Into the C24 Studio for a day of recording ADR and Foley, with perhaps some room for some mixing at the end!
Bringing along our plan, script and asset list, JP, Mitch and I set-up the recording space, console and ProTools Ultimate DAW session.
Mic choice:The LDC we ended up choosing (refer to my Planning blog) was the versatile Slate ML-1 with virtual microphone system!
I love using this thing - It's a flat response LDC cardioid microphone that we used with it's linear pre-amp to ensure that the uncoloured signal gets through to the PT session. This is important because the software that's paired with it then colours the signal to emulate any one of a large number of microphones! Basically we can emulate a huge variety of mics (like a Neumann U87) with a mic thats nowhere near as expensive, and pick the best one for the job.
We used the line-in input of the fireface interface that's available in the C24 studio - this action bypasses the preamp in the unit, making sure that the signal isn't coloured by further circuitry.
Lastly
"One of the keys to a good match between the production audio and the studio audio is to attempt to replicate the production audio conditions in the studio as closely as possible. It’s key to consult with the production sound mixer and request that the ADR studio provides the same models of microphones that were used on set." - Greg Crawford
This is indeed important, however when working on a stand alone scene like we are here, we were able to use a mic of our choice (as long as we thought that we could make it fit into the location).
Foley:
We began by focussing on the foley, with the aim of having a complete soundscape to assist the voice actors performances.
Using the asset list we prepared earlier, we set into the scene and hit one foley item at a time as they came up. While recording similar sounds together, for example there are waiters footsteps occurring more than once, so we recorded all the footsteps while we had the props out to do so.
I used this glass, metal canister and wooden board to create a few different sounds in our recreation.
The shaker with its' metal lid acted perfectly as the martini shaker, I poured water from it into the sundae glass which worked well for the pouring sounds as well. We even paid attention to the little things, adding skin on stainless sounds while the waiter handled the shaker.
The board with a thin layer of cloth over it to act as the tablecloth hit the nail on the head for the glass being put back down onto the table.
Mitch here looking good, about to create the first few foley tracks we worked on, using paper for the menu movement sounds, a cloth bag to pretend to blow his nose into, and later he did Matthew McConaughey's chest thumps, so that our voice actor Abdul could focus simply on McConaughey's lines and get those spot on. After our ADR was finished, with all the little things paid attention to (many of which the original scene did not include), we picked up our voice actor and got into some yummy ADR.
ADR:
Abdul, an actor and vocalist performed as McConaughey, while I performed as DiCaprio.
“The biggest issue is to make sure that the actor is completely comfortable in the room with us,” Greg explains. “Before anyone comes in, I make sure all the technical components are pulled together.” - Greg Crawford (ADR Engineer)
This quote is the reason we got as much sorted out as we could before getting Abdul in, to ensure an awesome performance, we took care of all technical stuff and just focused on his lines and performance for the duration of his visit.
We played around with mic distance, reminding him to stick to a couple feet away for most of the scene, and having him step back for the beginning of the scene when the camera is further back. After we got a good take of a line, we would play him the next line with context of his previous, to ensure continuity with his speech patterns. Most of the final takes were excellent, with some minor editing here and there it will look great.
Leo was pretty quick, the toughest part was actually the timing of the chest hits and humming/bird sounds at the end, running all those through with one take took a while and still I notice some areas that it could be improved. We could have done the chest beats separately again, however for an authentic sound we chose to do it in one take.
References:
1. Hinton, J. (2018). Everything You Need to Know About ADR (and Didn't Know to Ask). [online] Frame.io Insider. Available at: https://blog.frame.io/2018/06/11/adr-primer/ [Accessed 16 Oct. 2018].
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