Dialogue Editing

Alternate Takes 209
Durability. Although not wildly robust, hard-disk recorders are likely
to hold up better than DATs in the fi eld under adverse conditions (of
course, you could say that all fi eld recordings are made under adverse
conditions).
No tape to buy.
Backups are easier. The location mixer will provide a backup of all
recorded material, either on DVD or hard disk. No more making
time-consuming DAT backups.
Automatic naming of takes. Any decent hard-disk recorder will
automatically name each take following a variety of naming
conventions.
Having 24-bit fi eld recordings. Don’t let anyone tell you that there’s no
advantage to 24 bit over 16 bit. Listen: Improved dynamic range means
more headroom, greater clarity, and more depth. It’s better, it’s better,
it’s better.
Much better bookkeeping. Because BWF fi les allocate part of the fi le for
metadata, you can store a great deal of shot information with each
recording. The metadata is part of the fi le, so it can’t be easily lost.
This greatly reduces human error down the line and is essential for
managing multiplexed fi les in postproduction.
Making video dailies is much easier. When a fi lm’s sound is recorded on
DAT, loading the dailies into the video editing workstation begins
with two time-consuming tasks: digitizing the picture and digitizing
the sound, both of which must occur in real time. Sound recorded on
hard disk arrives in the picture cutting room on a hard disk, CD,
DVD, or fl ash card. No sound digitizing is necessary, just copying onto
the DAW’s sound drives.
Editing sounds originating on hard disk rather than tape makes life easier in
two ways. First, you have every take available on your workstation all the
time. Second, you can organize your database any way you choose, making
it conform to your way of thinking or even your mood.
For a dialogue editor, the true beauty of jobs recorded on a nonlinear
system isn’t the technical considerations or even the vastly improved sound.
It’s that you’ll edit better because you’ll lose any excuse not to check the
alternate takes. When you work with DAT-based projects, there’s always a
tiny (or not so tiny) voice in your head telling you all the perfectly good
reasons not to go back to the dailies. You eventually convince yourself that
there probably aren’t any decent alternates or at least nothing that compares
to the original. “Besides,” you tell yourself, “this noise isn’t really all
that bad.” Human nature maybe, but not a formula for great dialogue