CHAPTER 13

Dialogue Editing Tips and Tricks

 

 

Chapter 11 dealt extensively with the logic, the rules, the “whys and hows” of our craft. You learned about track organization, room tone, how and where to make an edit, and ways to deal with multitrack recordings. In Chapter 12 we touched on storytelling elements of dialogue editing, such as depth and perspective.

In an attempt to humanize the process and to provide some insight from the world of movie postproduction, I invited several dialogue editors to contribute tips, advice, and bits of wisdom about this trade. As you'll see, I tossed in a few tips of my own. Some of this advice is practical, some technical, some philosophical.

How Do You Know?

My mantra for production dialogue editing is “If it sounds good, it IS good!”

Victoria Rose Sampson

Listen

I have often been asked about minutiae—like what kind of fades I use, how long I make them, what goes on what track, etc.—and I find those questions a bit strange. In my opinion there are no specific rules or techniques that can be blanketly applied. A lot of trial and error is involved in getting a scene to work, so the basic rule is LISTEN to the edit. If you notice it, if it sticks out in any way, then you haven't done it right, so you have to try something else. Play down a whole scene at the end of cutting it, and make sure it flows and none of the edits stick out. Listening on headphones for this final playdown is really helpful—you get more detail.

Polly McKinnon

Get the Sync Sound

Get the original sync sound for each piece of picture, shot for shot (pic-sync). If the picture editor has swapped out some sync dialogue and cheated another take in its place, having the actual sync audio clip will enable you to check lip-sync and perhaps allow you to wiggle it ever so slightly to look more in sync. You probably won't be able to alter it in any major way, because the director and editor have become used to it, but it may just help a little. (And having the actual pic-sync will be very helpful if you have to ADR anything.)

Jenny Ward

Ask What Works

Sometimes I ask my mixer to show me a session that they have worked with. I ask: What did you like about the edit? Was it ideal? Was there anything in this edit that you would have liked differently? Was there any key element that you really appreciated?

Karol Urban, CAS, MPSE

Complete the Action

Often completing the motion or action of a character on screen is required through editing. Sometimes there is cloth, a car, or other noise under the dialogue at the end of a line when you have to cut to a different angle or take. If you are on character A's angle and at the end of her line character B comes in speaking immediately, cutting off clothing rustle, a skilled dialogue editor will find a comparable cloth rustle from another part of the take to complete the “motion” and then create fill to smooth the background ambience transition to character B's angle. This way you won't have an abrupt sonic disturbance when character A's angle is cut short due to dialogue overlap.

David Barber, MPSE

Sleight of Hand

The importance of fill [room tone]: Fooling the Ear so the Eye can enjoy the show!

Victoria Rose Sampson

When There's No Room Tone

Sometimes it can seem nigh on impossible to find more than a few seconds fill for a scene, even after trawling through every take of a particular slate. After a bit of experimentation, I discovered that from as little as a couple of seconds of fill, I could create as much as I needed using a plugin called “Freeze” which is part of the GRM Tools bundle.

 

Two caveats: Firstly, the results can sound phasey, so play around with the settings until you get a natural sounding output. I can usually get about 15–20 seconds of fill before phasing creeps into the sound. Secondly, pay attention to the crossfade from natural to artificial fill. The natural fill may well have more movement, or ‘shash’ in it so you may have to help the transition by adding some extra shash from elsewhere. This avoids a sudden loss of movement as you crossfade into the artificial fill.

 

Last piece of advice: Don't get lazy! This technique is a lifesaver when you're really stuck, but if real fill is available, it will always sound more natural and fluid.1

Michael Maroussas

Stick to the Basics

Plugins don't think as a human being. They don't have ears and aren't affected psychoacoustically like us. That makes a huge difference, at least at the dialogue editing stage. I found better results in the editing just by listening carefully, searching over material, and using Cut, Copy, and Paste than by applying a plugin that promises to do magic with the sound only to find out at the end that the magic is not there.

Cecilia Rivero

Syncing Compromises

If cutting the ADR perfectly in sync to the original dialogue is not possible, can you cut the ADR so it “looks” in sync with the picture? This is not as easy as it sounds because everyone has a different opinion about what looks in sync. Can you get that “p” or “b” to hit the mark? Does that “m” look right? Once you've done your best with the material, leave it for a while before reviewing, preferably until the next day. With fresh eyes, some new solution might come to you. When you've exhausted your options, you should show it to someone, preferably another dialogue editor, or colleague working on the same film. Show them the whole scene, not just the problem section. There are times when you are required to put a completely different word into the mouth of an actor for the sake of clarity of the story, etc. and nothing can be done to get it in sync. It's a tough ask, but do what you can to make it work and then get your sound supervisor, picture editor or director to approve it. Ultimately, they have to be the ones to okay it.

Jenny Ward

Forward/Backward

“Reverse” is your best friend in any dialogue edit, as you can create wonderful fill by taking a good solid piece, flipping it, and looping that to extend the sound as needed. Always be mindful of sounds in your fill that repeat, or cycle. Nothing gives away fill like a click, bump or, whine that repeats itself every second. To this end I have fallen in love with IZotope's RX2 bundle for creating fill in a dialogue edit. In particular the “Spectral Repair” module allows me to take a piece of what I used to consider unuseable fill and eliminate the anomalies, thus creating a piece that I could use, reverse and then loop to give me much smoother fade outs and ins of different ambiences.

David Barber, MPSE

Get Your Ducks in a Row

On really tough scenes where you know that shots aren't going to match, don't be impatient and immediately start editing. Instead, begin by making a library of room tones—at least one tone for each shot in the scene. If the room tone of a shot changes over the duration of a scene (e.g., it gets noisier or quieter, or it changers in character), make different tones that reflect these changes. The reason to do this is not strictly technical, but also psychological: if you begin editing an especially difficult scene and you're not armed with an arsenal of good room tones, you'll be tempted to find workarounds, building worse solutions on top of already bad ones. Once you've invested enough time with the edit, you'll be disinclined to go back to scratch. When you have a nice, well-organized selection of correct room tones—made especially for these shots—you can tackle the scene with relative ease and a clean conscience.

The Author

Save the Line

It never ceases to amaze me what production sound makes it back into the tracks, even if we do have to add cover. I use RX Spectral Repair to remove or lessen mic bumps, certain kinds of clicks, radio break up, ugly high-frequency noise, and so on. I have even been able to draw out a car horn from a line that you'd normally have to loop. We did record the line, but we went with the RX'd take instead. The only downside is that it will only process ten seconds at a time.

 

For broadband noise I prefer the Cedar DNS, which is simply awesome!

Chris Sinclair

Be Clean

X tracks (for unused OMF material) personally irritate me, cluttering things up. My preference is to start by duplicating all of the raw OMF tracks, and keeping a complete version of it on hidden, inactive tracks in case I need to go back to anything.

Polly McKinnon

Don't Forget What You're Reconforming

Send the old reconformed (cut up) guidetrack to the left speaker and the new one to the right. Play the whole reel down, listening for any changes. The editor/director may have moved a piece of dialogue to a new position, or swapped a line of dialogue, which may not be reflected in the reconform of your tracks. Take the time to check it now, so you won't be embarrassed when you get to the mix and the director or editor notices.

Jenny Ward

Think in Parallel

Often on low-budget films I'm the mixer, sound designer, and dialogue editor, all at the same time. Since it's important that I keep the sound designer—me—happy, I usually try to help out the “sound effects department” as much as possible with production elements. As I work, I search for production alternate sounds that will best hold up the scene, and will also combine well with the SFX I imagine the scene will need. I try to balance between bringing production elements to the mix and not being stuck with unnecessary dialogue editing because of this redundant search. My goal is to create a good free-standing dialogue track, while keeping in mind what I plan to do with the scene overall. If all goes to plan this will give me a coherent track without wasting time—time I don't have.

Michael Goorevich

Know Who You're Working With

I keep a notebook with the particulars of each mixer and show/film I work on. I have mixers that like only straight fades, short fades, tight curved fade ins, four-frame fade outs, extremely clean background noise, no noise reduction, lots of noise reduction, tracks devoted to characters, no more than six tracks, and so on. Everyone's workflow is different and every production is different. If you develop a relationship with your mixer—where communication is open and you receive feedback well and remember their preferences—you'll set yourself apart as an invaluable resource to your mixer.

Karol Urban, CAS, MPSE

Think Simple

All things being equal, start with the simplest solution that an edit will bear. Not only does the “try the simple, easy solution first” approach save unnecessary toil, but it's usually the best-sounding, most natural way to treat the transition. However, understanding the beauty of simplicity and succinctness is not a license to laziness. The edit must work, whether it's easy or difficult. If that means half an hour digging through outtakes and searching long and hard for alternate takes or room tone, just grin and bear it.

The Author

Remember Where the Story is

More and more while watching a reel, I find myself turning off the Pro Tools screen and focusing my ears and eyes on what's happening on the screen that has people in it. Sometimes when I'm premixing dialogue in the box, I find myself preoccupied with somewhat meaningless details: Is the automation point of the volume back to zero? Is the EQ flat? Is the reverb hi cut at 6 kHz or 5 kHz? It's only human to be distracted by all these small details because we can control and alter so many of them.

 

I'm not saying not to use all the options that you have in your toolbox—EQ, denoise, and more—but do so while thinking of what's on the big screen, not the small one. With every pass that you make, on every screening that you watch, try to have that wonderful feeling of watching the movie for the first time, in the theatre.

Erez Eyni-Shavit

Train Your Ears and Eyes

While searching for alternate takes, I find it very useful to listen carefully to the phrase or word I need to replace and repeat it continuously in my mind (as if it was a song bit). That helps me to decide in advance whether an alternative take of that phrase or word is going to be useful or not.

 

Also I use my visual memory to get some reference of where the phrase or word I need is placed inside the take. Let's say that I have a door slam two or three seconds before the material I need to replace, well then I'll be looking for that door slam waveform to find what I need much faster inside the alternate takes.

Cecilia Rivero

Story Over All else

When establishing the ADR and crowds lists for recording, the bottom line for me must always be storytelling, and that includes preserving performance. Obviously some lines have to be replaced for technical reasons, but as audio restoration tools improve I find there is less and less production original audio that can't be saved. Earlier in my career I was often too quick to want to loop things. That being said, as much as some directors and actors hate it, I find others really appreciate the opportunity that ADR can bring to augment existing material with new lines and performances.

Polly McKinnon

Be Nimble

There are usually a number of ways to solve an editing problem. Sometimes it's pretty clear what needs to be done and there's only one reasonable path to follow. If this plan is doing the trick, great—continue. But if you must pile fix upon fix just to keep the edit from totally selfdestructing, then you've likely chosen the wrong path. Your initial assumptions were wrong. Go back to square one and make a new, betterinformed decision rather than investing in a bad one. Don't convince yourself that “just one more fix” will sort out your flawed choice. It doesn't work in relationships and it doesn't work in editing. Walk away from a failed idea. Quickly test an editing plan and then abandon those that don't work.

The Author

To learn about these dialogue editors, as well as the other film professionals featured throughout this book, visit www.imdb.com.

 

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1. For more on this technique, see https://vimeo.com/26744698.

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