Dialogue Editing

200 DAMAGE REPAIR
Reducing Clothing Rustle and Body Mic Crackle
When clothing rubs against a lavaliere microphone you hear a nasty grinding.
This can often be avoided with careful mic placement, but by the time
the problem gets to you, elegant mic positioning isn’t really the fi rst thing on
your mind. You can’t fi lter out the noise, as it covers a very broad, mostly
high, frequency range. Normally, the only way to rid yourself of this sound
is to collect the alternate takes of the shot and piece together an alternate
assembly (see the upcoming section on alternate takes). You should also add
this line to your ADR wish list.
However, if you’ve exhausted the alternate lines and the actor is no longer on
speaking terms with the director and refuses to be looped, you can try one
cheap trick that occasionally works. Many workstations offer a plug-in
designed to reduce surface noise on 78-rpm recordings. Called “de-clickers”
and “de-cracklers,” they’re usually found in restoration suites used in cleaning
and remastering old recordings. Two examples among many are Waves’
X-Crackle and X-Click and Sonic Solutions’ DeCrackle and DeClick offered
as part of its NoNOISE ® suite. 1
When closely compared, the waveform of a transcription from an old vinyl
record and that of a dialogue recording contaminated with mild clothing
rustle have many similarities. In each case, what should be a smooth curve
is instead serrated stubble. De-cracklers and de-clickers use interpolation to
smooth out local irregularities. Maybe, just maybe, you can use them to
smooth out your curve, reducing the clothing rustle to a manageable distortion.
Before you start, make a copy of the region so that you have a listening
reference and can return to normal should this noise-removal plan prove ill
conceived.
As with all interpolation processes, you’re better off making several small,
low-power passes than one powerful pass. Compare this to the windowpainting
analogy I use in Chapter 11: You’ll get far better results with
several fi nishing coats than with one thickly slathered soaking. All in all,
don’t develop great expectations for this method of cleaning up clothing
rustle. Its results are often mediocre. Still, when you have no other choice,
a bit of de-crackle may be an acceptable fi x. Besides, what are your
options?
1 X-Crackle and X-Click are trademarks of Waves Audio Ltd. DeCrackle and DeClick are
trademarks of Sonic Solutions.