Question about how room tone works.

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ironpony

Carbonite Member
I read and watched tutorials about how if you do ADR and then lay the room tone track with it, that it will make it sound like the actors are still in that room as long as the ADR is recorded dry. I did that but it still sounds different to me, when the tracks switch from on set recording, to ADR. I am placing really close attention though, so maybe most people don't notice?
 
No your not too picky, whoever wrote that is full of BS. Roomtone is not actually used for ADR. It's used for the dialog edit.

Making a slight correction here. While this is true on a big film, it's misleading in this context. You will use RT to fill in behind the ADR so it matches the surrounding production. IF you are replacing all the lines then don't bother. RT is basically noise that ideally wouldn't be recorded. Your adding it to ADR lines so it doesn't disappear and make the ADR obvious. If it's all ADR then use your backgrounds and such but drop the RT.

ADR is clean and brought that way into the mix and then processed to sound like it's in the location.

BUT it's important to note that the "location" is the set (so that the ADR and the production sound the same) and everything is processed so it sounds like it's in the "world" of the film.

If you want ADR to fit in then you need to do a full audio post and the cover everything else that got lost when you dumped the production tracks.

So toss the roomtone and build some backgrounds and add Foley for the movements and SFX for everything else. A bit of mixing and with some luck it will seem original.
 
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It's important to mix in room tone, yes, but I think what you're missing here is how the actors' voices sound at the location. If you're doing ADR for a scene in a bathroom you'll need to add a few layers of some pretty aggressive reverb and echo to make it sound like the scene is actually taking place in a bathroom. All but the most acoustically dead locations will require treatment of ADR dialogue to make them match what location sound would have sounded like. Maybe it would be helpful if you compared the location sound to the ADR track aurally and tried to match the acoustic response?
 
Actually the scene is in a bathroom with a closed door. But that's just one so far. What do you mean when you say match the acoustic response?
 
the acoustic response is the reverberations / reflections of the sound off the objects that are within proximity of the mic being used to capture the sound. A mic being used in a bathroom has a very differant sound than a mic being used for the same lines in an open field outside, or in a living room with a lot of furniture. The difference is that the reverberations (and other sound harmonics) bounce off these objects and then reverberate into your mic as reflections.

Each room unless identical to another in furniture, wall texture, size, and dimensions will sound different when a voice is spoken in it. The reason why audio is hard, is that it is very hard to re-create these same reflections in post, which is why we want people to get the dialogue captured correctly in the first place in production sound.

Rather than do ADR, is there anyway to get back to your location again and run lines? A similar location to run the adr/lines? (just trying to give you another option)
 
There are two different things you need to worry about with ADR.
The first is if you are replacing only a few lines. In that case you need to get your ADR to sound like the production so that it all sounds like it was recored in the same place.

If you are replacing everything then you need to do is treat the sound so that it sounds like it belongs in the space that the set looks like in the film.

This last step you will often need to do to production also since the "set" generally does not sound like the place the "scene" takes place in.

I'll correct something I said before and that is that yes you will want some roomtone if you are only ADRing a few lines.

In a "big" film the ADR people wouldn't be doing that but the dialog editors would have RT fill so it would be done already.
 
My sound guy didn't show up on the shoot days actually, so I had to do the recording myself. About half of it needs redone, maybe less. But the location is no longer available. One of the actors moved away, so I got all of his lines that needed redoing beforehand, but I recorded them dry. I was told that sometimes that's a good idea, so I did, not knowing what to do in time. The rest of the actors I can either do the same or find a location with similar acoustics. Can I still make the one actors dry recorded lines sound the same?
 
It would be more easy to record as dry as possible. It's more easy to go from "bedroom-sounding-atmosphere" to "bathroom-sounding atmosphere" then the opposit

So if you can collect all actors together in one "dry" room that should do fine. And re-doing all lines would be most easy.
 
Sure, thanks. However, in my experience, the kind of bathroom reverb, that software can do does sound different than real bathroom reverb, at least to me from watching movies, where I listen for things like that. I have the Adobe CS5.5, can it pull it off, to sound the same, rather than a more artificial reverb?
 
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You can try to do the bathroom scene in a real bathroom too.... But it's best to have a cardio mic. And you have to search the right position...

Let someone talk against a wall, or 500 feet from it (we have big bathrooms in belgium) can make a difference.

Or you could put one mic close (for the lines) and another mic as high and far as possible... So you have the "reverb" and the "direct sound" which you can play with later on.

Go, have fun, try, succeed, make mistakes, do things again....
 
ironpony said:
Sure, thanks. However, in my experience, the kind of bathroom reverb, that software can do does sound different than real bathroom reverb, at least to me from watching movies, where I listen for things like that. I have the Adobe CS5.5, can it pull it off, to sound the same, rather than a more artificial reverb?
Click to expand...

Have you tried a convolution reverb?
 
And you have to do some things, it's not just "put the plugin, render and go party"

You have to search the right plugin, then in that plugin the right "room", then the right reverbtime, tail, right reverb level.

It's more easy in Protools, Nuendo, Fairlight... to do...

In DAW you mostly put a AUX track or FX-track, put the effect on that track, and then true "send/return", send the orignal track to the aux track...

If you're lost...it means you need a soundeditor/mixer to do so :-p
 
I think there is probably some strange translation issues since I doubt that even Belgium has bathrooms 152 meters long, ie about 1 1/2 football fields in the US.

As to your situation. First off it sounds like you recorded wild lines not really ADR. Were they looking at or listening to the original take when they were redoing the lines? Did you do any sync checking at the time?

If not then you probably also have some serious sync issues also.

Generally as Philip said you are better off recording dry and mimicking the space in post. Reverb is only part of the acoustic modeling you need to do to get it to blent. EQ is important, maybe mic modeling, possible matching EQ (because it's a different day the actors voice is probably slightly different). There isn't a "formula" because it all depends on where you are and where you need to go.

There are better and worse "reverbs" the best in general for post is a convolution reverb. You can even take IR's (snapshots of the response of the room) on your sets and get a very good match.

Adobe CS5.5, doesn't actually say much. There are four or five different versions of that so who know what apps you have. They do have a sound app in some and it may be OK? Adobe has been very actively adding good things to AE and PP so ????

But it's very much like the question a photographer friend of mine used to ***** about. He would get asked "what camera takes good pictures?" Pissed him off. The answer is the photographer takes the pictures not the camera.

So can you do a decent job of sound post in Adobe??? The YOU is the key. The only app that really has the tools would be the sound app, but I have never seen it in action so I don't know how well it works. BUT an experienced sound editor could probably get decent results in AE or PP with a lot of effort.

Can you do it? That is something only you can answer. With out a bunch of experience it is going to be a LOT of work. Personally I would find someone local who has some experience. If you can pay them and you can't talk them into doing it because you are a great person and they want to help you get off the ground, then you can probably get them to take a look at it and give you some guidance in what you need to do and how to do it. We love to show off and spread knowledge, it really shouldn't be too hard to get a little consulting time.

I usually recommend people just shop it out but really maybe it's better to slog your way through once. One of the best directors (for sound) I have worked with did his own sound a few times and really understood how important and how much work was involved.
 
I don't have the technology to check the sync on set and have to check later on. I tried having the actors watch and then do it, but they couldn't do it as they watched, cause the acting came off fake that way. I had to have them do it without looking, so the performance would come off more real. I tried matching up the syllables later but it kind of came off sounding robotic.
 
I found the best way to do low budget ADR is to play the audio and then have them record the line. You can even set that up as a loop in Protools so they can keep going till they want to stop. Setting up the video is a pain and inexperienced actors tend to get sucked into their own image and try to improve the performance. But letting them hear the line gives them the performance and timing and they generally get pretty close.

It is near impossible to slice and dice ADR to "sync" and have it sound decent. ADR editors use all kinds of tools to help message the lines into sync. Yes slicing and dicing is part of that but also stretching and specialized tools like Vocalign. Plus they are starting off with better ADR than most low budget shows.

You can get an IR by sweeping a room or by an impact. The preferred tool for that is a starters pistol, but that can get you in trouble so we usually use either slap sticks or balloons.
 
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