ADR Foley: producers rely on these sound techniques to replace or enhance troubled dialogue and production audio

Post, June, 2004 by David John Farinella

While sound and visual effects get the attention, Foley and ADR are the backbone of any feature film or television show. The talents of Foley mixers and walkers, as well as ADR engineers, bring almost any scene into sharper focus by replacing dull production sound.

Certainly technology's increased flexibility and quickness have helped facilitate successful recording dates, but in this market it seems that the most important tool in any session is the talent of Foley mixers and walkers or ADR engineers After all, nonlinear digital tools can speed up a session but doing the wrong thing quicker is not necessarily helpful. What do the pros say?

SCHMUTZING IT UP A BIT

Scott Gershin, sound supervisor on the action-packed film. The Chronicles of Riddick took a bit of a different approach on this film when it came to the Foley work that was done at Soundelux (www.soundelux.com). Because much of the film's dialogue tracks had to be reshot in ADR, the team lost most of the natural production sounds. "So, we basically approached it like an animated feature where we added Foley to everything," he explains.

Yet, he didn't try to get perfect sounds. "A lot of times, audio people make it very pristine and very clean" he says. "The reality is that when you hear great production dialogue that has movements in it, it's got many levels of detail. You'll hear the stuff that's really detailed, but at the same time you'll hear all these little sounds that are wonderful jewels of mistakes that come through the dialogue that are very hard to reproduce. I love to hear the Foley sound like production and not like Foley."

To do that he adds "schmutz." which is the smearing of audio. "You don't want every sound to be clear and crisp," he reports. "A lot of people would take a normal sound and just drop the volume, but the reality is that it's still clear and crisp. So, a lot of times we'll do an off-micing technique with people that are in the background, the people that you kind of want to softfocus a little bit so the ear doesn't tune into them as easily."

As an example he points to the Necromonger characters in Riddick who are heavily armored and don't move well. "So, the question is when you hear the main character walk across the room and there's other people walking, how do you differentiate it so it doesn't turn into mush. The ear can't hear and distinguish everything, so we make Lord Marshall very clear and crisp and powerful," he reports.

The tracks for this film were recorded into Digidesign Pro Tools through an assortment of outboard gear. A bevy of microphones--from Soundelux's own mics to Neumann U 87s--were used depending on the requirements.

Trend-wise, Gershin recalls a lesson he learned from his mentor Wylie Stateman about combining Foley and sound effects to make something punchy and special. "I'm not sure it's a new trend, but a lot of times people think of Foley just as footsteps, cloth movement and stuff like that," he says, "A lot of times the art of Foley can lend a certain level of detail to sound effects that makes them sound better.

"For me it's all about the detail," he continues." A lot of people are out there doing the big, broad strokes. For me, I like the detail and finesse. I like to be able to rock a room and then go quiet, to utilize the dynamics to effectively tell the director's story. Ultimately, we're storytellers and we're creating illusions in the background that help enhance that story."

THE MANY CHARACTERS OF SHREK 2

While Riddick was treated like an animated feature, the team at Skywalker Sound (www.skysound.com) faced all the challenges of a true animated film during the Shrek 2 sessions. Foley artist Jana Vance reports that the amount of characters was just one of the challenges in this film. "There were also so many different types of characters that we needed to come up with different sounds. Shrek, Donkey, Fairy Godmother, Puss in Boots, Gingerbread Man and the Three Blind Mice. So, a lot of it was establishing and making everyone sound unique and cute, and making sure everyone had their own personality," she says.

While cartoons open the door for out-landish sounds, Vance believes there's a careful balance to be struck, "We always talk about what you want to hear versus what is it," she explains. "So, with the Donkey in Shrek we have actual donkey hooves and other things that are like pig hooves. We want to hear him light and wispy and kind of cuter. We want something that will sell that he has hooves, but keep him in character.

"It also depends on direction," she continues. "With Shrek, they wanted us to keep things fairly realistic, believe it or not, but obviously there are scenes that are comic so you go for the rubbery snaps and bigger whooshes and things that are more over the top."

On the dialogue front, Shrek 2 was a challenge for ADR/dialogue supervising editor Marilyn McCoppen because of the volume of tracks shot for the film in a variety of locations. "So, we would have to carefully line it up, sort it out and try to make it as smooth as possible to make it all sound like it was coming from the screen," she says. "We were also pulling different takes from different days, and people sound different in the morning than they do in the evening."