CMU School of Drama


Friday, March 06, 2015

Say it Again: How to Do No-Budget ADR for Independent Films

Filmmaker Magazine: My first feature, Veer!, was shot primarily on Super 16mm, on an old Eclair ACL I got off eBay. While it shot beautiful images, the camera sounded like a helicopter taking off when rolling. Interior dialog scenes were especially nightmarish for sound, and one scene in particular retains no original production audio because of this. We had to re-create the scene’s audio — dialogue, background ambience and foley — completely from scratch. But when I point out which scene it is, people don’t always believe me. Indeed, good ADR goes unnoticed, and as much as I’d like to pat myself on the back for my audio skills, I actually re-recorded ADR for that scene again and again because I like to learn things the hard way.

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