Dialogue Editing

162 NOW, THE ACTUAL EDITING
Figure 10-31 A typical two-radio microphone overlap. In the highlighted section,
the top (left) track interrupts the bottom track. Outside the highlight, only one
track is “on-mic” and the other can be eliminated. During the overlap, both
characters are talking, which means that their lines are contaminated during
the overlap and probably have to replaced.
Figure 10-32 Both sides of the overlap have been repaired. A new beginning
(67-128-2, left) replaced the damaged attack on the top track, and a clean ending
(67-128-7, right) replaced the corrupted end of the bottom track.
scene loses its footing. Matters are made worse in “cutty” scenes, since the
frequent cuts are constantly reminding the ear of tone mismatches. This is a
common situation when editing a scene with a boom and one or more radio
mics, but two radio mics can also result in the same problem.
Figure 10-33 shows a classic scheme for cutting between strongly mismatched
shots. Room tone fi lls are edited for each angle and kept separate from the
shots. This gives great fl exibility, but may prove to be too much work. When
one shot’s room tone is much louder than the other’s, try fi rst fi lling the
heavier track (usually the boom) with room tone and fading in and out on
the quieter track.