Dialogue Editing

150 NOW, THE ACTUAL EDITING
created a room tone so sterile that it totally lacks texture, any loop you
attempt will be heard as just that: a loop. Reasonably long stretches of room
tone can be looped, but even these usually require some tricks to avoid
sounding repetitive. (See Figure 10-17.)
Another myth is that you can successfully create loads of room tone in a
sampler. It can be done, but the result is rarely natural, alive, or believable.
For the most part, if you want good room tone for a shot you must collect bits
and pieces of it from within the shot and then piece together a convincing
construction. (See Figure 10-18.)
Figure 10-17 A room tone loop fi lls the hole between two shots. A string of regions
that looks like this will sound like a loop. Anything this symmetrical means that
the editor didn’t listen while fi lling the gap.
Figure 10-18 More room tone is needed for the highlighted section on Dial E. If
a region’s natural handles aren’t useful, copy the region to a work track and
completely open the region’s handles. There’ll be many possibilities for fi nding
good room tone.