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11 years, 6 months ago - Dan Selakovich

Tried to post this before, but I guess it didn't make it for some reason.

I wanted to let you guys know about these great little lessons on Youtube by a professional dialogue editor. And it's free AND you'll learn something. I promise.

As a side note, some of you know I'm post supervising a film that triggered a completion bond. I'm about 2 seconds away from firing a dialogue editor that came highly recommended (my usual guys are working on other stuff), because he didn't split off the production sound of non-dialogue stuff.

Here's what that means: let's say you have a character that, in this case, throws a crowbar on the ground. You split that off onto another track, kids. There are several reasons: first, the foley guys are going to do their version. The sound efx editor is going to do her version. Then there's the production sound version. So there are at least 3 tracks of that sound, all on separate tracks. It's easy for the re-recording mixer to drop any of those out, but not if he/she is working around dialogue. Production sound is FULL of this stuff: a door knock, a glass on the table, a newspaper being rattled, etc. Split those sounds off! You also need to give each character their own track (but I assume you know that already).

The 2nd reason for splitting off production sound efx, is that on features that get foreign distribution require an M and E mix (Music and Effects) without the dialogue tracks. That way a country can dub the dialogue tracks into their language. (If you're curious, Turkey is the best in the world at this).

I watch a lot of SP shorts in competition. The majority have holes in the dialogue track, room tone that jumps from one cut to another, dialogue volume that is not matched, and a whole host of problems. I think because people just don't know.

So here are some lessons to get that sound sounding sharp! Please, please, take a look. He's using Pro Tools, but this applies to any system you're using.

Here's the first lesson, and all the lessons are FREE. Take advantage:

Dialogue Editing For Motion Pictures--Lesson One: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDwQCO7v1ME

You're welcome. Your Uncle Dan.