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Sound Editing/Mixing/ADR

Writer's picture: James StevensonJames Stevenson

Updated: May 8, 2022

I began sound editing during college projects when editing short films. I have a good knowledge of sound and the required DB that is suitable for films. I also have a strong passion for music and singing and this actually fits in quite well when editing sound for projects. This allows me to treat dialogue as vocals and make sure the background music or sound effects do not over power the words. Perhaps in more dramatic sections the background music comes closer to rivalling the DB level of dialogue but it will never over power it.




I always aim for sound in a film to be around -6 to -12 DB depending on the specific moment of the film. An explosion or loud sound effect can go higher than this bracket for effect but, besides that most stay between these guidelines when I edit. One of my best skills in sound editing is my ability create smooth audio transitions in between cuts. Room tone or a wild track when shooting can help this to an extent but using specific fade effects such as Premiere Pro's constant power really can go a long way to making an edit sound more crisp and less clunky in the final cut. Other software's have other fades you can use but for skill in sound editing Premiere Pro is definitely my favourite and strongest software for this section.


In the most recent short films I have edited I have worked with sound editors. This has meant I haven't had to do the entirety of the sound editing for the film. What I do in this situation is leave the sound in a healthy state so when the sound editor gets the project they can improve the sound and make tweaks rather than spend long periods of time trying to fix issues with the sound. I like to send consistent audio levels to sound editors as it makes there life easier and also means I get the mastered audio back faster as well.



ADR

I have worked on ADR on two films "The Last Tea" and "I See You". On both occasions I had a sound editor with me which made the whole process a lot smoother. On the first occasion I had the cut of the film playing on an iPad whilst the actors said the lines live whilst the audio was being recorded. I would watch the screen like a hawk in order to make sure they are in sync with the time of the film. This method had moderate success but we couldn't truly see if the dialogue was said at the same speed until we put the sound files into the timeline.


After syncing the new audio to the timeline the sound editor had to tweak a few lines that were slightly out of sync on certain words or phrasings of lines. But, overall it was a success.



On the second occasion I worked on ADR it was for the film 'I See You'. In this session we recorded the ADR in a sound proof edit suite, the sound mixer set up a condenser microphone and we recorded the dialogue straight into Pro Tools. This experience was a lot of fun. In the recording environment I had one eye on if the actors were saying there lines at the correct speed. But my other thought was on their performance. I made sure to help push the actors to as close as there on set performance as possible. The positive of editing the film before sound mixing meant I knew all of the lines and all the deliveries of the lines. This helped speed up the ADR recording process and allowed the actors to perform the best that they could.





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