This is something I’ve wondered since I was a kid. How do they ever add sound to moving pictures? When I was a child, I assumed they just taped some audio tape to the film. But they have had sound in pictures since the early 1900s–did they have audio tape that long too? Also, how do they line up picture and sound so perfectly–even in the early 1900s 
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Thank you in advance to all who reply 
You know that clap-board thingy they clap before the beginning of a take? The sound from that is used to synch-up the audio and the video during editing. More modern methods include digital time code on both. During playback, I don’t know about very early sound, but film with embedded audio was invented fairly quickly.
Early sound films used a synchronized record. It didn’t work perfectly, and of course splice from damaged reels were an insurmountable problem.
Later, some sound films were done with a ferric-oxide strip. (Super 8, for example.)
Real theatrical movies used an optical process, though – a thin strip on the side with little horizontal lines that modulated the sound. (The more lines, closer together, in a frame – the higher the pitch.) This was “printed” onto the film from a disk or tape source in the editing room.
This is a related question that I’d been meaning to ask, but which probably doesn’t deserve its own thread… is the dialogue on finished movies generally the dialogue that was actually spoken on the scene as it was filmed, or is it dubbed in later?
And if it’s the former, how do they separate the dialogue track from the ambient sound effects for the dubbed foreign-language versions of films? E.g. if you switch to, say, the Hebrew version on your DVD, you’ll hear dubbed voices, with no trace of the original actors’ voices, but the sounds of footsteps, traffic, doors closing etc is all present and correct and identical to the original. How do they do that?
When they shoot movies, they will use microphones to record the actor’s voices. A lot of the time they can use the sound from the original performance, perhaps with a bit of cleanup work. Often times they can’t, because background noise cluttered up the original sounds or whatever. The actors will do voice overs to get a clean version of the dialogue.
The microphones usually don’t pick up noises like traffic, doors closing, footsteps, etc. very well at all. These are added by what is called a “foley artist” who recreates the sounds using all sorts of things (wooden blocks to simulate footsteps, whacking a piece of steak from the grocery store with a boxing glove to simulate a punching sound, etc). In modern digital recording/editing it is very easy to keep the sound effects and the dialogue in seperate tracks, so when they dub the movie into another language, only the dialogue tracks have to change.
Nowadays, nearly all films are redubbed by the actors. It’s just easier to get good sound, especially since movies are often done on locations where you can’t control the sound as well as you can in a studio.
As a matter of fact, many of the ambient noises in a film are redubbed in the studio, too.
Since the tracks are separate, it’s simple to dub in the voices for a dubbed version and leave the effects track alone.
The footsteps, gunshots, traffic noise, sounds of puches etc, are all added to the film by the foley sound guys anyway-- they’re not picked up by the mics recording the dialog. (They have guys in a studio punching sides of beef and recording the sound, stomping on boards or concrete to make the footsteps, etc.)
When you hear music, that’s usually been added in later, too. IIRC, John Travolta complained of how difficult the dance scene in *Pulp Fiction *was to film because he had to stay on beat to music he couldn’t really hear.
Wow, engineer_comp_geek, great minds think alike! I guess I should have previewed before I hit “submit”.
Also remember that the film and audio are on separate media. This way a print could be made with language-specific audio tracks.
For film, audio is generally recorded onto 1/4" tape or a DAT. Such recorders as the Nagra have synchronous motors so that they maintain the proper speed. When the boards on the slate are clapped, the image of the moment the boards come together is recorded on film, and the sound is recorded on tape. In classic editing techniques, the audio is transferred to ‘full coat’ or ‘mag film’. This is simply 16mm, 35mm, or whatever film that is completely coated with iron oxide. Since the audio tape ran at an exact speed, and the film was run at an exact speed, the ‘full coat’ film has a sprocket-for-sprocket correlation with the picture film. The audio and visual film are put into a synchroniser that keeps them in synch. These devices are gangs of sprocketed wheels. A two-gang unit can be used for synching audio and video, or ‘A-B’ editing of two pieces of film. The more wheels, the more pieces of film/audio you can edit. Once the audio and film are edited they can be printed together. So you’ll have one piece of film with optical or magnetic sound, plus the image. Generally editing was done on a ‘workprint’, which may have been B&W to save costs. By using the editing logs, the negative could be cut to conform to the workprint and a master print could be made.
With video editing you can keep your negative intact and print the video to film, or you can use the editing logs from your video edit to conform the negative. Things have come a long way from when I was cutting single-system super-8 and using tape splices!
This seems the right thread to ask…
What is meant by “Looping” and “ADR”? I know ADR stands for additional dialogue recording… is that where the director sees fit to oar in a line that he thought of after filming? Sometimes in movies, maybe at the end of a scene, you hear dialogue that seems to have been bundled in as the scene fades to black, usually a clunky piece of exposition. I always thought that producers doubt the intellegence of audiences, and Record Additional Dialogue to help us out. Right? Is looping similar?
Damned talkies. Never catch on. They didn’t need dialogue. They had faces. There just aren’t any faces like that anymore. Maybe one, Garbo . . . Oh, those idiot producers! Those imbeciles! Haven’t they got any eyes? Have they forgotten what a star looks like?
Automated Dialog Replacement, or ADR, and looping are synonymous terms. I’ve never heard of additional dialog recording - sounds like that’s a lengthy way to refer to voice-overs.
Generally, the actors are re-convened on a “looping stage” or sound studio where they watch temselves on film and lip-sync their dialog. Ideally, all actors in a scene are there at the same time, but it’s not essential, and sometimes, a scene may be looped one person at a time.
As described above, it’s done because movie-making is noisy - the cameras can be noisy, a stagehand sneezes, a car goes by, etc. More often than not, the audio recorded as the film is shot is considered to be expendable, and it’s rare that on-location sound is good enough to use in the final print.
True, sound movies have been shown commercially since 1900. However, for the most part, before the 1920s, they cheated. They usually first recorded the sound on a phonograph (either cylinder or disk), and then they played back the sound recording on the movie set while they danced or lip-synched to the recording. (Most of those early sound performances were songs, dances, or pantomimes.)
For exhibition, it wasn’t hard for the projectionist to keep the movie in synch with the recording (again, on disk or cylinder). In the 1900s and 1910s, projectors were hand cranked, and could be speed up or slowed down at will to match the sound recording. And these early sound movies were always shorts, never more than a reel long (14-16 minutes), and usually only as long as the song or dance. Some systems had belts or gears physically connecting the phonograph with the projector.
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Why is it called Automatic Dialogue Replacement (or Automated Dialogue Replacement depending on the source)? I imagine the process is rather labor intensive making it neither automatic or automated.)
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No, it is rather automatic. The actor stands in a booth with a screen. The scene to be dubbed is played a couple times so the actor can get a feel for the timing. The engineer presses a button. The actor then talks while he watches himself on-screen. Easy peasy with all them fancy computers.
That’s not entirely accurate. Location shoots may be dubbed over via ADR, but most anything shot on a set will not be. The soundstage accounts for most of the dialogue in most films.
Not redubbed, since most ambient noise is not recorded in the first place. On location, great pain is taken to avoid ambient sound. The necessary sound effects are then added by the Foley artist as ecg mentioned.
Thanks, Norma.
I worked with the broadcast industry and not with films, but the process is similar.
In the “old days” (up through the early to mid 90s) the dialogue was recorded on audio tape and then, in the post production stage, it, the sound effects and music were recorded onto separate tracks of a multitrack tape. Sound effects were kept on 1/4 inch (6 mm) tape, and sound engineers would have libraries of sounds. Any narration would be also be recorded and added at this stage, and well as rerecording dialogues if necessary. A working copy of the video was played on a professional quality VCR, with time code used to sync the sound and the video.
Aligning all of the timing was a major task, especially since everything was done in analog. Once a sound track was recorded onto a track, it could not be easily moved or adjusted.
After all of the tracks were recorded, they would be mixed down to the final stereo (or mono) stage.
The world went digital, with the working video being recorded onto hard drives instead of video tape and the sound recorded in nonlinear editing machines. This move offered many advantageous, among them is the ability to readily move sound clips to sync with the video. Playing back the working video from hard drives eliminates the rewind time and allows better slow motion control.
For dubbing into an other language, the dialogue track is kept separately and then voice actors are recorded in a studio. They say their dialogues while watching the film, which must take considerable training. The foreign language track is then used in the final mix for that country or recorded separately onto the subchannel.
A special type of highly directional microphone, called a “shotgun” mic is used to record dialogue. These mics reduce the amount of background and incidental sounds.
Just to add a little to this excellent description of ADR: it’s called “looping” because the scene where re-recorded dialogue is needed is looped several (many, sometimes) times both so the actor can get a feel for the timing and so that he/she can lay down a few versions for the sound editor (or film editor, or director, or producer, or whomever) to choose from.
I’ve always heard that most movies have the dialogue dubbed in, but have always found it pretty incredible that they could sync it up so well.
Is this something actors have to practice alot to get good at? Or is it easier than I think?
-FrL-