At the front an centre of most movies, songs and any audio driven narrative is the dialogue. Dialogue drives the story and is essential for carrying information so it's important to get it right, right? Right... right anyway this blog is all about my dialogue recording techniques based on my current sessions for our Castlevania anime project. It starts pretty simple with writing a script as seen below. Luckily for me the dialogue in the trailer are quite interesting, short sure but a variety of voices and scenes to keep things fun. As you can see on the script it's colour coded and time stamped to help both myself and the voice actor find where their next lines are located within the trailer.
You'll notice quite a few time throughout this blog that I'll talk about techniques that help both yourself and the voice actor because it's not a one man show. Working with your 'talent' is part of working in this industry so I'm trying to learn as much as I can as early as I can about building and maintaining that relationship. Anyway back to the script, it's really important that everyone know what the line is and when about's it happens in the trailer, this saves time during editing too. When actually recording make sure the actor has a copy before and during recording so they can familiarise themselves with their material.
Anywho setting up your dialogue session is a little bit different to a normal recording session and I'll show you how. Like I mentioned in my last blog about foley recording for a scene like this is best done so one can see what they're performing to. So when I set up my session you obviously need to import the video as well so the artist can see the scene they are acting to. This is essential for correct timing, feeling and being able to put yourself in your characters shoes and give a really good performance.
This is a screen shot of my pro tools session, unfortunately not on the actual night of the recording but you get the gist of it. When recording dialogue there's an amazing trick I was shown that makes recording a line that much easier, it's called loop record. Although it's a really basic tool it helps immensely when doing take after take until you get it right. As you can see above I've got a part selected on the armed track, what loop recording is continue to record but only record in that section. It will then put each take in a new playlist so you have all your takes saved and you can select your favourite one. If this is confusing I found a person who runs you through the process in more detail (and funnily enough they're called Justin as well).
So with loop record you can effortlessly record take after take until you're satisfied that they've nailed the line and you can play it back for them. Also I made a habit of checking with my actor if the loop was the right size so they could get enough time to try the line again. Too little time before their line and its too fast and they can lose track or if the loop is too big then it takes way too long to get it done. So just check before you start recording. I usually let the loop run for a while before recording, during that I encourage the actor to have a go at the line and while they practise I adjust gain and listen to make sure they're on the right track. If they're unsure about the delivery or start saying the line in a way that doesn't suit the feeling for our project I kindly try and direct them in the right way. It didn't happen a lot as they had the original audio to imitate but I can imagine recording dialogue for the first time you'd be listening very closely to see if it matches. Once they're comfortable and I'm happy with the delivery I start recording. The only time I didn't let my actor practise was for a shouted line. I started recording straight away to save their voice as it was quite an intense line. You can see my playlist at the end of recording all those takes, its now as easy as going through and selecting your favourite take (Hot hint it's usually the one near the end). Looking at my session again you can see the video attached to the session, this includes the original audio as well. This is also a really important part for mimicking the trailer, recording audio to the original helps your actor nail the lines. What i ended up doing was sending the original audio onto the desk and sending that to the actor's headphone mix (not too loud or it can be really distracting). Also make sure you can adjust the headphones levels without affecting your own and visa versa otherwise it's a nightmare (sorry it would be easier to describe with photos). ]
Now the important part, microphones! I chose to use a NTG2 shotgun mic (pictured above) to record our lines. It might seem strange using the same microphone for both foley and dialogue but the the strengths of this mic work for both our uses. It's direct, its sensitive and excludes a lot of noise from around the room. Originally I was intent on using the Beyerdynamic M88 which is a great dynamic mic for dialogue (I use it on my podcast at the moment) but it was booked out at the time. So after asking for some advice i got recommended the NTG2 because when you think about it if it's good for movie location sound wouldn't it be even better in a controlled environment? So the recorded lines turned our really well which you can hear for yourself with our final product (coming soon). In hindsight however I did set up the mic a little differently, I was so used to setting up a mic so it points right at the sound source which is usually directly in front of them. What I should've done is set the mic above the performer like pictured below.
this would've avoided breaths, plosive noises and the other unwanted sounds that come with putting a microphone in the way of the sound source. Since the NTG2 is a shotgun mic it can be put further away and still pick up al the necessary details (I'll have to experiment with this at a later date). Anyway I hope you learned something I know I did and my next blog will be about editing dialogue which is my bread and butter at the moment. Thanks for reading!
References:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR5jvdiRDSM (Winksound, 2009)
Photos links are hyperlinked in photo.
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