Adr

W

WriteumCowboy

I got some feedback from a very good film festival. They reviewed my short film, "The Visit", and had a concern that one of the actor's heavy accent made it hard to understand some key lines of dialog. Of course, they were right. Seemed like we were not going to make it into the festival.

Luckily for me, my lead actor (and in another part), John Wm. Galt, volunteered to "ADR" the lines in a softer accent, but make it discernable. (He is one of the best voice-over actors in Dallas). I spoke to the powers that be, and they were jazzed and said they would love it if I could clear this up.

Low and behold, John found a good sound man to do the ADR work for free and John will contribute his time as well, and "ta-da", we have a better sound track.

Life is good.
 
Awesome! Glad to "hear" it went well and that you got a good track. ADR is very hard to do. I've done alittle of it, to corect a line here or there, but never replace a whole actors voice like it sounds like you've done. Some of the earlier James Bond films did this to cover up the thich accents of actors. Goldfinger's voice is not his own, but was dubbed in by another actor! :yes:

I'm going to have to do it for my next project I think. It'll be a hard, but a challenge too.
 
I'd like to see what the interior of a pro studio ADR suite looks like. :cool:

Are they giving the film a second chance, with the newer soundtrack?
 
An ADR studio is really cool. I first did one on my first "co-starring" role on "Hollywood Safari" on the Animal Planet about 1996. It has a mike in front of youand a big screen playback that they run "over and over" until you get it right. I was dubbing my own voice and it was still hard.

ZenSteve,

Yes, to the new soundtrack given a new chance. Without out it, I'm toast.

WC
 
ADR is freaking hard. Those who can pull it off in less than two takes are absolutely the most talented people in the world.
I was taught for radio-commercials, you have to use a "trinity". A watch, a mic and a script. Keep all three things balanced, and you'll do ok... but ADR puts another element to time.. synching. Which is hard. Very hard.
To dub an entire movie with another person's voice must be tedious.
Good luck with your festival, cowboy. Hope you get in and kick the competition... er.. out!
 
Fortunately the part of the "Angel" has only a few lines, so John should be able to "sync" the lines after a few takes. The time element is about 1 1/2 minutes of the time.

I can use the "luck."

WC
 
ProTools has a plugin that can make ADR soo much easier. It is "Synchro Arts' VocALign Project plug-in" The cool thing about this plugin is it takes the amplitude of the previous track and tries to use time compression/expansion on the new ADR line to make it fit. That way the actor need only be in the ballpark and the plugin can match it up to their lips. It still leaves all the other problems of ADR like making it sound like it was actually recorded on set, but still a huge improvement.

I was working on an indie doc that is coming out soon and there is a whole scene where the audio sucked. We needed to ADR most of the scene. This plugin was a lifesaver because the talent could not do ADR well.

In my expereience most actors can do ADR eventually but there are some people who just can not do it at all. I guess they just don't have the ear, or are not able to hear themselves and realize they are not doing it right.

If technology can make Britney sing on key why not make ADR easier as well!
 
Joe,

My sound engineer mentiioned that software program. He wants to get it, but he says the one he wants is $1,000., so that's off a ways.

The session went fine, but at the beginning I took all of the tapes from the editor I had, but the master is on digibeta and the sound eng. did not have that deck player, so I called the editor's office and spoke to the original editor. Man was she rude. She made excuses about I'm very busyt right now and this is short notice stuff. All she had to do was plug in the 12 minute tape and make a copy on mini-dv for me to use. Monday I'm calling back and talking to her boss to see if they will honor their work.

Oh, before I forget, yes to the question about getting a second chance at the ff.

I am so used to hearing the heavy Mexican accent and since I wrote the dialog, I know what he is saying, but to the regular person in the theater, his dialog is unclear. Wish my first sound engineer had caught this, but it's a lesson well learned.

WC
 
You can get the plugin for less than $1000. I got it with the ProTools DV toolkit, which if you look around you can get it for a couple hundred less than retail which I believe is $999.
 
We did the ADR session and John dubbed in 6 lines. Getting the timing down was, of course, the difficult part in order to sync John's voice to the Angel's lips and head movements.

Now the challenge is getting it back onto the digi-beta original for making the screeners and the copy to use in the big screen at the festival. My previous editing company wants to charge me extra (at least 1/2 hr. @ $225/hr.) so I'm going to try and find another editor who has an avid and can dub in the new lines and match the ambient background sounds so the soundtrack won't "jump".
 
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