Location sound versus ADR

S

scottfs

Well-known member
As a hobby, I help out indie filmmakers with sound. I've had a couple of the say they want to do the entire film in ADR. Most want location sound using a shotgun mic or lavs. I think that ADR is appropriate at times (say, while trying to record in a moving car, which didn't work out well...), but location sound has the ambient sounds as well.

I see feature films using booms, so isn't that the way to go, and using ADR only when necessary?
 
scottfs said:
As a hobby, I help out indie filmmakers with sound. I've had a couple of the say they want to do the entire film in ADR. Most want location sound using a shotgun mic or lavs. I think that ADR is appropriate at times (say, while trying to record in a moving car, which didn't work out well...), but location sound has the ambient sounds as well.

I see feature films using booms, so isn't that the way to go, and using ADR only when necessary?
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Anything is possible if you have crew and post that work for free or peanuts. But I seriously doubt that any of these "indie filmmakers" would want to ADR an entire film is they were being charged a standard rate for the work.
 
ADR is the exception, not the rule. It's difficult, expensive, and time-consuming. That is, if it is to be done correctly.

ADR is necessary for shots where there is no hope of getting clean production dialog. For example, action sequences with the actors hanging off the ledge of a skyscraper my have wind machines just off camera, and those are noise monsters. Production sound at that point is focused simply on getting enough of a reference track that the actors can try and match the original performance.
 
I concur with the above.
Only when absolutely necessary. Not only is it very expensive, most actors hate it and and/or are not very good at it.
OTOH, an occasional wild line is another story.
scottfs said:
As a hobby, I help out indie filmmakers with sound.
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As a hobby.. FWIW, I've had more than a few interns moved to another dept. or fired. Especially the ones who were hired calling themselves a 'Boom op'.. usually by a penny pinching UPM, both of who obviously have no experience whatsoever and don't know what the job entails.. thinking anyone can hold a pole. Furthermore on a low/no budget film, no one learns anything anyway because the entire crew is made up of incompetents. Sorry of the rant.
 
Amount of ADR in a film can vary from 100% to 0. Depends on the film. Even with 100% ADR, you should have a reference track and ambient sounds.
 
ADR can certainly simplify production, but massively complicates post-production (unless there's little or no dialogue). Going 100% ADR seems very odd, unless there's something unusual about the script or required visual/audio style. For a naturalistic dialogue-heavy film, it's probably a terrible idea. For a silent surrealist film, it might work fine.

One other issue that has bitten film makers before: some wonderful actors simply can't ADR their own performances. Whereas other actors are terrible 'live' but are ADR geniuses - they usually become voice actors :)
 
I'm pretty experienced at most of the stuff we do, but just TWO lines of dialogue took me all day to do in my studio when nobody noticed a machine noise out in the field who wiped out just maybe ten words? I looped the sequence and could not believe how impossible it was for the actor to get it right. I had hundreds maybe even more of attempts and never want to do this again. Nobody noticed, but one word in the finished product, which was shot in a factory was actually ME, mimicking a northern accent!
 
I'll actually give you points for saying you do it as a hobby. Rick's rant is really for the folks who don't understand they are really hobbyists and try to pass themselves off as pros.

To your question. You should read the stickies on post. It's buried a bit in the stickies so here is the link
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?174562-Compilation-of-Post-Audio-Information

There are two common misconceptions in your question.
The first is the directors thinking that a lot of big films are mostly ADR and that it's easy and something he can do with out a budget.

The second is that the sounds on the set are the ones you hear in the film. With the exception of dialog almost nothing that you hear in a big budget film was recorded during the filming on set.

There are a couple of reasons. First it's a LOT easier to do the picture edit if you don't have a bunch of sound that also has to match. Second set's in general look nothing like what you "see" in the film. Things are a bit more "location" shot these days but even then the room is almost always a lot bigger than you think it is, or it's a set and has walls you can remove etc. There is a lot of crew to get in to shoot a film and you need to be able to light it etc. So the SET almost never sounds anything close to what you want your STORY to sound like. A really simple example is a night scene with crickets. When shooting you want to make sure they are NOT making any noise. Why? Because they will change their sound based on all kinds of things and in post you will have a nightmare trying to cut. Films will use things like starters pistols to shut them up for takes. Same with frogs. FYI Loud noises will usually get both to shut up for a few minutes.

A last misconception, Behind the Scenes "footage" is generally as "factual" as any other piece of advertising. Same with articles in MIX magazine about how the sound was done for film X. One bit that is pretty funny and makes a good point is the extra content on a low budget film called PIPE DREAM. It just shows the last scene of the film and shows what the takes really sounded like. It also shows how easy it is with framing to completely fake an entrance. Watch the film first, really fun film. Then see what you missed.

People forget that filmmaking is magic, not the kind in fairytales but the kind performed on big stages before an audience. It's an illusion that if done right feels real.
 
Don't ADR a whole film unless you have budget, lots of time, and unending patience. I had to do it on a short because all the production dialogue was distorted because the production mixer was an idiot, and it was the biggest pain in the rear. I can't imagine doing a feature length like that. One film that manages to pull this off is The Never Ending Story. But again...budget, time, and patience.
 
scottfs said:
As a hobby, I help out indie filmmakers with sound. I've had a couple of the say they want to do the entire film in ADR.
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Try to educate them about what a horrible idea this is. But if you can't, you can't. They'll only make that mistake once.

Even major Hollywood features try to capture as much dialog as they can on set in real time. These are the people who could actually do ADR well (have the time, money, access to everything, etc.) yet they avoid it like the plague. I don't know about you, but that tells me something about ADR.
 
Sounds like someone is being lazy and trying to concentrate on the pretty pictures too much, ADR will only ever work if you have all the time and money to do it properly and even more importantly actors that ccan replicate their on screen performances months later in a dark V/O booth.

I have done loads of ADR and it takes a lot of time to get it right, generally as others have said it is there to replace dialogue that is un-useable due to production techniques that prevent good location sound rather than a one easy fix for poor production planning or cost cutting on crew.

Someone has probably watched Raider's of the lost Ark and read that it was all ADR, well there was a reason for that and as most of the film is action sequences it made more sense just to do the whole lot but it was budgeted that way from day one of planning!
 
I have never done any ADR recording, but I used to have a music studio for years. From a technical view, it doesn't seem too hard as there's dedicated software to sync up the new audio (I've used it to sync backing vocals in music recordings). So as long as the actors can get the tempo and phrasing in the ballpark the actual syncing shouldn't be that difficult.
However, in dialogue and/or emotion driven scenes I can see the problem of getting actors to repeat the performance. With action films where there's mostly "cool" one-liners shot back and forth it should be easy though ;)
 
Most of the autofit software takes even longer to use and I think you will find a few lines from a music track is rather different to the phrasing and potential of hundreds of pages of dialogue!
 
OP don't let "From a technical view, it doesn't seem too hard as there's dedicated software to sync up the new audio (I've used it to sync backing vocals in music recordings). So as long as the actors can " the actual syncing shouldn't be that difficult. " suck you into the dark pits of hell, ADR.

Performance is EVERYTHING in a film and very few actors in low budget films can "From a technical view, it doesn't seem too hard as there's dedicated software to sync up the new audio (I've used it to sync backing vocals in music recordings). So as long as the actors can get the tempo and phrasing in the ballpark". Also it has to actually be a lot closer than "in the ball park" or it sounds funky.

But what this guy is forgetting is that the only way you get away with ADR is if you are doing a FULL audio post. ADR has none of the ambience of production, nor any of the little sounds. So full FX, Backgrounds and Foley for the entire film.

The exception is a film you don't need to have tight sync on like a Hong Kong Action film. In that case live direction from stunt coordinators trumps dialog. And they are going to dub it all anyway so it doesn't make a lot of Dif.
 
Well, hence the comment about action movies and one liners. And performance. Never did I imply that it would work well from a performance perspective.
 
Actually Hong Kong Action films all get dubed into multiple languages and the native market is very small so that is primarily why they went that way. US action movies are not particularly full of ADR.

Not sure how that last line is to be interpreted. So if you don't care about performance then ADR is easy? It's still not easy but if you don't care about performance why even shoot the footage? Lense tests? Yes ADR for lens tests is easy.
 
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