Dialogue Editing

Working with More Than One Channel of Dialogue 165
Figure 10-36 Occasional quiet radio microphone inserts can be balanced and
controlled by providing a parallel track of the boom’s room tone.
One Microphone per Channel—Dissimilar (and Loud) Room Tone In the
last example, one channel overpowered the other so you only had to create
one track of continuous room tone. The other, quieter track could effectively
“hide” behind the noise of the dominant track. Now you’re facing two noisy
tracks, each carrying its own room tone. This poses an unsettling choice
between smoothness and noise. Certainly, the smoothest option would be to
run both tracks all the time so there’s no energy or tone change between the
two. But this causes two problems.
First, as in any of the examples shown, the off-mic track, with its slightly outof-sync,
muddy sound, will compromise the clarity of the speaking character.
Adding this inarticulate muck to an otherwise decent bit of dialogue will
weaken attacks and add an unwanted “halo” around the words. Even with
a noisy room tone problem, the normal rules of cutting still apply. The other
problem is that running two tones all the time makes your edit awfully noisy.
No getting around that.
Once you’ve tried other, less draconian solutions, you’re left with the option
of creating two fully toned tracks and then minimizing the double room tone
noise as best you can with volume automation.
On each track, remove the off-mic dialogue and replace it with
appropriate room tone.
Once you’ve fi nished the editing, use volume automation to reduce
redundant room tone as much as possible. (See Figure 10-37.) When,
for example, the character on Dial B is speaking, lower the level of the
added room tone on Dial A until you reach a point where you can