Documentary film dialogue editing

[cclegg68]

Hi,

I'm doing the sound editing and mixing for an independent documentary film and I was wondering when editing dialogue, do I need to split all the dialogue from the ambience of the interviews?
Doing so will probably offer me greater liberties for mixing the dialogue but then, the background ambiences won't match anymore.
In a fiction film, I would recreate the whole scenes with foley/wild/soundbank sounds to have control over every aspects (anyway the prod sounds are never that usefull!) but I don't know how it is done in a cinéma vérité kind of film.

I can't seem to get me going until I know the proper workflow of editing this kind of film.

Thanks!

[Fajita]

I record roomtone when I work with my wife's docs. That way the edits can be smoothed out.

[Jussi]

Don't split. It makes your life and mixers life much more difficult if you do. Add atmos if you need something extra or need to smooth the bgs. And since it is a doc, you won't have and don't actually need that much control over what's there in sync. Us viewers tend to accept all kind of a stuff in a doc because "its real". Doesnt mean you shouldn't put any work on it to make it work tho. On the contrary, doc's can be more difficult than fiction.

[eoats]

I would agree with the above; you're not making a whole new set of clothes, just patching & smoothing out the wrinkles

[mikevarela]

yeah, +1 ^

The only time I'd edit out Dx from tone is if they asked for a FF M&E, but that's expensive and usually not needed. In fact, most people watching will understand the guerrilla style and often mixers will even accent the cuts by not cleaning up transitions (scenes).

I've copied out Pfx sometimes when I wanted to give them a better M&E, but usually I default to leaving the Dx track in tact with all the color and futz it came with, cleaned up a bit of course.

[JoeMilner]

I've done a ton of feature documentaries, and I approach them exactly as I would as "fictional narrative" film. BGs & FX for every shot, foley where needed, and when I print my stems, the "sit down" interviews and narration (if applicable) are on separate channels. Usually I end up with a 6ch DX Stem: 2 centers for Interviews & Primary verité DX, a center for secondary verité (which can often be put in PFX and included in the M&E, as the M&E requirements for docs are usually less rigid than for non-docs), a center for narration, and a LR pair for reverbs (if applicable), a 5.1 MX stem and a 5.1 FX stem.
Of course every film is different, but that's what I start out with.
Hope this helps, good luck!

[cclegg68]

Thanks everyone! you've helped a lot.
I finished cleaning up the interview and v.o. tracks and all my doubts and scares went away now!!