editing Dialogue Editing Question

moonshieldmedia

moonshieldmedia

How would you edit the dialogue if the boom operator was trying to record a 2 person scene by moving the mic back and fourth, but he/she was too late to catch the whole line on some of them?

Assuming there was only one good take and assuming the audio levels are all usable. It's just that the spoken line gets louder and loses reverb mid-sentence as the mic turns.
 
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Make sure you get good coverage of the scene.

In addition to the master or wide where the boomOp is swinging from
person to person you should shoot a "clean" closeup of each actor. If
get full coverage of the scene you will have many different audio takes
also. One of them will work for the scene even if you end up using
the master/wide in the final cut.
 
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I normally use the dialog from all of my closeups as I'm able to mic better in them (closer to the subject). The master is generally only used a few times in a dialog scene for me, so using the closeup dialog is easy to fit over the shot... then the closeups are spot on.
 
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You've gotten the basics from directorik and knightly.

If you got complete coverage of the scene you should have many more versions of the line(s) available. Extract the audio from all of the alt/unused takes. Organize them according to shot type - CU, 2-Shot, etc.** First try the takes that most closely sound like the one with the "bad" audio. For example, if the bad audio is a 2-shot try the other 2-shots first. If they don't work then try the alts from the CUs because you can add reverb to better match the 2-shot. Besides off-mic problems, you can use this process to fix all sorts of extraneous sounds interfering with the dialog, or a mumbled line, or an indistinct word, or even adding just a "T" or an "S" to the beginning or ending of a word.

This is where "ears," skills and tools come into play. I use Vocalign for this process. With Vocalign you take a guide "snapshot" of the original line of dialog and then Vocalign performs a time alignment of the target line (dub) of dialog. Vocalign LE ($300) has "loose," "normal" and "tight" alignment algorithms, Vocalign Pro ($600) has variable algorithms, and ReVoice Pro ($800) does amazing things.

Even with Vocalign you may have to manually "microscope" edit the dialog, shortening or lengthening spaces (time stretch and compression) and/or words or syllables (don't forget the cross-fades). If you don't have Vocalign you may/will have to edit every space and syllable to get the alt dialog line to match the original. I have had to Vocalign individual words in a line of dialog, as well as manually shorten and lengthen spaces and syllables, and then perform the alignment process on the entire line.

The replacement dialog has to sync with the picture seamlessly as well as smoothly blend in sonically. I have reconstructed entire scenes. This is not a quick and easy process, and why dialog editing takes so much time. I usually spend about one third of all my time on the dialog edit. But the film rests on the dialog, which is why I preach so much about getting the production sound right.



** BTW, this is another reason to label all of you clips properly; it saves LOTS of time. The dialog/sound editor doesn't have to listen to every single line in order to organize it.
 
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moonshieldmedia said:
Assuming there was only one good take and assuming the audio levels are all usable. It's just that the spoken line gets louder and loses reverb mid-sentence as the mic turns.
Click to expand...

This statement seems a bit contradictory, the levels change as the mic swings between characters and are therefore probably not "useable". It might be possible to salvage this dialogue but requires considerable knowledge and equipment. There is no way to tell you how to do this though, as the solution, if there is one, will vary from case to case.

Provided you have filmed correctly and have good coverage as described by directorik then you can apply the techniques explained by Alcove. If you don't have the coverage, your only likely two remaining options are ADR (which will again require the techniques described by Alcove) or re-filming the scene in such a way as to allow for good production sound recording.

G
 
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The reason I added: "Assuming there was only one good take and assuming the audio levels are all usable" is because I'm well aware of the usual other options (ADR, reshoots, using different takes)

But I wanted to find out if the audio is salvageable if none of those things are a possibility. Is there literally a way to fix a line that changes from kind of soft/ reverby to full volume/no reverb mid sentence.

From the responses to my post, it sounds like the short answer is no. My best guess would be to use an automation level and reverb effect that changes as the spoken line changes, but I question whether or not that would sound natural.
 
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There are plug-ins that remove the ambient roominess from production sound tracks, and range from cheap (SPL De-verb - $59) to incredibly expensive (Trinnov Optimiser - $10k). Even the most expensive ones only do an okay job. As far as level goes you just have to automate the volume, and probably the EQ, during the mix.
 
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moonshieldmedia said:
From the responses to my post, it sounds like the short answer is no. My best guess would be to use an automation level and reverb effect that changes as the spoken line changes...
Click to expand...

The short answer is "no". For an audio post professional the answer is "possibly", as I said before though, it's not something I can explain, I'd have to analyse the dialogue in question and then try a range of different tools and tricks, to discover the combination which worked the best.

Your guess is unlikely to work because when you automate the level, you are not only automating the dialogue level but also the background noise and reverb level. Dealing with that changing noise and reverb level is going to be extremely difficult, not to mention having to deal with the EQ problems due to the dialogue being recorded off-axis. Your solution ignores the noise and EQ issues and aims to equalise the reverb issue by making the good dialogue sound as "reverby" as the bad dialogue.

G
 
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On set, make sure the person recording sound is someone you trust to ask the director for another take if they need one. And the director needs to trst that they mean it an d go for another take. Just like a Cam Op missing focus or a slow/fast pan that loses the actor... pointing the mic in the wrong place at the wrong time gets you unusable audio footage :) The problem is that with Picture, the Cam Op, Director, Art Director and Cinematographer are all around the monitor watching for problems... whereas on most sets, there's only 1 or 2 people who hear the mistakes in the audio. I always try to have 2 (Boom Op and Recordist), the Op is listening for strong dialog and the recordist is listening to the background noises... that way the Op focussing on their job (dialog) doesn't miss a problem in the rest of the audio.
 
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