Reddit reviews Dialogue Editing for Motion Pictures

Whoosh.....

It's like if you asked a musician how to write a song and they responded...play notes.

There is a lot to post audio. Here are the broadest strokes...

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Dialogue Editing - Use fades to smooth out transitions from one clip to the next. This helps with room tone shifts and hard edits. If there is a gap in audio between two lines of dialogue...add room tone that matches both sides to fill the space. Clean out clicks/pops and any unwanted sounds...cloth rustling, mic hits, radio mic breakup, director talking.

Sound Effects Editing - Add sounds that you either record or find in a sound effects library. These can be broken down into a few categories.

• Hard Effects - .door close, phone ringing, car engines and things like that.
  
• Design Effects - Sounds that are less tangible. Like whooshes or other synthesized sounds.
  
• BGs (backgrounds) - Room tones, wind, eerie tones, birds, crickets, rain. Anything that is used to create atmosphere.
  
• Foley - Very specific and sometimes subtle sounds that are usually too specific to find in a library. Footsteps, cloth movement, prop movement like belts clothing accessories, things that the actor holds and interacts with. A glass being set down on a table for example.
  
  Music/Score:
  
  This is usually handled by a composer but an editor may need to smooth edits between music transitions.
  
  After all of the audio has been editing to your liking it's time to mix.
  
  Mixing (just a few bullet points) -
  
  
• Balance dialogue levels so they are even from one clip to the next. Two people having a conversation should be relatively the same loudness. There are obviously situations where someone is softer or louder based on what is happening. But the mix is the time to set these levels.
  
• Use EQ to enhance dialogue. This could be to make the audio from two different takes or mics sound the same or it can be used for creative effect to make someone sound further away or behind a window or something like that.
  
• Set music levels. It could be really loud to carry a scene or loud at the start and then comes down when people start talking...or it could be music that is supposed to be coming from a radio. In which case you would use EQ and some other treatments to make it sound like it is coming from a speaker.
  
• Balance sound effects
  
• Pan whatever you want to be panned
  
• Futz things....make it sound like it's coming out of a phone or TV.
  
  This is a very basic look at what post audio entails. I suggest you use this to look up how each of these things is done individually. There are many different techniques and everyone has their own way of doing things. People spend their entire lives mastering this craft. It's really not something that can be summed up in a single post.
  
  Resources that have helped me over the years....
  
  
• www.pro-tools-expert.com
  
• www.groove3.com
  
• www.lynda.com
  
• Dialogue Editing For Motion Pictures (Book)
  
• Sound Effects Bible (Book)
  
• Audio Blocks....A cheap way to start finding sound effects. Not great but a good start.
  
• SoundSnap....Another sound effects subscription website.
  
• Also check out the related subreddits on this sub.

John Purcell has a handful of nice tutorial's online and an amazing book on dialogue editing: Dialogue Editing for Motion Pictures: A Guide to the Invisible Art

Check out this book, it's very good and explains the process in great detail. Even though I had previously done a lot of dlg editing, I still learned a lot!! I highly recommend it.

https://www.amazon.com/Dialogue-Editing-Motion-Pictures-Invisible/dp/0415828171/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1549700412&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=dialogue+editing+for+motion+pictures&dpPl=1&dpID=51Sch4Y7zgL&ref=plSrch

Here's what I propose:

1. get and read John Purcell's book on dialogue editing
   http://www.amazon.com/Dialogue-Editing-Motion-Pictures-Invisible/dp/0415828171/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1412346038&sr=8-1&keywords=john+purcell+editing
   
   dialogue is THE most challenging and important thing about the audio post process for film, and John's book lays out an excellent workflow for approaching what is going to be the majority of your sound post work.
   
   also, recognize that on proper film projects the post audio is executed by TEAM of SPECIALISTS who have honed the specific part of their craft over years of effort. Because you are not a team, and because you are not a specialist in each of the disciplines being attempted, you will not be able to execute on that level. adjust your expectations accordingly.
   
   
2. Once you've read the book, re-evaluate whether you want to tackle the dialogue edit yourself. If the answer is no, then make sure whomever you find to do this for you has AT LEAST the basic skill set described in the book. if yes, then begin work.
   
   3)work patiently and dilligently through the edit. The worse your location audio is the more difficult this will be. Don't get fancy, but also don't let problems linger. Bring in a trusted set of ears to evaluate your work periodically. Don't have them evaluate the mix (you haven't mixed dialogue yet), have them listen for editorial problems.
   
   4)with the dialogue finely edited, do a basic levelling pass. Make sure you're listening at a calibrated and consistent level, then ride the faders to taste across the entire film. NEVER change the level of your speakers. Recognize that this basic levelling pass is not a dialogue mix.
   
   5)with the dialogue roughly prepared, do a music editorial pass. listen to ONLY the music, and make sure that all of the ins, outs and transitions are to your liking. then do basic levelling as with the dialogue, but do not consider basic levelling to be a mix.
   
   
3. shop for a studio with an appropriate mix environment and engineer to do the ACTUAL dialogue mix. Look for a facility with a mid to far field 5.1 speaker setup, and an engineer that specializes in dialogue mixing. Pure music mixers will take your money and F your film up, so avoid them. find a film shop.
   
   -yes, i'm advocating you spend even more money on this step. its worth it. If your dialogue is pristine, you can get away with all kinds of craziness elsewhere in the sound track and in the film in general. if it has blemishes, no amount of perfection elsewhere will reduce the impression of amateurism that it will convey. If you can't afford to get your dialogue mixed, then you can't afford to release your film. find or raise the money and get this ONE step handled professionally. Mixing in this context should consist of appropriate volume riding, EQ, denoising, panning and reverb. These are the types of parameters that really do have to be evaluated in a proper listening environment. That's what the money goes to.
   
   
4. With the dialogue mixed, re-balance the music against your final DX stem. Keep your speakers calibrated and set.
   
   8)now you have a DX and MX track, leaving you with FX to get handled. Go minimal here. don't cover everything, only cover what you feel needs a sound in the context of DX and MX. Start with BGFX and do a pass through the full film. This could take 4-5 days. Next will be foley (foley is recorded sound performed to picture), and finally you'll have spotted fx (doors, cars, guns, etc)
   
   
5. Do a basic levelling of all of the FX, and bring your trusted friend back to re-evaluate. Make revisions as necessary. If you can, book two hours with a studio to playback the mix in a proper listening environment and make change notes on a notepad against timecode as the film is playing back. make more revisions and re-evaluate once more.
   
   ----
   
   this will get you as close as you can get to making something show-worthy. Its an immense effort for even a seasoned pro to take on alone - and that's with no learning curve. Be patient and don't cut corners.
   
   good luck.

Pro Tools 100%. Standard in any post studio. You can get a massive discount if you're a student, £200 in the UK instead of retail which is £699. studica.com sells it

Check out: Pro Tools is Awesome, a load of great tips working with dialogue in Pro Tools.

Books:

• Dialogue Editing for Motion Picture - Technical.
  
  
• The Sound Effects Bible: How To Create & Record Hollywood Style Sound Effects - Technical, good list of what to record for certain sound effects, also takes you through the basics of audio and recording.
  
  
• Practical Art of Motion Picture Sound - Overall view to the practical side of sound for film.
  
  
• Sound Design: The Expressive Power of Music, Voice and Sound in Cinema - Very interesting read, more orientated toward creative, business and your mindset.
  
  
• The Foley Grail: The Art of Performing Sound for Film, Animation and Games - How to perform Foley.
  
  Any questions you have id be happy to answer, I'm a location sound guy now but at one point I was going down the post audio career route(mixed a few shorts, web-series and a feature).

While certainly not exhaustive, "Dialogue Editing for Motion Pictures" by John Purcell has a decent amount of information in it in regards to reconforming, EDL's, etc. It's also a really fascinating book!

To add to aeon's list of books:

• Practical Art of Motion Picture Sound
  
  
• Dialogue Editing for Motion Pictures
  
  
• Audio Postproduction for Film & Video
  
  I know you said sites, but honestly, these books package so much valuable information into their pages that you really can't find all in one place anywhere on the web.
  
  A bit about all those books:
  
  
• David Yewdall's book gives perspectives on a variety of topics within movie sound. A lot of the book is dedicated to supervising: budgeting, management, interacting with people. But there are a lot of practical gems in there as well (hence the title).
  
  
• Purcell's book's title indicates dialogue, and that's its focus, but there's no other book out there that will teach you to edit sound (whatever kind of sound) the way that this one will. Besides that, the dialogue comes first. You can have some crazy explosions, some great car fx, but if people can't understand the dialogue then they usually can't get the story.
  
  
• Jay Rose's books are pretty awesome because he didn't "come up" in the industry the way most people do. He had kind of an academic interest in the subject from the get-go, and wanted to basically analyze the methodology as a whole and write about it. So, his books are extremely informative and can teach a lot, ESPECIALLY for more of an indie filmmaker perspective.

"There isn't suddenly a gap in the center because ambience is still being provided be L/R."

Actually there is a gap when you only fill LR and not in C. This might not be heard in a small editing room, but as soon as you are watching it in cinema, you can't rely on that. Those speakers are several meters apart, so depending on where you sit, you'll hear those gaps.
I recently watched a movie who had exactly that issue (not paying attention to filling the center channel between dialogue) and it sounded awful and just wrong.


"Sure I could fill those gaps in the center channel, but why cover with a L/R ambience again later, too? It's a double ambience with the same purpose."
Filling gaps is a technical thing/requirement. Creating ambiences is a creative decision: most of the time you want to create something different than what you heard on set.
And if you are ever asked to deliver a M&E mix, you'll have to fill the center channel anyway (though this is more part of creating ambiences).


Don't want to offend you, but you might want to read John Purcell's book:
https://www.amazon.com/Dialogue-Editing-Motion-Pictures-Invisible/dp/0415828171

Start here: Purcell