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Originally Posted by mattiasnyc  I just read through this thread and there's some really interesting info here.
One question the original poster asked that I think got a bit lost though is this:
If we look past the dialog itself, and look at what goes on between lines, what does one do with that sound?
So suppose an actor says; "Hey, how'd you like to rob that bank right now?"; the other answers; "Not now, my pet hippo needs a spongebath. How about tomorrow?"; and between those lines we can hear various nat sound. Let's say, for arguments sake, that one person moves his body and is wearing a leather jacket for example.
So is the decision of how much to leave in and how much to leave for foley something done at the beginning of the process and by whom? I assume the dialog editor is not the person making that call.
And I also assume that if the decision is made to take out any noise that lives between lines of dialog, the editor will then create "filler" room tone to cover. Is this right?
The reason I'm asking is because I, just like another person here, have noticed both in TV and film a "gate-like" effect, where I can hear high-end "hiss" come and go as the dialog comes and goes. It's really distracting (depending on the listening situation of course). And I was wondering if this is because of what I just described: The stuff between the dialog is "cut out" and there isn't "proper" room tone to fill the gaps...
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On the big motion pictures I've seen the Dialogue protools sessions for, yes everything is moved out of the dialogue tracks except for the dialogue. That's not to say ALL films are like that, just the ones I've seen are.
The dialogue editor moves most of that kind of stuff onto PFX tracks. But will also remove some of it. Things like lip smacks, movement off camera, clinks off camera, etc get deleted.
Fill is sometimes made, sometimes not.
In the end it comes down to the director and mixer to choose whether to use the PFX tracks, foley tracks or both. But they are always mixed to the FX stem and not the dialogue stem. that way you can mute the dialogue adn ONLY the words go away but everything else is still intact.
If you cut the dialogue so you left all the movement, room tone, etc on the same dialogue track with the dialogue, when you mute the dialogue (to say do a foreign language version) all that additional sound will go away and could make certain on camera actions feel fake because you don't hear sound to go along with it, or the tone changes since you are now only hearing the foley instead of the foley plus prod sound effects.
If you can hear a "gating" effect on the dialogue, it is probably because of time factors. Technically speaking, if you make a fill track through a scene, every time the take that you used for fill plays, the noise level will jump up 3dB unless you cut the noise "out" on the PFX track for those regions. But even if you did that, there's no guarantee that the mixers will have the level of the fill/room tone be the same as the level of the room tone behind the dialogue. So you could be hearing it the jump in volume because of that.
You could be hearing it because there was no fill track to try and mask it or no fade ins/outs to hide it coming in an out.
Or you could be hearing it simply because the mixer didn't have enough time to remove the noise. If there is something like that in a scene, you can use Cedar to pull out some of the noise on the top end to hide that "in/out" effect of the noise.
Or it could be a combination of everything people have mentioned. I've worked on a project where the dialogue was so noisy and the deadline so tight that noise gating was the only way to minimize the noise without completely destroying the dialogue with noise removal tools. It's not that I liked doing it or thought it sounded perfect... but it was the best I could do on the stage I was mixing on within the time I had to mix. Such is life sometimes...