Recording ADR... without a proper studio. But (lucky) it's not really ADR!

[Alternative]

Hi Folks,

First and foremost... Sorry about asking dumb questions. Your answers always help me keep focus.

I have an indie movie completely recorded "MOS". I mean, I have the camera sound which is a bunch of crap as you would expect. They had no perchman available to record it properly. I need to completely remake the soundtrack, that is, rerecording dialogue, foley, etc. Crazy work, but I like the movie and how talented and professional are the people who made it (a theatre company).

Now the first bit is rerecording dialogue. I should have had access to a "studio", that is, a non-commercial-grade-but-reasonably-efficient recording room to which I could have added some movable panels, ala GIK to make it dead enough. I would have recorded everything in it. However, the people renting this place decided they'd better favor some of their close friends who also needed the studio... And I'm out without any acoustically serious place to record. (mylife.com ended, I promise).

So I still have to record this dialogue, and quickly. I thought about a couple of points of high importance: most (85-90%) of the scenes are indoor and I don't have a production recording to match.

So, what about actually recording these scenes into several real rooms: recording (pseudo) ADR in the (indoor) field ?

Noise floor would be higher, I'm exposed to potentially disturbing neighbors, but that doesn't seem actually worse than production dialogue. I'm more concerned about editing it then, as it will need a lot of splicing&stretching to make it in perfect sync, while production dialogue would to be treated more gently.
Will it blend?

Blending in foley will require dead and quiet foley, and I'd better be gentle with ambiances.

Recording would be mobile Reaper rig, fireface UC, Neumann KM140 and KM150 (km184 and km185), headphone and headphone amps as needed, video projector and screen.

I'd also build several acoustic screens similar to GIK's "screen panels" GIK Screen Panel. GIK Acoustics. Acoustic Panels and Bass Traps.

They could help me work the rooms acoustics to my advantage and allow me to record part of the foley. I imagine these would provide reasonably high absorption if used like a "booth", with no "small closet sound" like a small VO booth might give. Small sounds would be quite contained within and not excite the room's acoustics much.

Outdoor dialogue and loud foley would still require a studio but at least it gives me the necessary time to find a solution and limit the necessary renting of a studio to the bare minimum - also giving me the opportunity then to work with one that is a bit far from town, but very gently priced during the week.

A lot of guesses. Am I shooting myself in the foot or in the head?

Thanks,
Nicolas

[eoats]

First if you're in a hurry forget it. The set up time at each location is murder on schedules and the lack of control just eats up more time.

ADR &/or Foley on location has been tried on a few projects I know of.

(Dragon Slayer, Rumble Fish, Fight Club, K-19...)

Get a studio or at least a nice space that you can hope to have some control over and go for it. On K-19 we spent more than half out time waiting for noise from boats, people or car alarms to go away. Not to say you can't get some lovely stuff, but it costs a lot of time.

[Alternative]

Eoats,

Thank you very much for your very valuable advice. I might have overlooked set-up time and, yeah, waiting for noise might take a lot of time. I hear you on half the time! I remember one movie where we spent several days shooting and I was trying to record... 50m away from a suburb train station with a bus stop the other side of the house. Noise:1 My nerves:0 xD.

Nonetheless, I'd be very interested to hear more about location ADR, as you worked this way. Especially: what did you liked the most with such a setup? Was it reasonably easy/good sounding to edit and sync, and how did the "room acoustics" went through timestreching and slicing? Can you really take full advantage of going a little extra distance to directly record with the appropriate depth? What/how was your setup? Or anything that you think of, as I'm really really interested!

Well, I guess that even if I find a "reasonable" place, though not perfect, I'll take the chance to try it on "easy" sessions, with "easier" locations. Anyway, as I have to start next week and that nothing else will be ready by then, I have no other choice than at least try it - and with no acoustic panels, please! That actually is a good thing if I can make it work - maybe will the result exceed my expectations? (some optimism never hurts... especially when you don't really have the choice anyway)

That said, I just made an agreement to have access to the cellar of an artist residency (old cellar). A bit of reverb, obviously, but the space being quite large and strangely shaped, it has its resonnance rather low (sounded under 150Hz) and quite pure while the mids are rather homogenous (don't ask how this is even possible... The space is very oddly shaped!). Treble suffers most with a very sharp and crisp reverb that's quite fun but out of place for recording dialogue xD.

So maybe things alike to GIK's Screen Panel could help me reduce throw, help make sure the mids are flat, seriously tame the highs/reverb, and with good use of EQ to control that deep tone, it should be possible to get an acceptable sound. Sure, not ADR-auditorium clean but hey... I'm very tempted by the convenience of this setup.

Will try both in the short term, and make the panels, too.
Meanwhile...
Any other opinion?

Thanks,
Nicolas

[Alternative]

Oh my O_o.
Eots, I just looked at the link on your sig...

Wow O_o.

Congratulations and thanks again for your precious time!
Gonna have some rest... And watch Fight Club again!

[danijel]

You will have to hit the rec a couple of times and see if the space works out or not. The bright reverb might be a problem, just like any characteristic that deviates from 'neutral'.... Make sure you've read all the other ADR threads - work the actor, make her 'project', don't stick the mic up her mouth and you're 90pct there
BTW, last I checked, projectors weren't silent.... For a mobile rig, I suggest you forget the picture - just play her a line of location dialog from a single cheap active speaker and make her repeat that while performing the similar body motions from the shot. Most actors lately prefer not to sync to the picture anyway.

[Alternative]

Danijel:

Thank you. Yep, I read a number of ADR threads here and I read the advice about the video and actors having trouble to sync to the picture - or more accurately, trying to sync to picture and lose any expression. As the involved actors are not experienced with ADR, I thought I'd better avoid having them talk over the picture, so yeah, doing it "audio only".

But I thought about having a way to show them the sequence before...
That said you are right. I'd probably have less trouble with just an extra monitor or laptop computer (not in the "booth", of course) to show them the sequence before as a projector is noisy and finding where to place it/how to stop the noise might be cumbersone and time consuming (and not perfectly silent).

[eoats]

Originally Posted by Alternative

Oh my O_o.
Eots, I just looked at the link on your sig...

Wow O_o.

Congratulations and thanks again for your precious time!
Gonna have some rest... And watch Fight Club again!

don't get too impressed; on many of those I did very little and just came in at the end to help conform.

[philper]

You can do simple ADR with a mic, a recorder and a laptop playing back a QT. Some actors can get the speaking in sync to picture thing easily, others never do no matter how elaborate the setup. Do the best you can about matching ambiance etc, but know that ADR often takes editorial massage (if not Vocalign) to work, in addition to skillful mixing with the other elements of the soundtrack.

phil p

[Alternative]

Thank you for your answers.
I like that expression, "editorial massage" xD.

That's actually one of the main things that made me switch to Reaper. Editing power is incredible and as you can fully configure workflow (modifier keys, modifier regions, standard and alternative editing behaviors, etc) you really go through the most crazy editing blazingly fast. Its not perfect, there are some irritating quirks (it has clearly not been made for post), but its advantages clearly pay for its faults (and I didn't chose it because of price).

Acoustic panels and access to the room is planned for next weekend, but I have been convinced into recording one of the actors as he only has two lines + breathing over a "love" scene and was in Paris. So, settled in the living room, and started. Also the main actor came later so we could start to work together, see what works for him, how to make it efficient on my side... So next week everything could flow.

All the seasoned pros here will find the following completely useless. But I'm going to type it anyway, it might give ideas to others (whether these are good or not... these are just my thoughts, not facts, nor opinions from someone long involved with ADR).

About having the actor see the video or not: I found it depends on the actor and the scene (was to be expected). And, as advised, that actually performing to the video does not seems to be the most universal solution. I had better luck by playing the location recording several times, and then have them redeliver. Play them the original line, direct them between takes, replay them the original line if needed... Yeah, it does the trick - in fact, it works as good as I could hope.

How to record this audio? Hm, I tried first having the actor "freewheel" the line as many times as he wants. Which is super convenient for him as he is free, but cumbersome for me as I can't see the corresponding video in "sync", and so might let unsynchronizable things in. So I used these three "beeps" and things went on smoothly, as long as I paid precise attention to the video.

Then for the breathing, I had him try to "imagine" what breathing he would do. He also has one meaningful breath (that means "So what? Go away" when he sees the little brother is watching them xD) that I played the location recording and had him "redeliver". That didn't worked well. Then I had him look at the picture, and "breathe to the video". We got 5 takes in row, and they are all good.

Also, the actors really gain from watching the scene before recording it to better get "in the bath".

So as far as video projector goes: yep, it is way too noisy, whatever I try to tame it. But I need to show them the video before recording, and it might be needed to get some things right. Having them come to my side see the computer's monitor is cumbersome and time-consuming. I have a video output on my Macbook, so I'd have to use a splitter and a couple monitors to have video sent to a monitor for them, and a monitor for me (as I can't have it on my laptop's screen and the video output at the same time. No Canopus nor Blackmagic for Reaper...). I have a license for Humatic Chaingang, but MTC-controller playback is slow to sync, often not that smooth, with some quirks. It's not against Chaingang which is the best MTC video slave I ever used IMO after the Pyxis from Fairlight (That is heads and shoulders above anything else... And I don't work for them anymore).

I'm not too keen on carrying a couple LCD monitors with me (I can't leave much stuff in place) and as I'd like to keep the setup as small, light and portable as possible, I thought about pico-projectors. These can be had dirt cheap used (100$), and have a composite input. They have a crappy image quality, but no fan. With a white cloth in front of the actor to act as a screen, it won't interfere with the acoustic properties of the acoustic panels, and just do the trick. Same for me, so we'll both have an image at least a meter large to glance at - not too bad for something that would hold in my pockets and can even run on batteries! Gonna buy these small things.

About what the actor listens to: headphones are cumbersome. And I prefer to blast the sound at a decent level into their face and with some distance to incite them to project more. Did this with PC speaker this time, but will plug a good old Yamaha MS101 (think cheaper Fostex 6301b. Small size, low weight, loud half-decent sound. Swiss knife.)

Think I might need to resort to headphones ocasionnally, like when the girl will be doing the "love scene" breathings too. Better if I could get both actors together to rerecord it with all the intended play, but if it's not possible... I'll have to do it anyway. Good news as I can let my headamps (half rack) sit at home. Will share my own headphone output if ever needed.

Also, I need a control surface. Even a crappy Korg nanocontrol, or an X-Keys, anything that has buttons and can be made to speak midi. To control monitoring. Mute and unmute in the software equals loosing precious time, and got on my nerves. Buttons for mutes midi-tied to the RME's mixer's software returns will greatly smoothen things. I'll probably even make a small Max/MSP patch to add my own snapshot control! (as RME's Totalmix records the mic gain in the snapshots, preventing you from using it as a monitoring controller... Booh RME! Ever heard about "recall safe"???).

Reader beware: these are just first thoughts after only a few hours of recording. But these give me hints about what to do to make the next weeks flow.

Sorry I heavily deviated from acoustics. Will work on this subject further as soon as tomorrow.

Cheers!