place and/or move the microphones so that the
sound corresponds to the space between actors and
camera and the dialogue will be as free from back-
ground noise as possible. Double-system record-
ingis the standard technique of recording film
sound on a medium separate from the picture. At
one time, sound was recorded directly on the film,
but now the various media used to record sound
include digital audiotape, compact discs, or com-
puter hard drives. This system, which synchronizes
sound and image, allows both for maximum quality
control and for the manifold manipulation of sound
during postproduction editing, mixing, and synchro-
nization. Once the sound has been recorded and
stored, the process of editing it begins.
Editing
The editor is responsible for the overall process of
editing and for the sound crew, which consists of a
supervising sound editor, sound editors (who usu-
ally concentrate on their specialties: dialogue,
music, or sound effects), sound mixers, rerecording
mixers, sound-effects personnel, and Foley artists.
The editor also works closely with the musical
composer or those responsible for the selection of
music from other sources. In the editing room, the
editor is in charge, but producers, the director,
screenwriters, actors, and the sound designer may
also take part in the process. In particular, the pro-
ducer and director may make major decisions about
editing.
The process of editing, of both pictures and
sounds, usually lasts longer than the shooting itself.
Sound editing takes up a great deal of that time,
because a significant portion of the dialogue and all
of the sound effects and music are created and/or
added during postproduction. Included in this
process is adding Foley sounds (discussed later in
the chapter) for verisimilitude and emphasis and
creating and layering ambience with traffic, crowd
voices, and other background sounds.
Filmmakers first screen the dailies(or rushes),
which are synchronized picture/sound work prints
of a day’s shooting; select the usable individual
shots from among the multiple takes; sort out the
outtakes(any footage that will not be used); log the
usable footage in order to follow it easily through
the rest of the process; and decide which dialogue
needs recording or rerecording and which sound
effects are necessary. Rerecordingof sound first
recorded on the set (sometimes called loopingor
dubbing) can be done manually (with the actors
watching the footage, synchronizing their lips with
it, and rereading the lines) or, more likely today, by
computer through automatic dialogue replace-
ment (ADR)—a faster, less expensive, and more
technically sophisticated process.
If ambient or other noises have marred the qual-
ity of the dialogue recorded during photography,
the actors are asked to come back, view the scene
in question, and perform the dialogue again as
closely as possible. When an acceptable rerecord-
ing take has been made, an ADR editor inserts it
into the movie. Finally, the sound-editing team syn-
chronizes the sound and visual tracks. There can
be a certain amount of overlap between the sound
editing and mixing stages, facilitated by the fact
that the entire editing and mixing process is now
done digitally.392 CHAPTER 9SOUND
ADR in actionFor the American version of Hayao
Miyazaki’s animated movie Spirited Away(2001), it was
necessary to rerecord the characters’ voices using English-
speaking actors and the ADR (automatic dialogue
replacement) system. Here, Jason Marsden (the voice of
Haku), standing in front of a microphone and holding his
script, lip-synchs his lines to coordinate with the action on
the monitor in the background.