The Components of a Soundtrack

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Creating a soundtrack is perhaps the most complicated audio engineering task you can take on. You must not only capture dialog (words spoken by people on-screen) and narration (words spoken by someone off-screen ), but also the sounds people make on screen as they move around, called foley sounds. Foley sounds include footsteps, doors opening and closing, papers rustlingyou get the idea. Then there are imaginary sounds, such as the sound a spaceship makes traveling through the vacuum of space. I consider this an imaginary sound because sound cannot travel in a vacuum . Such sounds are called special effects , and they include bigger-than-life sounds like the unrealistic gunshots and body punches in the movies and on TV. Last, but certainly not least, is music. Music can take the form of the score or background music, environmental music such as the jukebox in Happy Days , and incidental music such as songs playing over the ending credits.

Dialog and Narration

Dialog and narration make up the most important element in any soundtrack except for a music video. In order to communicate information and emotional content effectively, speech must be clearly heard . Taking the time to perfect dialog and narration tracks will pay dividends later, when they are combined with other elements of the soundtrack.

Production Audio

Dialog consists of what the characters say while they are onscreen or within earshot of the camera's point of view. A member of the film crew, usually the production sound mixer, will record the dialog into a stand-alone audio recorder or, in the case of video production, directly into the camera itself. This is called production audio that is to say, any audio recorded during the filming phase of a project. Production audio includes wild takes , or recording while the camera is not filming. These takes of dialog, background ambience, and sound effects can be used later in post-production.

The audio recorders used for field recording traditionally have been either Nagra ¹ /4" analog tape decks or portable DAT machines. However, in today's digital environment, using a recorder capable of generating data filessuch as the Fostex PD-6 shown in Figure 2.1 and the Zaxcom DEVAis becoming a popular alternative to traditional methods . Transferring files from one of these data recorders into Pro Tools or a video editing system is a simple process of copying data directly off the DVD disc, thereby eliminating a time-consuming , real-time transfer. The day of an all-digital production chain from source to delivery is rapidly approaching, and you'll need to prepare for this technology in order to remain competitive.

Figure 2.1. The Fostex PD-6 DVD Field Recorder is capable of recording six tracks of 48kHz audio or two tracks of 96kHz audio directly to standard DVD-RAM discs.

Re-Recorded Dialog, or ADR

Many times production audio becomes unusable because of environmental noise such as passing cars , airplanes, dogs, or some other sound. Equipment failure can also wreak havoc during filming, causing loss of audio. The solution to these problems is "dialog replacement." Commonly referred to as ADR (automatic dialog replacement), it is the process of re-recording parts or all of the dialog in a certain scene or take in which the original audio is unusable. The actors and actresses (called the talent ) who performed in the scene come into the recording studio and record the lines needed. They do this by watching the original footage and listening to themselves talking in order to maintain what is called "lip-sync." If you've seen Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring or The Two Towers then you've seen movies that are mostly ADR dialog. Due to the nature of modern visual special effects, there is often a lot of noise on a film set, rendering the production audio useless. ADR can also be used to enhance the emotional performance of a character. Dialog replacement can also be used to edit profanity out of a scene. We've all seen this done badly , as when we hear "shucks" but we see the actor's lips saying something quite different!

Narrator/ Voiceovers

Narration and voiceovers are simply the voice of the announcer . Sometimes this can take the form of one of the onscreen characters either narrating part of the story or talking to himself. Voiceovers are usually recorded in a studio similar to the one shown in Figure 2.2. Timing is particularly important to voiceovers. A tenth of a second can make a big difference in a fifteen-second TV spot. Talented voiceover artists can adjust their speed to fit certain timings within tenths of a second! It can sometimes be necessary for an engineer to edit out breaths and spaces in order to make a voiceover fit. Have you ever wondered how they get all the disclaimer information in car ads spoken so quickly? Fast talkers and good editors!

Figure 2.2. This is a typical voice-recording studio with isolation booth . All types of dialog may be recorded in a studio like this. The key elements are a neutral acoustic quality that can lend itself to a variety of voice recordings and suitable isolation from outside noise.

Voices for Animation

Animation is a special case when it comes to dialog recording. As there is no filming of characters on a set or at a location, there is no production audio to use. With animation, the dialog is always recorded first. Animators then will use the finished dialog to create the different expressions and make the animated mouths move in sync with the words.

With the advent of computer-generated animation, certain action scenes may be animated before the dialog is recorded. The talent can watch their animated characters moving onscreen while they read their lines, kind of like with ADR recording. Then, later, animators can superimpose the expressions and mouth movements derived from the recorded dialog onto the already-moving bodies of animated characters. You can see an example of this in the movie Shrek . Certain scenes began as animated bodies then the actors read their lines while watching the bodies' movements. Finally, the animators created facial expressions and mouth motions that matched the dialog and had the computer place them on the bodies of the characters.

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