Dialogue Editing

ADR Editing 285
ducer is happy because this operation takes little or no time. But the next time
a comparable fi lm is out for bid, the expectation is that ADR “editing” will
be equally quick, so the winning bid will be even lower than before. Once
standards have dropped, it’s all but impossible to bring them back up.
So, how do you effectively use VocALign? First you edit, constructing the best
possible, most natural-sounding phrases. You’re probably (but not necessarily)
better off building a line from several takes than heavily processing the
one selected. If you need to expand or compress a line or part of one, do so.
(I’m not claiming that time expansion/compression sounds better than Voc-
ALign; it doesn’t. It’s just that doing your homework fi rst allows VocALign
to do its best work.) Piece together the best possible sentence and then apply
VocALign.
The processor will do some nice “nip and tuck” that you couldn’t do yourself,
and since you’re not asking it to do the impossible you ought to get tight sync
without artifacts. (See Figure 15-15.) Newer versions of VocALign offer control
over landmarks within the reference and the dub, so you may get by with
less preprocessing editing, but don’t get lulled into thinking that any plug-in
can do your work for you.
Be sure to intelligently name the resulting region beginning with the ADR
code number. Also, place the pre-wordfi t string of ADR edits—muted—on a
track that will travel with you to the mix. You never know when a previously
unheard processing artifact will surface in the mix or when, as you watch
your manicured ADR construction for the fi rst time on the Big Screen, you’ll
realize that a word is out of sync. Having the unprocessed string immediately
available will make for faster fi xes.
Editing ADR on a Noisy Scene
Looping a very noisy scene is hard work. The scene may be so noisy that even
transcribing the original lines for your ADR call sheets becomes a test of
patience and hearing ability. And the recording session will be diffi cult
because the actor has trouble hearing herself in the guide track, which certainly
gets in the way of artistic expression and results in frayed nerves.
Unfortunately, the headaches don’t end with the recording session. When
you can’t hear well and can’t discern details within the waveform, you’re
working with at least one hand tied behind your back. The same goes for
word-fi tting processors. If the signal-to-noise ratio on your reference track is
so bad that the processor can’t make wise decisions, the results will show it.