Dialogue Editing

126 GETTING STARTED ON DIALOGUE EDITING
Table 9-2 Common Abbreviations in Sound Reports
Abbreviation Term Description
WS Wild sound Any nonsync recording, including location sound
effects, room tone, and atmospheres. It also
includes dialogue retakes from shots where the
sync sound was botched or impossible to record
and lines not recorded with the original sync
recording such as extra breathing and off-camera
voices of principal actors.
WT Wild track Also wild sound. I prefer WT for dialogue and WS
for nonvocal sounds such as location sound
effects. Use WT if WS might be mistaken for
“wide shot.”
Wild Wild recording Also wild sound. “Wild” is the broadest description
of non-sync recordings.
RT Room tone Used to fi ll holes in the track, aid in shot transitions,
and prepare tracks for ADR; not the same as a
background/atmosphere.
Atmo or BG Atmosphere or A recording (usually stereo) made at or near the
background shooting location that the effects or background
editors use to build a “soup” of tracks to describe
the time, place, or season, and to affect the mood
of the scene. Don’t confuse with room tone.
GT Guide track A track for reference only, not for actual use because
of unwanted background noise or other problems.
Also used on music “playback” scenes, where a
mic was open on the set to record stage sounds
that may be useful when syncing the music.
PFX Production On-set sound effects recordings.
sound effect
Making a Printout of Wild Sound
Most workstations allow you to make a text fi le of the contents of a session,
which can be very useful for quickly creating a list of your project’s wild
sounds. The process varies by workstation, but once you create a text fi le
you’ll almost certainly have to do some editing to remove unwanted details
and organize the information in a manner that makes sense for you. You can
use a spreadsheet or word-processing program for this clean-up process.
Figure 9-9 is an example of a wild sound list for a very simple fi lm. Keep
something like it handy while editing.
By now you may be wondering, “Why go to all the trouble of loading the
wild sound and creating a list before you know if you’ll need it?” After all,
you may well get through a scene not using it at all. You’ll fi x the bad lines