The Importance of ADR for Your DVX 100 Digital Movie
by Margaret Kleinsele

Okay, all you DVX100 digital film makers, let’s start with the definition. The acronym ADR stands for “Audio Dialogue Replacement” or “Additional Dialogue Recording” or “Additional Dialogue Replacement”, depending on who you ask. 

Have you ever watched an independent digital short film on streaming web? 
For example, like those found on On the Lot and was just so intrigued by the first couple of shots during the intro that you said to yourself… this might be the one… the one DVX100 movie to make it all worth spending my whole afternoon skimming through endless amounts of online digital short films. Then without a moment’s notice this beautifully directed short mini-dv film you were so intrigued by, suddenly appears to be the biggest waste of time you’ve ever spent.  All because it sounded like the movie production took place in an underground sewage tunnel! Yuk!!! It looked good… but the audio from the film was crap. 

It’s as if you finally met the girl of your dreams and she sounded like James Earl Jones. I highly doubt that you’d be thinking marriage anytime soon… unless she gives you the Vader finger choke that is!!  Anyway, my point is that in a no-budget film production, you can look the part, but if you don’t sound the part then the jig is up. No one will believe in your DVX 100 project. Don’t get me wrong…there are a lot of films that use location audio for their final product, but if you really want your run & gun do-it-yourself digital film to seem like it had a budget closer to that of the bigger independent film productions - chances are you’d want to seriously consider investing some thought and hard work into your audio.

Great sounding dialogue in any film production is the key for raising the bar on any DIY digital camera project.
ADR during post production is time consuming and can be costly for smaller budgeted mini-dv productions, but the end result speaks volumes over the effort involved (yes, pun intended).

The system I use in my DVX100 film and video productions is a simple Digidesign/Protools Mbox interface hooked up to my non-linear editing system, in this case - Final Cut Pro, via-firewire.
In Protools, I import a Quicktime movie of the scene that my actor is going to record his vocal performance over. I then simply create an audio track for my actor to start recording their voice. There are many different audio recording programs that allow you to perform ADR with different types of movie files. If you are too broke to afford any audio programs that have the ADR capabilities then consider just playing the scene back to your actor with they record their ADR into your on-camera DVX 100 microphone. In the end all you really want is to establish crisp clean dialogue audio from your talent.

Here are some DVX100 audio post production tips that will help your digital movie production.

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!