Boost Your Film and Video Production Value with ADR and Foley
by Ed Tanten

Let's face it - low budget independent movie productions always get a bad rap. From lacking trained actors, to makeshift duct tape and "do it yourself" PVC parts, we're constantly proving ourselves to be worthy. One crucial area of production that a lot of digital film makers tend to overlook - but shouldn't - is audio quality. Sound quality can make or break your audience's suspension of disbelief. Nothing's worse than becoming intrigued with a compelling movie only to be annoyed by bad audio dips and cuts.

Audio can boost the production value of any movie  including a DVX100 movie production. AND it's something that we can actually control! The viewing audience is trained to expect a certain type of audio delivery when watching a film. They're often very forgiving when it comes to less-than-perfect images, but for sound...it's a subconscious expectation to experience flawless sound. And amazingly enough, many first time filmmakers forget this. Usually on digital film productions.

It doesn't have to be as serious as a 5.1 surround sound mix, but it does have to (and should) be clean.

By clean, I mean that you shouldn't rely on just a shotgun microphone alone! Because most shotgun mics have sensitive pick-up patterns, they will record every little thing; from ambient hiss to unwanted sniffles and passing airplanes. Although a shotgun mic is a great choice for digital movie documentary run-and-gun style productions, you wouldn't want this to be your primary choice for capturing audio when filming a DVX 100 movie that contains dramatic spoken dialogue or one that has a lot of action. 

For this, your best bet would be to go the route of ADR (Automated Dialogue Recording or Replacement depending on who you ask). 

ADR

In this process, the actors re-record their dialogue into an audio workstation like ProTools (I use the MBox) to sync up to the picture. 

A good way to get good ADR onto your film is to start during the actual production of the movie. If you can find a boom operator, then you're in good shape. If not, don't worry - just mount your shotgun mic onto a microphone stand and set it just out of frame just enough to pick up your actors' voices. Or you can tape it to a nearby surface using some gaffers or duct tape. You just need to make sure to point the mic towards your actors so you can pick up their lines to be used later. This will be used as your "reference audio". You can also use external recorders to capture audio as well...like a DAT, hard disk recorder or even some on-camera mics - Altec Lansing makes reasonably priced shotgun mics that fit the DVX100. As we know, however, the DVX on-camera mic isn't all that, so be careful.

It is possible that some independent digital filmmakers get lucky with great location reference audio and all they have to do is tweak it in ProTools or a similar audio workstation to remove hiss and they'll have workable dialogue tracks. BUT most of us aren't that lucky.

So...after digitizing or 'capturing' your tapes to your editing system (FCP, Premiere, etc.), make sure that you sync up the audio with the video. Then, export a movie clip containing both the video and your reference audio into ProTools. From there, you can view the video while recording new, clean dialogue tracks.

Foley 

These are actual, physical sound effects for action movements.

If you’ve ever seen any DVD behind-the-scenes footage of some person on a sound stage performing sound effects to an image on a big screen, then you know what foley is. For example, if the action in the movie calls for the character’s arm to break in a fight scene and they need to simulate the sounds of bones breaking, then they might break celery sticks to simulate the sound of real bones.

The people that perform these manual sound effects for a film production are called
“Foley Artists”.

The types of effects produced by foley artists are usually footsteps, prop handling or body movements such as punches or bones cracking. All are performed in real time to picture in a special studio called a foley stage.

A good rule of thumb for knowing what to perform a foley sound effect on is: "see a sound, hear a sound". That is to say that any movement seen on screen deserves a sound. This goes for larger budget Hollywood films and small DVX 100 digital movies.

Sometimes you can get away with using special effects libraries, but they can get pretty expensive. The best cost-effective way is to do it yourself with foley. The quick and dirty way is to have your actors repeat all of their actions and bring the mic all the way in to get good mic placement. Remember not to forget to record even the slightest movement.

This can seem like a long and tedious process, but when you're in post production and in need for some clean sound effects to match your movie, it'll save you. And when you're screening the movie for your audience and they're listening to your actors' words instead of your movie's noise, you'll be glad you did it.

Do YOU have a cheap, low budget, do-it-yourself DVX100 tip or trick that you'd like to contribute?
If so, just email it to us and we'll post it up!

Thanks for helping the grass roots grow!