Dialogue Editing by John Purcell (via sonicskepsi)

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Pro Tools Editing Bootcamp (4-part series) by Brent Heber

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Despite being huge sound design fans, when we listen to any narrative soundtrack, our attention is naturally focused on the voice. “Dialogue is King” – plays a particularly key role when listening to radio, where you don’t have the benefit of pictures to tell the story.

I spoke to Ralph van Dijk, who is an award winning, radio commercial’s writer and director, to find out more about the techniques and considerations that go into getting that great voice performance. You can listen to his work here www.eardrum.com.au.

Designing Sound: First of all, what got you interested in making radio commercials?

Ralph van Dijk: I reckon it was because it combined a few of the things I really enjoyed at the time when I was deciding what to do. I love music, I love writing and I like acting. I was doing all of those things to varying degrees – of awfulness. Advertising itself was interesting because it was a combination of all those things. Plus comedy. I’ve always enjoyed comedy. Radio was like a very condensed version of all those things. I could experiment with all those different areas in a very short space of time.

That’s the other great thing I love about radio, is that you can conceive and execute the idea in a matter of days. Whereas with television, back when I worked in an advertising agency, it was just so frustrating to have an idea, then to have to wait for months whilst it went through research and client changes, before you could even go anywhere near actually making it. And when you have a very short attention span, that’s not a good thing.

I guess it was also very satisfying creatively because writing radio is quite liberating. You can do whatever you want. And I felt I could do it well.

DS: What are the key elements of good radio?

The first thing you need to do is engage. Engagement is critical because radio is a secondary medium. You’re often doing something else, or thinking about something else at the time of listening, so you really need to reach out and intrigue and engage the listener with something funny, interesting, arresting. So that’s absolutely a major requirement.

Intimacy is also important because the medium itself is very intimate, as in, it’s one to one. You’re listening to your choice of station, on your own, in your own environment. So an ad that’s conversational fits the situation well because it is a communication medium heard where people are very relaxed. The best commentators on radio are those who communicate naturally, sounding like it’s all from off the top of their head. So a good radio ad should reflect that.

DS: What kinds of things do you first consider when you get a radio script, prior to the studio?

When I get a script, the first thing I look at is to define the tone and emotion of the piece. Whether it’s a character’s monologue or a five-word corporate end line, because if you don’t assign an emotion, however subtle it is, it could end up being bland and forgettable. So that’s the starting point, just to work out, what is the emotion? What is the feeling and tone we’re trying to convey? It makes the casting more streamlined. Ideas on appropriate people seem to fall out of the woodwork once you’ve defined what feeling you want to capture.

DS: So when you are casting actors, are you considering their skill over their experience? Or is it the quality of their voice?

RvD: The most important criteria is acting ability and that’s followed closely by skills and the experience they’ve got. By skills I mean things like breathing and timing. Voice quality is less important for a lot of the roles we tend to be involved in – which are more character roles – and the priority there is to achieve a more natural, authentic performance. When I say character I don’t mean silly voices, I mean being someone who might exist beyond the ad, not just a voice floating around in the ether. In a straighter read where the voice is representing a brand, the texture and timbre of the voice then becomes really important. Some actors are blessed and have it all! They have the acting ability, the technical skills as well as a beautiful voice.

DS: A lot of your work transports your listener to a specific space in the ‘theatre of the mind’. What are some tips you have for achieving realism in your radio works?

RvD: Let’s assume the actors are brilliant, have been cast well and understand the script. So that’s a starting point there because you’re not going to bother trying to imagine where the character is, if you don’t believe they exist in the first place. I guess after that it’s mike dynamics, which make a big difference. Encouraging the cast to move around as they would if the scene was being filmed. Approaching the mike for a conspiratorial tone, or turning off mike to help suggest movement. It means often setting up stereo or multiple mikes. The changes in perspective create a much more vivid picture for the listener.

I always tell the cast where the scene is set and play relevant sound effects in their cans. That just helps them get it clear, in their minds, where they are and dictates their projection and performance.

DS: Is there a different skill set required for directing a voice only piece as opposed to directing theatre or film?

RvD: I always say, our ears are incredible bullshit detectives. Authenticity is more important when you are just working with voice. You have to be so much more in-tune with the tonality of the piece when working with voice alone. There are subtle nuances I use to communicate emotions that you would normally see on an actors face.

DS: Such as?

RvD: I guess I’m talking about sub-vocals – which are meaningless sounds that occur in the middle of a sentence when someone is responding to something someone is saying, that can tell you exactly what they’re feeling, without having to use words or wait for their lines. The benefit of seeing both characters on screen is you know how the other person is reacting without having to use sounds. In radio, by having little sounds and responses, noises or pauses in strange places, it can suggest a lot of that information that you wouldn’t have otherwise had to do audibly, if you had it all there for you to see.

It’s all about that authenticity. It’s going to sound like a cracked record! But anyone can make written words audible and it’s up to me to make sure those words are actually pulled to life, so they mean something.

So it’s all about an awareness of the details, to achieve an emotional authenticity.

DS: Has there ever been a point in studio when you have felt ‘this isn’t going to work’ and how did you get things back on track?

RvD: Yes – quite a few times! Some of the techniques might be stopping, bringing them into the control room for a cup of tea and having a chat about something completely unrelated. That’s just usually because the words have become a bit meaningless and they’re getting a bit tired, starting to question everything. So we just need to recalibrate and take a break. Also, taking their headphones off is a very simple way of getting people to stop concentrating on what their saying so much and start to become more instinctive and fluent.

If they’re not getting the right tone or emotion, I’ll sometimes play music. Whether or not that music’s going to be used in the final mix, it takes their minds off concentrating on how they’re saying the words and they naturally match the tone of the music. It also helps them drive the pace. Then you just take the music away and presto!

The other one is sitting in the studio with them and turning the script into an interview, so they respond to real life questions. It adds meaning to the words on the page.

You know if you’ve been working on something for too long, it’s hard for actors to unlearn everything. So a lot of it is about distracting and trying to help them not think too much.

Richard Stevens and Dave Raybould have finished a new book the will be published by Focal Press. It’s called The Game Audio Tutorial, described as “a practical guide to sound and music for interactive games”. They’ve also launched a website where the readers will be allowed to enjoy some cool stuff, including a unique tutorial game level, twenty 10-minute tutorial videos, a library with hundreds of sound files and all kind of articles and resources. So great, huh?

It’s available for pre-order on Amazon and others at $48,95 and will be available on March 29, 2011. Its price is $48,95.

Details:

This practical guide to Game Audio puts the means of production into the hands of Sound Designers, Composers, and Game Designers. If you want to be part of the future of Game Audio you need to learn how to produce Interactive Audio, not just one shot sound effects or music loops. Better use of Audio makes a better Game and it’s your job to make this happen. You can do this by talking, but you can do it better by showing. Get your hands dirty by seeing what you can do, and how far you can go, in a real Games Engine to demonstrate your ideas effectively. Each section of the book links to an area of the accompanying Game Level where you can experience the principles in action before getting stuck in yourself with over fifty practical exercises.

Chapter 1 : Basic training

Readers will be introduced to the chosen platform for demonstrating the principles within the book, Epic Games ‘Unreal Development Kit’ (available to all readers for free at http://www.udk.com/). They will learn about the importance of ambient sound in adding character and immersion to game environments. Via a number of simple tasks they will learn how to navigate the UDK interface and how to implement basic sound ambiences.

Chapter 2 : How big is the van ?

This chapter will deal with the issues of memory when developing audio for games. A number of solutions to non-repetitive design will be discussed, illustrated and accompanied by tasks to embed knowledge. These techniques and principles are particularly applicable to platforms where the memory is a significant restriction such as the NDS, PSP, iPhone or other mobile devices, but are also equally important for other consoles such as the Wii, XBox360 and PS3 albeit on a different scale.

Chapter 3 : Making it sound real

This chapter will deal with a number of acoustic principles, as applied in games, and their implementation. It also will discuss the need to create a realistic, consistent and believable sound world through the implementation of sounds to accompany the physical interaction of gameplay objects.

Chapter 4 : Making it sound good

This chapter will deal with the crucial issues of how sound can support gameplay and narrative not only through adding characterisation to objects and characters but by also being reactive to game events via the use of interactive mixing.

Chapter 5 : Music systems

This chapter will cover music implementation in games. It will deal with a number of different approaches going from simple crossfading systems to more generative techniques.

Chapter 6 : Dialogue

This chapter will begin by looking at some of the tragic history of dialogue in games and posit some reasons for these continuing crimes, before proposing some suggestions and techniques for improving things in the future.

Chapter 7 : Advanced Sound system design

This chapter deals with complex interactive systems for game sound design such as vehicle and weapon design. In this chapter we will dig beneath the usual user interface of the game development tool and look at some of the key concepts relating to the scripting and programming that go on under the hood.

Chapter 8 : Next steps

This chapter will look at career opportunities within the games industry. It will include interviews with industry practitioners, advice on the roles available within industry, and advice for creating an appropriate demo reel.

Appendix A :Sound FX design

This chapter will look at practical sound FX design for games. Taking the reader from basic recording principles to processing and digital audio manipulation for the creation of sound FX.

Appendix B: Sampling and resampling

This demonstrates the application of this important technique via a freely available audio editor package.

Appendix C: Loops and Looping

This demonstrates the application of this important technique via a freely available audio

editor package.

Appendix D : Quickstart Page

This provides a summary of the key techniques for those readers who already have some familiarity with Game Design tools.

Appendix E : Keyboard Shortcuts.

This provides a useful reference for keyboard shortcuts.

Appendix F : Template levels

This appendix contains a description of the Template level included with the book that can form the basis for readers further experimentation.

Appendix G: Sound Library Contents

This appendix will outline the contents of the small sound library which accompanies the book.

Appendix H : Basic terms.

This covers the basic terms that the book will use for any readers unfamiliar with common computing terms.

The New York Times has published an article featuring Ren Klyce, who shares how was his approach on mixing an  important scene of “The Social Network”.

As part of our continuing quest to help you win your Oscar pool – and again, not at all as part of an end-of-season notebook dump – the Bagger returns to the hard-to-predict sound design category.

When we spoke with Ren Klyce, an Oscar-nominated sound guy behind “The Social Network” we asked about a scene that has been drawing an unusual amount of attention for its mix; even The New Yorker commented on it.

The scene is a pivotal moment in which Justin Timberlake, as Sean Parker, and Jesse Eisenberg, as Mark Zuckerberg, are talking in a loud club, and – in perhaps the movie’s gravest departure from reality – you can nonetheless hear everything they’re saying.

“That was a very difficult scene for us to mix and create,” Mr. Klyce told us.

(Warning: audio nerding ahead.)

Do tell!

“When we mix films, we know as part of our job, that we have to make sure that no matter what happens, that we have to have the audience hear everything that’ s being said,” he explained. “There’s nothing worse than missing a word in a film and being frustrated by that, particularly if it’s very important to the plot or what’s happening in the scene. So when we first mixed the scene, we did what one would expect. We had the music very loud at the beginning before people spoke, and as the camera cranes across the room, we pulled the music down to hear the dialogue. We had the music playing very low under the dialogue and it worked and it was fine.”

Mr. Klyce and his colleagues – David Parker, Michael Semanick and Mark Weingarten – invited the movie’s director, David Fincher, in to see their work.

“We called him in and he was very unhappy with the scene,” Mr. Klyce said. “He said it doesn’t feel realistic to me, it doesn’t feel like I’m in a club; I just feel like I’m watching a movie.”

This meant: back to the drawing board.

Continue reading…

Via @soundesignblog

[During this month, I'll be doing weekly reports about “Secrets for Great Film Sound“, a new webinar series hosted by David Sonnenschein and Ric Viers.]

Last week’s webinar was fantastic. Lots of theory and techniques from Ric Viers about the roles in post-production audio and also talked a lot about foley, including history, tips and techniques. Then he shared a lot of stuff about sound effects recording and design, including several tips and ideas for conceptualizing sound effects and designing a wholes soundscape for a project.

They also talked about the use of plugins and effects in order to manipulate different characteristics of sound. Then David explained his methods on using different kind of effects and sound manipulation processes.

One cool thing that I’d like to mention is that I had several Internet connection issues (in my home, not the webinar’s platform)  in the last webinar and I didn’t finish to see it, but David always send a recording of the webinar to the attendee’s mail addresses. You can play, stop, take notes, rewind. It’s just fantastic!

[During this month, I'll be doing weekly reports about “Secret for Great Film Sound“, a new webinar series hosted by David Sonnenschein and Ric Viers.]

Last week’s webinar was fantastic. David and Ric talked about dialogue, sharing all kind of techniques, tips and tricks on recording, mixing and editing dialogue. Ric shared a lot of useful tips and things to keep in mind when recording on location dialogue, tips for recording voiceover, challenges on dialogue editing and mixing, and more. They also talked about ADR, voiceover, and the importance of dialogue in film sound. It was just fantastic!

One thing that I loved from that session was the discussion about some of the works showcased by some of the attendees. Their excellent work generated a very interesting discussion, both form the comments and the opinions/analysis from David and Ric.

The great thing about these webinars is that David and Ric are not hiding anything. They share a lot of things and they’re always ready to answer you anything.

New video at SoundWorks Collection, featuring Production Sound Mixer John Midgley and his work on “The King’s Speech”.

You might not know Production Sound Mixer John Midgley, but you definitely have heard his incredible collection of work including the first three “Harry Potter” films, “Children of Men”, and “Hotel Rwanda”.

John Midgley was recently honored with his second Academy Award nomination for his work on “The King’s Speech” and was previously nominated for “Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace” in 1999. In this 30-minute conversation, the SoundWorks Collection explore what it was like to capture these critically acclaimed performances by Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, and Helena Bonham Carter. Find out how specific scenes in the film were recorded, the challenges that came with the film’s short schedule, and what it takes to be a Production Sound Mixer. God Save the King!

The february issue of AudioMedia Magazine is available now and includes a very interesting article featuring the sound team of “The King’s Speech”.

AudioMedia – February 2010 (Online, Free)

The November’s Issue of AudioMedia Magazine is also available now, including two interesting articles; one about the sound of “James Bond 007 – Blood Stone“, including conversations with lead sound designer Mathias Grunwaldt and composer Richard Jacques.

The second article is a very cool read about the sound of  the “America: The Story of Us” “docu-drama”, with comments of sound supervisor and dubbing mixer Phitz Hearne and people of the Prime Focus team.

AudioMedia – November’s Issue

Waves has published an interview with another guy from its artists team. This time is not a sfx guy… it’s a dialogue editor! and a great one: John Purcell, author of the wonderful Dialogue Editing for Motion Pictures: A Guide to the Invisible Art book. A very cool read for anyone:

What’s the main goal of a dialogue editor?

A dialogue editor is responsible for every sound that was recorded during the shoot. He takes the more or less finished film from the picture editor, makes sense of the edited sounds, organizes them, and finds out what works and what doesn’t. The dialogue editor wades through the outtakes to find better articulations, quieter passages, sexier breaths, and less vulgar lip smacks. He replaces washy wide-shot sound with clean close-up takes, establishes depth in otherwise flat scenes, and edits tracks for maximum punch and clarity.

Dialogue editors also work to remove the filmmaking from the film. Dolly squeaks, camera noise, crew rustling, and light buzzes must go; otherwise, the magic of the movies is compromised. These editors help present the actors in their best light, quieting dentures, eliminating belly noises, and sobering slurred syllables. And when the production sound can’t be saved, the dialogue editor is involved in the ADR process, that is, the re-recording of voices in the studio, to replace problem field recordings or to beef up performances.

Dialogue editing is all of these things and more. Dialogue is what makes most films work. The dialogue editor makes the dialogue work.

What are some of the problems you encounter as a dialogue editor?

There are two basic kinds of problems: production problems and problems with the tracks. Production problems include not getting all the materials that you need to get started, receiving materials that aren’t to spec, endless changes after the picture is locked, actors who can’t perform ADR, inexperienced directors who don’t have a clue, and producers who don’t pay.

Track problems range from problematic recordings to noisy locations to clothing rustle with lavaliere mics to off-microphone shots, to scenes that just won’t cut. The list goes on and on.

The greatest frustration of any editor is that there’s rarely enough time or money to give the film the love it deserves.

Continue reading…