Dialogue Editing

Alternate Takes 219
division of labor. “You cut,” he said, “I make it sound good.” Thankfully, I
had stashed the original (completely cleaned and edited) onto a junk track
and with no effort the Empire was saved. Still, who needs the humiliation?
So what should you do about wind distortion? I suggest you build two parallel
tracks: the original—fully edited and faded and cleaned of nonwind
noises, but still containing the wind buffeting; and an alternate version
assembled from other takes, free of the wind noises. Mute your least favorite
version. This way you’re prepared for anything that might happen in the mix.
If the mixer can remove the wind noise from the original take without
causing undue damage to the natural low frequency, great. If not, you’re
prepared with a wind-free alternate. Either way you don’t get yelled at.
Removing Shock Mount Noises
Like wind noises, shock mount noises appear as unwanted low-frequency
sounds. But unlike wind, which usually lasts a long time, they’re almost
always very brief. Like dolly noise, which occurs with camera motion, shock
mount noise is usually tied to a moving fi shpole. This makes it easier to
spot.
You can often succeed in removing shock mount noise with very localized
high-pass fi ltering, usually up to 80 Hz or so. As with any fi ltering you
perform in the cutting room, save a copy of the original. You usually won’t want
to fi lter the entire region but just the small sections corrupted by the lowfrequency
noise. If possible, listen to the results of your fi ltering in the mix
room, with the mixer. Here you’ll learn if you under- or overfi ltered, and
you’ll hear any artifacts you couldn’t hear in the edit room.
Of course, the right way to fi x shock mount noise is, yes, to fi nd replacements
for the damaged word in the outtakes. This way you don’t risk any surprises
in the mix.
Getting Rid of Dolly Noises
It was dolly noise over dialogue that started the discussion on using alternate
takes to repair damaged lines. By now it should be clear how to piece together
a new sentence from fragments of other lines. What makes dolly-related
damage interesting is the fact that the noise source is always changing, so
you usually must line up all reasonable alternates and hope that the annoying
cry of the dolly occurs at slightly different places on each one. You end up
constructing an entirely new line from the best moments of all the takes. If
this doesn’t work, you’ll have to rerecord the line.