Questions From Fans PT. 3: Sound Design

Questions From Fans PT. 3: Sound Design

ADR - Automated Dialogue Replacement

This will actually be a three part section. The first part will actually be featured in the WSN magazine next month. WSN is a Los Angeles based industry magazine that focuses on web series. 

Sound is a crucial element within the filmmaking process. When done correctly, sound helps create mood and atmosphere that will add life and realism to any television show, web series and film. Unfortunately it is also an element that is often overlooked by inexperience filmmakers and sometimes completely disregarded as not important.  There are three major elements of post-production sound i.e. sound design, foley and automated dialogue replacement (ADR). For the purpose of this article I will be focusing on ADR. 

When shooting a show, there are times when it is almost impossible to get a clean dialogue track and a looping session (ADR) becomes necessary; a process where dialogue is dubbed during post-production . This particularly is an issue among low budget shoots where access to a studio may not be possible. Shooting on location can be noisy which creates complications when trying to capture a clean track; this is where ADR comes in handy.

When filming ‘Western X’ I knew from the very beginning that it would be tough because two of our locations were tourist attractions, so there would be no way to salvage any of the audio because of the uncontrolled atmosphere. However, I always roll sound regardless of the background noise because It will be used as a reference once I’m in post. It always comes in handy when preparing for a looping session. 

Recording studios charge a fairly hefty amount for looping sessions and it usually is much too steep for people operating on a very small budget, which is the same situation I found myself in with ‘Western X’. However, budget should never be a reason to put out poor quality work. The best solution for me was to cough up a small bit of cash and build an ADR booth. 

To build the booth was approximately $200-$300, which included the cost of lumber, soundboard and sound foam. Once complete I was ready to capture studio quality sound; this is only half the battle. The real work begins once the tracks are imported into your audio workstation. This is where the audio starts to truly take shape and goes from just raw audio to properly mixed and synced. Episode seven of ‘Western X’ took me close to four weeks to mix the dialog properly within the timeline. Is it overkill? Not when you compare the difference between a properly mixed track and a raw one. 

Most of the dialog in episode seven takes place in a saloon and I had to recreate the proper tone that would make the audience believe the characters are in the saloon; and 

because I don’t sit in western saloons all day I had to study hours of western movies so that I can get the feel of what sounds acceptable and believable to the audience. Forget about realism you have to recreate what feels right to the audience and that goes for the entire sound design process as a whole. 

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Supergirl should be in 'Western X'