Evaluation of ADR: Sound Production - TASK 10

Similar to our previous unit within sound production, we were asked to create two more ADRs of our choice from moving image, either television or film. From this I decided to take on two familiar pieces of entertainment. The first was a scene from the 2004 film Mean Girls, which showed four friends having a split screen conversation on the phone in which they were putting each other on hold to gossip about the friend on the other line. I felt this scene had a diverse array of elements to recreate throughout, such as sound effects (beeping of phones being used throughout conversation), music in the background and most importantly, spoken word – dialogue. The other ADR I created was from the new television show Gotham, which again had the content I needed to recreate in order to meet the criteria for this unit such as sound effects (ambiance, clattering of tables/chairs in background), music to create mood/atmosphere and again spoken word dialogue. This scene focused on the death of one of the main characters in the show, Oswald Cobblepot, who the Detectives Montoya and Alan were questioning Fish Mooney about.

The first thing I did was try and find the scripts for the two scenes I was creating ADR for. When looking I couldn't find the script for Gotham, so instead I listened and transcribed the dialogue onto word and printed out 3 copies so each of the voice actors had the words in-front of them, which I felt was important to do considering the dialogue was quite in-depth and confusing in parts. For Mean Girls, it was a little more straightforward as the script was available to print online, which again helped within the recording process as we had the dialogue in front of us. It also helped each members of the cast learn the lines more rather than just watching the clip to learn them. After this, I began to record Gotham and Mean Girls. The Mean Girls recording took quite a lot longer than the Gotham one, as Gotham took 15 minutes and Mean Girls took an hour. I feel this was due to the content, as there were a lot of different parts to record and in some cases we had to re-record because the lines were messed up. Once this was done, I set up Garage Band and imported the videos so I could start creating my ADRs.

I began to manipulate the dialogue that I had recorded with my cast within Garage Band. The cast consisted of Theresa and Wallice (who voiced Detective Montoya and Alan) and me, who voiced Fish Mooney. The character which I did the dialogue for had a very smouldering voice, almost seductive and a bit evil. I wanted this to come across with my role, which I feel even though having a massively different voice to the character, I pulled off quite well. Theresa and Wallice also did very well at being Detectives Montoya and Alan, although their parts were easier (as their voices were as every day folk, not much acting involved or emphasis on words) but never the less they did very well. In some instances, the words were spoken to fast or too slow - which was a huge issue, as I wanted the recordings to sync exactly to the video. Similar to the dialogue in Gotham, me and my cast (Me as Regina George, Theresa as Karen, Noran as Gretchen and Cloud as Cady) had to vocally act and put a lot of emphasis into the spoken word side of things, which I felt was quite difficult as the characters were speaking in quite an unusual pace and got confusing throughout the recording.

To create the illusion of the ADRs being the original dialogue for both scenes, I began to move the sound clips around, snipping them in certain places (such as unwanted distortion of sound bites heard at the start and beginning of the clips) by holding cmd, T and then selecting the place I wanted to cut, then removing the unwanted sound. This helped my project's quality, as there were no sound bites that would look unfit for the scene and again created the illusion that this was the original sound recording. Another thing I did which I feel improved the quality of the finished production was the technique I used to sync the sound with the video. As the original video had sound along with it, I had the option whether to listen to it or not (by clicking small speaker icon, I could turn mute on & off on this track). Although I did not keep the original sound within it, I occasionally kept the track off mute, as by doing this, the track was able to show me the levels of sound and where they were at their climax. This helped me as I was able to move the new sound I had recorded in the exact place, replicating the levels (clicking and dragging back & forth) so they matched the original but in a new track beneath it. I feel this technique helped me a lot, as it was hard for me to sync the dialogue perfectly but this gave me the upper-hand as I could visually see the sound rather than just hearing the audio along with the mouthing of the words. 

I then began to find room ambiance sound FX for the Gotham scene. I decided not to use ambiance within the Mean Girls scene, as it was quite basic layer wise and I did not feel the need to add in any ambiance FX or atmospheric sounds, as in the original I can only hear three sound elements such as; FX of the phone buttons, music and spoken word. I feel if I were to add ambiance within the Mean Girls ADR, it would have been pointless and would not be heard when listening to it back, as the background music and dialogue would have overpowered it more than say the Gotham one, as the sound level of the ambiance was higher in the Gotham scene. In the original sound for Gotham, in the background we hear distant clattering and talking, in which I felt was important to keep within my version as it creates special awareness for the audience and creates the scene through sound as well as picture. On YouTube, I sourced a sound effect, which was not copyrighted and was free to use without concern. This sound effect mimicked that of the original, and felt that this combined with the other layers of sound would create a convincing scene. As this was the base of my project on Garage Band, I began to build upon it, as then I knew what direction I wanted to go with my ADR. 

When editing my Mean Girls ADR, as the scene did not audibly have any signs of ambiance or atmosphere, I decided to concentrate more on the music in the background, which would add a reflective mood onto the scene. To do this, I used Google to find songs which were released the same time of the movie (as I felt this would have a relevant connection to the scene in this case) and found a song by the Ting Ting’s called That’s Not My Name. I used this song due to the upbeat tones used within it, which I felt would work well with the contents of dialogue. I used an instrumental version of this song, so the sound of the scene was not overpowering along with the other layers I was to add in later. The impact this had within the scene was that rather than having only the dialogue, we had depth within the ADR and it sounded more natural that if it hadn't been used. Looking at the original Gotham scene, I realized there was subtle background music used, which actually impacted the scene much more when listening to the music and dialogue together. I decided to use YouTube once again to find a piece of music which would resemble my scene audibly, as I wanted to reflect the serious mood that the scene was giving off to the audience. I found a soundtrack when researching for serious toned sounds, and even though it was my first I decided that it was perfect for the clip, so I made a new sound track on Garage Band and dragged the newly downloaded song into my project. The only difference I made to this sound clip was snipping the beginning of the track off by using a familiar method (cmd + T) and deleting it as it was dead sound and made the beginning of the ADR sound odd when listening to it in full. 

Once I had re-recorded the dialogue I needed, had reviewed the ADR and made sure it was in sync, the final editing decision I made was to add in sound FX to emphasis and highlight an important part of the scene. This was the part when Fish Mooney revealed Cobblepot's death by bluntly saying 'He's dead' and the detectives turn to one another in shock. I decided to add in a sound effect within this part as in the original there was one, which I felt worked really well, but wanted to do another in a different tone as I felt that I could improve on the original. I created this sound effect by drawing in notes with a cello (as this instrument is associated with serious mannered situations and I felt reflected the on-going situation. I drew in around 6 different tones, one on top of each other, to create a depth-y and rich sounding effect, such as the infamous 'dun dun dun', often associated with revelation of story line or character. When it came to adding SFX for Mean Girls, it was pretty straight forward as the only sounds I needed to recreate was the beeping when the girls pushed the buttons to change caller. To recreate this, I decided to put a sound recorder up against my phone whilst pressing the buttons, so that the recorder captured the beeps, which I needed for the scene. The first time I did this, it didn't turn out too well but when using a different sound recorder, which was able to collect a high level of sound, I had quite a good outcome. With this, I imported the sound clip into Garage Band and snipped the bits I didn't want out, moving it around to fit in the place of the original sound.  

When showing this back to class mates, they were impressed with how I was able to create the scene atmospherically, without making it look fake and still being as effective as the original. Once I knew that my peers were impressed, I decided to mix down the project and was finished with my Gotham and Mean Girls ADRs. If I were able to re-do these again, I feel I would have given myself and my voice actors a bit more time to rehearse the scenes, as this would have avoided any re-recording of particular dialogue that was not up to scratch while also maybe having more convincing voices for the characters, especially when looking to the Mean Girls ADR, as this was a big issue within the production. Other than these improvements, I don't think I would change anything about how the project went or what quality the production was. This is due to me feeling that I did very well within this particular ADR, as I feel the goals I set for quality were met in all areas (music, spoken word and sound FX). When comparing it to the original sound, I myself can see a little difference in quality - as the original was obviously done professionally, but I feel I recreated the scenes quite well and in terms of what was better, I would say the original. This is only due to the fact that they had the equipment and actual actors voicing the characters which synced perfectly, whereas mine was not, but I am proud with what I have achieved within this particular part of the unit. I kept the original idea in mind rather than creating a completely different one (using similar sound effects + music) as I felt this was the best way to convince my audience that what they were hearing was the original sound. I feel if I was to have gone in a different direction with the scenes, such as if I were to put a comical spin on the Gotham scene, it would have been risky as I feel the visual content would not match a long with anything other than what was intended originally. I feel I could have gone a different direction for the Mean Girls seen though, as the comedy within it could have been exaggerated a little bit more, but other than this I am happy with the outcome of both of the ADRs I have created.