Aims
- Successfully clean and edit the Dialogue to a high-quality standard
- To mix (level, automate, process [reverb, eq, etc.]) the Dialogue so it sits well in the Final Mix for the film
- Use Zodiac (David Fincher, 2007) as a benchmark of quality for my work. Please follow this link or see the ‘Benchmarking’ Category on the left for more detail
Objectives
- I will clean and edit the Dialogue by applying the skills and research learned so far over the semester using RX 5 Advanced Audio Editor
- Research mixing and processing techniques to help achieve a balanced Final Mix
- Analyse Zodiac and conduct further research into how the Dialogue Team achieved their overall sound
Process
When starting the dialogue edit, I utilised the same approach as I did for the Kinema in the Woods [link]. That being, once the sync was approved and mics picked, as follows:
- De-click and de-pop
- De-crackle
- De-hum and de-buzz
- De-hiss
(CEDAR Audio Limited, www.cedaraudio.com, cited from Scetta, 2008)
I found the process difficult at first as the location offered up large amounts of background noise, primarily traffic from the adjacent main road. As the dialogue at the start contains only breaths and plosives, the noise needed a lot of treatment without affecting the performance of the dialogue. As Hillary Wyatt illustrates, “it is an important but essential invisible art [to create seamless dialogue] because the audience unconsciously expects to hear naturally flowing dialogue,” (2005, 150) therefore it was vital to remove the background noise and merge the clips imperceptibly with the room tone to create the illusion of the audience being at the camera’s perspective. Background noise such as a motorbike riding past would definitely shatter this illusion.
Creativity
Creatively, I had a few ideas of how the dialogue could be manipulated with reverb to enhance the effect of her being unstable, addicted to drugs and psychotic. These ideas included using a very large cathedral-esque reverb with some sort of pre-delay/inverted pre-delay reverb underneath. The idea came from her waking up after a heavy night of drug usage, so her hearing would be cloudy/inside her mind. The pre-delay reverb would make this clearer and eventually these reverbs would filter out and snap her back into the present time.
I also had the idea to use something similar throughout the piece, for example on Jack’s dialogue up until she takes the first set of pills. However, this would be unrealistic to only have dialogue doing this and not foley/SFX/music, etc. – it would have been more appropriate to put on the Final Mix.
The reason this was not used was because after adding the Ambiences of outside wind and rain, along with the dialogue, this effect did not work well, so I made the creative decision not to use it.
The idea stemmed from Tomlinson Holman’s Sound for Digital Video (2005), in which he illustrates several creative moods the sound can create in a film. Holman describes surrealism as “emphasizing the unconscious” and suggests “surreal sound might represent the point of view of a character as we slip away from realistic presentation into a more subjective one.” This is when I thought about how the audience could wake up inside Susan’s mind as Susan appears to do herself, and this as a recurring theme could have been interesting and added to the notion of Susan being such an unstable, dangerous character, who is dependent on drugs.
In addition, I attempted to use the reverb of the dialogue to enhance the feeling of the attic being so small and boxed-in. The effect definitely came across, but possibly too strongly – this is something I shall write about in the reflective summary.
Finally, I added in several extra breaths, mouth movements and groans to the piece which the editor had decided to leave out. When I first edited the piece it was much smoother but there was still a lot missing. For example, the scene where Susan attacks Jack and he is writhing in pain – these were recorded as Location ADR and successfully added to the film in order to convey Jack’s painful emotion and add authenticity. I am pleased we recorded the Location ADR and were able to use it in the film – I believe this was very good practice from the team.
Final Stages
After the edit and mix had been completed, it was time to see how the dialogue track sat with the Foley, SFX and Music. We congregated in the sound theatre, put our wavs together and wrote out any additional changes needed: this included using iZotope’s Insight plug-in to ensure our piece sat around the -23 LUFS level, which is broadcast standard (I have written more about this in the “Benchmarking” category).
We had several issues of sync on the final day, as some devices displayed lag, with dialogue and foley being out of sync, whilst other devices did not. We spent a frantic morning fixing this and believe the issue was with the movement and creation/editing/bouncing across both sound theatres frequently.
Conclusion
Without wanting to repeat what will be written in the reflective summary, I was happy with the dialogue but I am aware it is by no means perfect. There are a few things I would change if I could go back into the sound theatre tomorrow, but time caught me up on this one. However, I felt the research on RX’s Advanced Audio Editor and Insight plug-in greatly helped me to clean and edit the piece, which was one of my learning outcomes, so I am taking this very much as a positive. Wyatt also suggests that dialogue editing is largely about problem solving, and the more tricks an editor can throw at a scene the better the result will be. Therefore, for future projects I need to learn to use other plug ins and processors to improve my dialogue, other than RX.
Please see “Benchmarking” for further analysis of the Aims and Objectives concerning Room.
Reference List
Holman, T. (2005) Sound for Digital Video. Oxford: Focal Press.
Wyatt, H. and Amyes, T. (2005) Audio Post Production for Television and Film: An introduction to technology and techniques. [3rd edition] Oxford: Focal Press.
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