Dialogue Editing

Beeps, Tones, and Leaders 115
Markers make it easier to easier to prepare for the mix.
If you establish the scene breaks and place markers, the rest of the
editing crew will be able to use your marks. This saves time and
ensures that all scene transitions will be sharp and even and on the
correct frame, not staggered messes that lack energy.
Apply short, sensible names to the scene markers, and you can use the
markers list to instantly navigate to a scene; for example, (1) Sc33 INT car
Sarah, (2) Sc17 EXT Bob runs, and (3) Sc45 INT kitchen fi ght. Make up your
own naming system as long as you can pack all the information you need
into a small name cell.
Marking Scene Changes
Once your editing team has agreed on the scene boundaries, it’s easy to mark
them. (See Figure 9-6.) Here are the Pro Tools instructions. Other workstations
have comparable routines.
Locate to the fi rst frame of a new scene and press Enter on the numeric
keypad. You’ll see the New Memory Location dialogue box.
Type the name of the new scene.
To see a list of all markers, press CMD+5 (numeric). Use this list to
navigate through your fi lm. If you’re using digital picture, this feature
is extremely valuable because you can use the list to jump instantly
from one scene to the next.
Beeps, Tones, and Leaders
In the days of analogue recording, every piece of tape, magnetic fi lm, or
optical track carried a series of alignment tones at its head. With these tones—
usually 1 kHz, 10 kHz, and 100 Hz—as references, a tape could be played back
properly on any well-maintained machine, anywhere in the world. A set of
standard (and very expensive) alignment tapes were used to ensure that the
machines were set up for proper recording and playback. Every assistant in
the industry spent more time than he cares to remember aligning analogue
machines. The system was amazingly simple, and it worked.
Today analogue machines are all but unheard of and machine alignment is
a lost art. With digital, there’s little to align. Unfortunately, the myth that
there is nothing to align has resulted in some problems. Analogue-to-digitalto-analogue
(A/D/A) converters do need periodic adjustment, something
small studios rarely get around to. Plus, the fact that a maintenance engineer
once had to regularly align analogue recorders kept him in touch with the