Sound. Part 6. Dialogue.

Dialogue has always been tricky to get right. We thought about not having any dialogue at all, but then that wouldn't be solving the problem, just avoiding it.

I did a few mic tests (a video of this will be a part of my hand in), And I already spoke about each mic in a previous post called SOUND TEST.

On the NN shoot I got all Sally's lines on set. This time I was aware of the silence needed. The boom mic always picks up something you don't want, a chair creaking or feet shuffling. I monitored it much better this time. The the more experience I get on a shoot situation the more comfortable I get asking the actors to re-perform because of little issues like a creaking chair. We did have the mic and headphones plugged into the camera, which I wanted to avoid. (as stated in Sound Test post).

For Eric's lines with him being behind a door I couldn't get the mic close enough to pick the sound up. At the end of the shoot I got him to do his lines again. First I got him to them in the living room, but it sounded badly reverbed and needed to be almost muffled. I got Tim to go back outside and this time I could put the mic right up to the door. This is what I used in the sequence and it sounds really good. Syncing it up was much easier than I thought.

The Torture sequences doesn't have dialogue, but I did have to dub in the breathing of the victim. I originally wanted to get the actors back in, but thought it would be more interesting asking someone else to do it. I tried it with my friend Luke and Graeme. Both gave fine performances, I let them watch the footage and perform it. Much like the foley, I was able to give direction.

Again, syncing this up was up easier than imagined. There are parts that don't match perfectly, but for a first attempt I am very pleased.

We wanted to have some deep breathing for the torturer, but this wouldn't fit. I think its down to the performance of Andrew, he didn't breath deep on set. The visuals wouldn't match the audio. I couldn't get it right and it resulted in not being in the final piece, I've put this down to inexperience.

I love dialogue, when I come up with short film ideas they're always heavily dialogue driven. I would like to do some good dubbing. There are features on Australia and Benjamin Button where they do some really incredible dubbing and as a result they get superb clear dialogue. That is my next challenge.