Callum Norfolk – Portfolio Blog

My redesign of The Iron Giant needed some ADR for a scene when a presenter speaks on a television set (See Figure 1). In the original film the presenter was American, however in the context of my redesign this did not matter. Therefore I got an English male to perform the dialogue. It was important to research how to carry out ADR to a professional level, as it was directly relevant to my learning outcomes 1 and 3. We also need to carry out some ADR as the characters in the animation soundtrack grunt, breathe heavily and laugh.

Figure 1

“Looping originally involved recording an actor who spoke lines in sync to “loops” of the image which were played over and over along with matching lengths of recording tape. ADR, though faster, is still painstaking work.  An actor watches the image repeatedly while listening to the original production track on headphones as a guide. The actor then re-performs each line to match the wording and lip movements. Actors vary in their ability to achieve sync and to recapture the emotional tone of their performance” (Film Sound). I will therefore implement the practice of looping when carrying out ADR for my redesign and animation soundtrack.

Prolific sound designer Randy Thom states “One of the things you do with ADR to make it sound more like production sound is to pitch it up. ADR is almost always delivered at a lower pitch because the actor doesn’t have the energy he/she had on the set.  In the excitement of the shooting set the actor tends to talk louder and higher. In an ADR session, the director typically has to push the actor to get them anywhere near the level of vocal performance that came from the set (Brophy 1999, p. 236). I will therefore try this technique on my recorded dialogue to see if it sounds more authentic in the context of the redesign or animation.

With ADR there are two common practices used, often both are utilised but it is dependant on the kind of line that is being recorded. Visual ADR is when the actor listens to the line of dialogue and is asked to match the dialogue whilst watching the scene on screen, with no sound. Audio ADR is when the actor listens to the line of dialogue and then recites the line along with the audio recording again and again, in a loop. “Audio ADR might give you a more exact result, as repetition forces the actor to divorce the meaning from the sound of the words. The line becomes simply a series of noises; the speech to song illusion kicks in and it’s a matter of repeating the song. But if you want to go for a different performance, you may just want to have the actor do a visual ADR” (Hess, J. 2014)

John Hess suggested leaving three seconds before the line of dialogue being replaced, and put a beep on each second to prepare the actor to say their line. This is an example of visual ADR. For audio ADR, he suggested leaving out the beeps, then this way the line is looped quicker, and the actor can continuously try to match their line with the audio content coming through their headphones.

When using condenser microphones you don’t want to get too close, or else the proximity effect will kick in, and make everything sound really deep. Standing about ten inches away will give a natural sound. Hess states that it is easy to get confused when trying to listen to the original dialogue and try to get an exact match. He suggested using Adobe Audition to visually line up the waveforms, and then shift things around, syllable by syllable (See Figure 2). You can also try Auditions built in Automatic Speech alignment. Other tips and tricks from John Hess included; applying EQ, taking down some low range to compensate for the proximity effect, adding a delay filter of fifteen milliseconds to ‘dirty up the sound’ with a bit of combing and finally adding a subtle distant reverb.

Figure 2

I will try these ADR techniques in my redesigns, as they directly relate to my Learning Outcomes 1 and 3. I will use visual ADR for our animation dialogue as we are creating an original soundtrack. Audio ADR will be used for the dialogue replacement in my Iron Giant redesign, as the lines are only short and relatively easy to duplicate. I will also use the microphone placement technique and experiment with the other editing suggestions.

References

• Brophy, P. 1999. Cinema & the Sound of Music. AFTRS Sydney.
• Film Sound. ADR. [Online] Available at: http://filmsound.org/terminology/adr.htm [Accessed: 20 April 2017].
• Hess, J. (2014). Introduction To Automated Dialogue Replacement (ADR). [Online]. Available at: http://nofilmschool.com/2014/10/afraid-recording-adr-dont-be-sound-tutorial-will-show-you-how. [Accessed: 26 April 2017].

Essentially a hydrophone is a microphone that can be used underwater. They are often made from a piezoelectric-type transducer. When put into water, the hydrophone converts sound pressure waves into electrical signals that can be recorded. The hydrophone operates with a balanced XLR, which can interface with any recording device that can supply +48V of phantom power. I used a Zoom microphone and used headphones to listen to what the microphone was picking up.

In my Matrix redesign there is an explosion that occurs in slow motion. The stretched sound gave me the idea to record underwater, where a large object will hit the water and the recording can be stretched. Recalling on a guest lecture in 2016 from a man called Jez Riley French, I remembered him speaking about hydrophones. I then conducted some research on how to use these microphones and started recording and experimenting with one for this slow motion sound. I dissolved some vitamin tablets in water to get one of the layers for a fire crackling sound effect in my Iron Giant redesign (See Figures 1 and 2).

Figure 1

Figure 2

(Screenshots from The Iron Giant dream scene)

I found this research important for achieving Learning Outcome 1.

References

• Spanos, G. 2016. How To: Hydrophones. [Online] Available at: http://gamesounddesign.com/Using-a-hydrophone-to-record-underwater-sounds.html. [Accessed: 20 March 2017].