ADR

[Ryan Young]

Hi,
I'm doing sound design and ADR for a film. I've worked on a few previously but I was wondering what the real/best way to go about doing things are. First, I was wondering what's the best way to create the beeps before the dialogue for ADR. Before I duplicated the audio region and created the beeps with the signal generator, that's probably the hardest way to do it. I'd like to be able to have the beeps, then the audio playback, beeps, then audio while recording the new dialogue. Thanks for your help!
-Ryan Young

[gerax]

Hi

I usually do it by putting beeps generated with Signal Generator in grid mode (usually with 1 second of spacing in between) and looping the line continuously recording multiple takes one on top of each other (loop recording), leaving enough space in front and behind the line to have a comfortable time for the actor; I then open them up and choose/combine the best ones to match up the original line. I guess that's the easiest and most widely used mathod for ADR, anyway, I figured it out myself, so I don't know of any "standard" rule or way of doing it, it just felt better that way, but the word "looping" should give you a clue. Several actors don't want to hear the beeps at all, every performer has it's own way, you should be prepared for that.

Very inportant are the headphone monitor mix, the mic/preamp combination (should be the same as that used in production sound), and a neutral booth with no strange reverbs (if any). Watch out for TV high pitched whine (it's around 15KHz or so) if you're using a TV set to let the actor lip sync with his/her original performance.

Then it's off to editing (maybe using Vocalign to match the performance exactly where needed) and lots of EQ and reverb tweaking to match the exact sound: a badly matched ADR line stands out in a mix like a sore thumb

Hope this helps

L.G.