Dialogue Editing

Working with More Than One Channel of Dialogue 163
Figure 10-33 What’s left of the original pair is on Dial E and Dial G after cutting
the scene. The tracks have dissimilar room tone, so a simple back-and-forth edit
plan won’t work. Here, all off-mic signal was replaced by the matching room tone
and placed on the track beneath. This four-track plan is a bit cumbersome, but it
gives the rerecording mixer the most fl exibility in balancing smoothness versus
noise.
Eliminate all off-mic dialogue on the boom track (i.e., when the
dialogue of the other person is heard on the boom channel, replace
it with good boom room tone).
If the radio microphone room tone isn’t too loud, you can either create
short tone bridges leading up to the dialogue or cut from silence to
radio mic with no tone bridge, assuming that the dialogue attack is
loud enough to mask the change in room tone level. Figure 10-34
shows how to construct such a shot.
Use volume automation to slightly reduce the boom channel’s level
while there’s dialogue on the radio microphone channel. Match the
timing and curve of the automation with the fades on the radio track.
How much can you lower the level of the channel that carries the
dominant room tone? Probably not more than 3 dB, but it depends on
the two tracks. (See Figure 10-35.)
You may encounter scenes largely covered by a boom microphone that also
include a few inserts from radio mics. (See Figure 10-36.) Often, the radio
microphones will carry less room tone than the boom, so the inserts will
stand out. An easy way to match these shots without increasing overall noise
is to run a track of the boom’s room tone parallel to the room tone segments.
The mixer can easily control the amount of room tone with respect to the
shot. There are many other applications for this parallel tone technique, such
as production effects (PFX) editing and ADR editing.