Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
chapter 13
Building the Soundtrack
Most of the
audio that you hear in Hollywood movies is recorded and added afterward during post-production.
This allows the sound designer to have complete control over the individual audio elements, enhancing each
sound to heighten the emotional impact of a scene. This is why gunshots sound more like cannons during action
movies. When footsteps or clothes rustling are heard in a movie, it's most likely recorded after the shoot by a Fo-
ley artist who has painstakingly reproduced these everyday sounds on a Foley stage.
Sometimes a production is forced to shoot in noisy locations, such as airports, or on days when the weather isn't
cooperating and the wind is completely blocking out the actor's dialogue. In these situations, the best solution is
often to shoot the scene and re-record the actor's dialogue afterward in a soundproof studio. This process is
known as automated dialogue replacement (ADR) and is sometimes also known as additional dialogue recording
or looping. The sound designer takes all these disparate sounds and creates the auditory world of the scene.
The DVD accompanying this topic includes a collection of additional audio files, which were used to create the
final soundtrack for
Pranks.
These audio files can be found in the Event Library and are organized in various
Collections, such as ADR, Sound FX, Music, and Audio Stems. The Sound FX Collection is provided by the
movie's dubbing mixer, Ken McDowell, and includes everything from camera clicks, door slams, and toy
squeaks to an assortment of background ambience sounds for both interior and exterior scenes. We've also in-
cluded the original mix-downs used for the movie as separate audio stems comprising of Dialogue, Music, and
Atmos & FX.
The music score, which was composed, arranged, and performed by Darren Jon Bunting, also has been made
available for you and has been separated into individual music cues to make it easier for you to use anywhere in
the Timeline. (A
music cue i
s a single section of music that makes up the musical score.) We've also included
two extra music cues—Photographs and Staircase Chase (reprise)—which were dropped from the final movie.
However, feel free to use these in your version of the soundtrack if you wish. You can use all these audio ele-
ments on the DVD to create your very own sound design for
Pranks.
This chapter will look at how to use each
audio element in a scene.
Replacing Dialogue with the ADR Files
Let's go back to the Building the Climax Project that you created in Chapter 12. You may remember that we en-
countered some problematic audio while editing the climatic scene in the hallway. The sound on the clips from
that sequence were plagued with background camera noise, which unfortunately was unavoidable while shooting
in that environment. Because we didn't have the luxury of ADR during the post-production of
Pranks,
we recor-
ded each actor's lines after the shoot in a quieter area on the set, a tactic that is used on many low-budget movies.
