How do they record audio in feature films?

[dwmonroe]

This absolutely absurd and 100% UNTRUE.
If you want to be more specific about what movies you are talking about then yes, maybe the percentage is rather high.
As it stands though, it's just another flippant, inaccurate statement.

I'm not going to debate this as my experience with it is first-hand. Granted NOT ALL movies are "looped"... but the vast majority are... well into the 90 percentile. Perhaps you should do a little research on this before saying it's an "flippant, inaccurate statement". It simply proves your ignorance and lack of knowledge.

FACTS:
1) ALL movies are mixed in multi-track studios.
2) ALL movies have 95% of their sound effects added in post = FOLEY ARTISTS
3) Dialogue recorded ON-SET is MOSTLY used only for referencing the looping process. An exception would be a scene in an extremely quiet sound stage.
4) ** since ALL films are mixed in multi-track form, a single boom mic overhead a table of 5 actors would give a SINGLE audio track. Hollywood knows this is USELESS in case one of the actors volume needs to be raised. The solution? The are LOOPED in studio in POST. Period.

You can choose to disbelieve this... that's your right, it's America.
However, if you choose to embrace this STANDARD Hollywood practice, you will find you can achieve similar results on your laptop with a decent multi-track program, a small sound board and a mic. You will find your "movies" SOUNDING as good as we try to make them look.

Whew...

[Gymnut808]

From sound classes taught by working professionals, not a whole lot of production dialogue is used on feature films. As to what percentage is of anyone's guess and varies from film to film, but much of the audio is done in ADR and Foley because it gives the most flexibility in the mixing process.

[1]

95% of all movie dialogue is RE-RECORDED in a studio during port production.

If you want to be more specific about what movies you are talking about then yes....

...STANDARD Hollywood practice...

There you go, I knew you'd see it my way eventually!

[dwmonroe]

Sorry, yes... I was only referring to Hollywood movies. Most non-Hollywood movies do not, in fact, use this method.

[1]

Aye, then naturally you are correct.

Statements like those you made do really need specific qualifications, otherwise
they get misunderstood. Hence my getting to the bottom of it.

[dwmonroe]

Statements like those you made do really need specific qualifications

Ha ha, ya I know... got a little excited...

However, I wish people would seriously look into how EASY and affordable it is to do your own "looping" in your own home. I'm glad this thread started to possibly shed some light on it for people who didn't realize it. I'll add another post later with specifics on "home looping".

[dWyZaK]

Your way over generalising buy saying that 95% of hollywood dialogue is ADR'd.
It's preposterous.

No way can you capture the same feeling and emotion by overdubbing and it is mainly used when there is a problem with the sound or its felt a bad performance was let slip.

The example of 6people round a table doesn't cut it cause it takes 10seconds to change someone's volume in post (unless there's more than one person talking or continuity problems with the background noise).

Sometimes excessive background noise will mean dialogue will need re-recording.

You really think people dedicate their whole careers and thousands of pounds of audio equipment just so that they can provide a 'Guide Vocal'?

OK, i'm being harsh, maybe the really loud action blockbusters will be heavily ADR'd, not much call for capturing subtle acting skills on the set of Armageddon is there, but Hollywood as a whole would be way more biased towards on field audio.

[Frank]

I'm no expert, but it seems more likely to me that 95% of Hollywood films have some looping, rather than that 95% of all Hollywood dialogue is looped.

[kaidomac]

However, I wish people would seriously look into how EASY and affordable it is to do your own "looping" in your own home. I'm glad this thread started to possibly shed some light on it for people who didn't realize it. I'll add another post later with specifics on "home looping".

Spill the beans, man - I'm taking notes! The first time I ever saw ADR in modern cinema was actually in an episode of the TV show "Monk" where a celebrity character was re-recording his vocals in the studio for a commercial. I thought that was baloney, but once you see what Melodyne and other software can do, it's totally believable. I'm all ears, so please share what you know!

[kaidomac]

Wow, check out this ADR clip from King Kong:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwZwTP52aIc"]YouTube - Sound Design for King Kong (Post/production) 3 of 7[/ame]

That's gotta drive the actors & recordering engineers NUTS!

[dwmonroe]

Thanks for that KONG clip... an excellent example of looping or ADR in Hollywood post production.

I have been doing ADR for years, and the IDEAL setup is a PC dedicated to audio recording with a top-notch sound card, sound booth and pro mics. I personally use NUENDO, many use pro-tools. HOWEVER, extremely good results can be done with an average PC or laptop.

HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED:
1) a small mixer http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com...xer?sku=631262
2) a mic (XLR) http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com...age?sku=277031
3) headphones
4) multi-track recording software... the BEST part is you may already have it and not know it! Sony VEGAS, Adobe Premiere... PERFECT.
5) a quiet room

THE PROCEDURE:
I am going to use SONY VEGAS PRO 8 for this example, however most video editing software is also capable using similar methods.

1) connect your mic to your mixer, put your levels at about half, and connect the output of your mixer into your PC's LINE-IN. (some pc's have RCA in and others use MINI-IN) ... either should work fine.
2) put on your headphones, turn OFF your speakers (eliminates feedback)
3) go to any video project in Vegas
4) from the toolbar: INSERT / AUDIO TRACK
5) open the VEGAS mixer to make sure your mic is sending a decent signal.
6) Hit the red recording button and PRACTICE matching your voice to the on-set audio track.

Once the tracks are recorded, you now have 100% control over the audio... pan, EQ, effects, volume, etc.

Do the same procedure for additional actors in the scene.
MUTE the original camera audio track to see how you did. Play with adding sound effects, wind, rain, street noise, footsteps (CHEAP sound effects cd's are everywhere).

Use the volume sliders to adjust the volume of each track exactly the way you want it. MUTE the camera audio track and RENDER.

Keep in mind this is the most BASIC tutorial. Do some research online as well.
YouTube has excellent videos on the subject.

EXAMPLE: last year I produced a CHILDREN'S movie using 100% green screen and 100% ADR (looping). Here's a webcast on the looping procedure if you're interested.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e0UrXWK1gg"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e0UrXWK1gg[/ame]

That's really about it. However you WILL FIND that practicing and mastering this technique will REALLY improve the audio on your movies.

HAVE FUN...

[Halsu]

6) Hit the red recording button and PRACTICE matching your voice to the on-set audio track.

While ADR is used pretty rarely here in Finland, if compared to Hollywood, it's not too uncommon - i've done it many times.

It helps to do this one sentence at a time, instead of i.e. trying to get a whole scene at once. I usually have two copies of Vegas (or other audio software) open at the same time - one is recording, the other is used to play back the sentence that will be overdubbed.

I'll play back the sentence, the talent will try to re-act it, i'll play it back again etc. I guess the term looping comes from playing back / recording the same sentence over and over.

The recording doesn't need to be exactly timed, it can be slightly tweaked in the timeline, simply by looking at the audio waveform, comparing it to original and then and moving stuff around. You can often make edits with single syllable precision, especially if you make the edit in the short pause before consonants. Oh, BTW, consonants are the most important when syncing - if you get the B's, F's, M's, P's etc. synced up properly the vowels can be a little off and no-one will notice.

When you play back the original and overdubbed sound together, ideally they should sound more or less like a single recording that has a chorus effect added. If you get there, the sync is good enough...

***

As far as on-location sound goes, in addition to boom mics, it's nowadays very common practice to have a wireless lavalier for each actor, hidden in clothes, hair or whatnot. This provides a dry, close proximity sound that's often desirable. The tracks will be recorded separately on a multitrack audio recorder, and a mono mixdown is sent to camera for reference.

[marshallarts]

I just wrote this long and sorta rude rant because this looping ADR thing is annoying. But looks like the original argument subsided so I shouldn't waste more of our time.

All I'm going to say is:

Yeah... Looping.. ADR... Folly even.. What's the big deal. This is really simple basic stuff. It totally exists but NO WAY is this something they generally expect people to do in entirety unless for some reason the film depended on it. Any one of use that makes a film would at some point realize, "Geez.. Maybe we should rerecord that line", for a variety of reasons after it's been shot. To discuss it is sorta pretentious unless we just mention it because someone has a question.

As for how to do it? Some technical know how is appreciated to those curious. But it's really something anyone would figure out. If someone is curious maybe they should start a ADR thread. But it's offtopic and uninteresting and isn't really a big deal.

[dwmonroe]

Yeah... Looping.. ADR... Folly even.. What's the big deal. This is really simple basic stuff. It totally exists but NO WAY is this something they generally expect people to do in entirety unless for some reason the film depended on it. Any one of use that makes a film would at some point realize, "Geez.. Maybe we should rerecord that line", for a variety of reasons after it's been shot. To discuss it is sorta pretentious unless we just mention it because someone has a question.

As for how to do it? Some technical know how is appreciated to those curious. But it's really something anyone would figure out. If someone is curious maybe they should start a ADR thread. But it's offtopic and uninteresting and isn't really a big deal.

Odd comment since this tread is titled "How do they record audio in feature films?" ... this IS how they do it in feature films.

Regardless... it is UN-fortunate that more independent filmmakers don't use this technique. Everyone is SO concerned with "image / video resolution" that they ignore the other half of the movie experience.

At any rate, I'm glad this subject was brought to light... I'm sure some minds were opened.

[fishops]

I'm just posting to back up dwmonroe here. I came into the world of film from the sound side, I was a studio engineer first. I got a couple jobs doing foley and ADR recording for a couple of 50-100K indies and over a couple years started to get more and more involved in making films.

Anyway, even low budget, professional indie films are at least 75% rerecorded if they have a chance in hell of placing in festivals. I know it sounds bizarre and hard to believe, but unless you are doing everything on a soundstage, production sound is almost always useless.

The stuff we tend to keep is room tone, ambience, outdoor dialogue if somehow the stars align and we can get a clean pull from it, and occasionally some incidental foley but that's very very rare. Nothing else. Anything you hear in a closeup, footsteps, dialogue, clothing movement, birds, dishwashers, crowds, cats, dogs, cars, planes, clicks, whistles and pops. Everything is replaced. Foley is a truly bizarre art form.

99.99% of all dialogue you hear in theaters is ADR. I promise this to you. I swear it on my mother's toenails. I am seriously not kidding.

When a distributor buys a film, it assumes that it will have to do two things: Pay for a sound remix including getting the actors back for missing ADR, and pay for a film transfer. Almost nobody can afford a release quality sound mix on their own, it is the very first thing that gets done when a movie is picked up for distribution.

I'm starting to wax rhapsodic here, if anyone has any specific questions related to mix, foley, that sort of thing I can probably answer them but my info might be a few years old since I haven't been in the studio for a long time.

[mrgreed202]

I remember seeing on rottentomatoes.com that Quantum Of Solace was recording all live dialogue sound. I'm sure they added sound effects, but i think they kept all dialogue sound.

[1]

99.99% of all dialogue you hear in theaters is ADR. I promise this to you. I swear it on my mother's toenails.

It might be time to cut your mother's toenails!!
Another ridiculous statement.

Really, can we try and stick halfway to factual stuff here?

This thread goes from stating that sound effects are all added afterward (which is mostly true); to 99.99% of ALL dialogue being ADR (which is ludicrous).
I do agree that almost EVERY Hollywood movie has some ADR, and that is close to 100% of them. There's so much dialogue that there's always some that is crappy, and has to be replaced.
But those two things are totally different.

Getting absurd!


Here's some limited reading with some examples of percentages:
http://filmsound.org/QA/ADR-Discussion.htm

I'm reasonable comfortable believing Randy Thom on this subject.

[C8X]

I think fishops's first few lines qualifies his point of view at least - indie films that couldn't afford to get the sound right the first time. Maybe it is true that this category has a much higher percentage of ADR. Anyway, i found the whole subject pretty interesting.

[spideralex90]

Tuning in a bit late here, but as far as i know most of the audio is rerecorded later because on set audio and such is pretty much unusable because of the crews footsteps and directors giving actors direction mid shooting. or in the case of the dark knight, the camera itself is incredibly loud so you have no choice. Audio is dubbed after wards. Actors are usually pretty good at recreating their own voice.

[1]

Oy vey, oy vey...

[crortega9]

The stuff we tend to keep is room tone, ambience, outdoor dialogue if somehow the stars align and we can get a clean pull from it, and occasionally some incidental foley but that's very very rare.

Hey fishops, what do you mean by this? How would you keep the room tone and ambience?

I agree with the whole ADR process but what's the point of having really expensive mic's on set if the sound is only going to be used for reference?

A perfect example of the definite need for ADR is in " The Shining." If you watch the making of The Shining, you can see some scenes where Stanley Kubrick is yelling out directions to the little boy during the taping of a scene. Also on some outdoor shots, there are cranes and all sorts of loud equipment around which would make it impossible to use the audio. However, there are other scenes indoors with Jack Nicholson where you can see the use of shotgun mic's and lavalier mic's. So again why the trouble if only for reference? My guess is they do this so that they are able to keep the on location sound if its good enough since the acting, especially in a movie like that, is very intense.

A good example of some low budget ADR is El Mariachi. The DVD has by far the best commentary I have ever seen and an awesome extra "10 minute film school" feature where Robert Rodriguez explains how the entire movie was shot silent. He then re-recorded all of the sounds and dialogue on location with a radioshack mic and recorder!

On that note, does anyone know of any other films with such great commentary and insight as El Mariachi? You can almost make a movie after watching the 10 minute film school on there lol.

[Westcroft]

On that note, does anyone know of any other films with such great commentary and insight as El Mariachi? You can almost make a movie after watching the 10 minute film school on there lol.

Try any Robert Rodriguez DVD, I personally love the stuff on Once Upon a Time in Mexico... "inside troublemaker studios" inspired me to create my home studio where I have a similar scoring set-up as his (except PC based).

And if you're up for it, after "10 minute film school", watch "10 minute cooking school" and make some Sin City Breakfast Tacos or Puerco Pibil.

[fishops]

The simple answer:
MOST audio on feature films is recorded using shotgun mic[s] with some wind protection on a boom pole. That will cover 90% or so.
Alternatives to the shotgun are hypercardioid condensers if the shotgun records too much reverberation.

For the remaining 10% they might hide mics in plants, in the actors' hair, or anywhere else.

Mal, as much as you are trying to backpedal here you have to admit you don't know what you're talking about in this thread. You can rant all you want about people overstating the fact, but this is what you posted on page 1 and it's just plain wrong.

Almost all the sound in almost all feature films is replaced. We can argue about percentages but I don't think anyone keeps statistics on this sort of thing so it's pointless. I speak from experience, as does dwmonroe, and anyone in the film industry will tell you the same thing.

It's just plain physically unlikely to get quality audio on set. There are too many things out of your control. Sure, there are times when it works and directors who do it that way, but it's the exception not the rule.

Hey fishops, what do you mean by this? How would you keep the room tone eand ambience?

Usually the recordist on set will roll tape for a few minutes of "silence", creating room tone that we can then loop in post and lay under the dialogue and foley tracks. Nothing works without this tone, it's essential for realism. Without it, the whole mix just sounds like sound effects strung together in a vacuum.

I agree with the whole ADR process but what's the point of having really expensive mic's on set if the sound is only going to be used for reference?

Because whatever does work saves money and time in the expensive recording studio. Production audio needs to be clear for reference as well, on-set sound cues are often helpful for the editor.

However, there are other scenes indoors with Jack Nicholson where you can see the use of shotgun mic's and lavalier mic's. So again why the trouble if only for reference? My guess is they do this so that they are able to keep the on location sound if its good enough since the acting, especially in a movie like that, is very intense.

It's always better to get on-set dialogue if you CAN. It's just usually not possible.

A good example of some low budget ADR is El Mariachi. The DVD has by far the best commentary I have ever seen and an awesome extra "10 minute film school" feature where Robert Rodriguez explains how the entire movie was shot silent. He then re-recorded all of the sounds and dialogue on location with a radioshack mic and recorder!

This is actually a great way to work, especially in the digital age now that we have instant playback on set. I know a couple of people who set up quick little sound booths on set, and do the looping the same day, sometimes right after the take. They say it helps capture the feel of the take and I'm inclined to believe that.

[CWildenradt]

This ADR stuff makes a lot of sense actually. Coming from an audio production background and having over 10 years experience in recording studios, I find it VERY hard to believe that any big budget production could achieve even near the quality of sound that they do with field recording techniques.

As for using elaborate audio setups during filming for reference purposes only, I can believe that too. This is a technique used in recording studios for cutting records too. Recording a full band performance knowing that many of the initial tracks will be ditched is common practice. To an outsider, pro audio techniques can seem extremely unusual and nonsensical, but there's definitely a method to the madness. I see no reason why it would be different for film.

[Halsu]

I know a couple of people who set up quick little sound booths on set

BTW, a car interior is usually a great place to record stuff on the road (couldn't resist the pun - naturally a parking lot is usually wiser choice than a road ;-)

Cars are usually pretty well isolated from exterior noise, full of soft, echo damping stuff, have no straight surfaces to cause unwanted reflections... overall, a great recording booth.