the scene as a wild track for dialogue sound only straight after the take as they will be able to recall their performance easier than in ADR months later, that way at least you have a version of the dialogue clean and it can be adjusted to fit in post it will also match any other dialogue recorded that may be useful.
 
GaryNattrass said:
If you have a scene that has background noises that may be problematic in post then get the actors to run the scene as a wild track for dialogue sound only straight after the take as they will be able to recall their performance easier than in ADR months later, that way at least you have a version of the dialogue clean and it can be adjusted to fit in post it will also match any other dialogue recorded that may be useful.
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+1, I've done this before and its a good suggestion when you're in a pinch due to extraneous noise out of your control.
 
Gary Huff said:
+1, I've done this before and its a good suggestion when you're in a pinch due to extraneous noise out of your control.
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Make sure to get good room tone though. Something to lay in under the dialogue at a lower level than before. If you are in a gymnasium, and there is a b-ball game going on.....you want to hear the game and it's associated noises as the audio backdrop to the dialogue. Without it......you are going to need something there to make it sound natural.
 
Gary Huff said:
+1, I've done this before and its a good suggestion when you're in a pinch due to extraneous noise out of your control.
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This has been my way of doing things. While sometimes lip sinking ends up a bit off, quality- we are talking very low budget here- sounds much better than recorded on location. Just make sure to record ambient sound on location after the scenes where recorded. While this means much more work on the audio front in post, ultimately, if one knows what he's doing, can get pretty acceptable and nice sounding results. Make sure, however, your cast relaxes and gets into character in the dubbing sessions. Allow them to shout and express themselves, don't restrict their acting. This is the difference between good dubbing and bad dubbing. here's an example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmPYVbKWF70
 
Wild lines! I record those a lot if anything is in question to give the dialog editors more options, this save production ADR cost too.. however getting time (and quiet) for this on some sets can be difficult.
 
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