Dialogue Editing

Using the Right Edit 181
Editing the Telephone Split Like it or not, the telephone split is part of the
language of fi lm, so you’d best know how to do it. Here’s how:
Mark each location change cut in the scene. Remember, these marks are
based on picture, not sound, edits.
Split the tracks at the picture cuts. You’ll edit onto four tracks:
– Character A “live.” We’re with this character, so we hear his voice
in a natural way. We hear this track only when seeing character A.
– Character A “phone.” This is the phone voice of character A as
heard by character B. We hear this track only when character B is
on the screen.
– Character B “live.” We’re with this character, so we hear her voice
in a natural way. We hear this track only when seeing character B.
– Character B “phone.” This is the phone voice of character B as heard
by character A. We hear this track only when character A is on the
screen.
From the moment the phones are picked up, edit two sets of room tone:
one for the live voice and another for the disembodied voice coming
over the phone. Phone noise doesn’t come and go with speech, like a
walkie-talkie. Instead, there’s a constant noise fl oor coming over the
phone.
Once you edit the tracks, removing all unnecessary noises, fi xing
articulations, and doing all of the things you normally do with
dialogue, soften (lengthen) the perspective cuts a bit. Usually, two to
three frames of crossfade will do, but it depends on the effect you’re
after as well as the relative noisiness of the tracks. (See Figure 11-1.)
Using the Right Edit
During a crossfade, two sounds are of course playing at once. Ideally, there’s
neither a “bump” from excess energy nor a “hole” from a loss of energy. Most
of the time you don’t pay much attention to this. If you set up your preferences
correctly (and you’re not sharing the machine with another editor who
changes your preferences while you sleep), everything ought to work well.
But what if you try a perspective cut and something goes terribly wrong—
your edits bump. What happened?
Crossfades
Normally you’re cutting or crossfading between two different sounds. (See
Figure 11-2.) Even when you’re crossfading between different parts of the