Dialogue Editing

156 NOW, THE ACTUAL EDITING
Figure 10-25 The copied material covers the click, and short crossfades prevent
introducing other problems. Note that the line of the waveform follows a more or
less predictable path even after the new material is inserted.
Figure 10-26 Room tone copied from a pause in dialogue. Don’t copy the entire
available room tone. Omit a bit on either side of the selection so you can easily
adjust the edit point and make crossfades.
Copying Less Room Tone Than You Need
When copying room tone from a pause, take less than what’s available. Leave
some clean tone in the handle beyond what you select so that when you edit
it into your track you’ll have some extra room tone to play with and use for
crossfades. (See Figure 10-26.) Remember, if there’s motion or clothing rustle
in the area you’re repairing, your “fi ll” room tone must contain matching
action. Don’t go to the trouble of adding clean room tone to a rustle-fi lled
shot when the resulting quiet will be distracting.
Working with More Than One Channel of Dialogue
When mono Nagra was the industry standard, most location recordings came
to the dialogue editor on single-channel 35 mm mag stripe. For better or
worse, you were at the mercy of the location mixer, whose job it was (and still
is) to combine all of the on-set microphones into a single mixed track. Then
along came stereo Nagra and later DAT, which enabled location mixers to
provide two separate mixes or two solo tracks, depending on the complexity
and needs of a shot. There were pioneers like Robert Altman, who was