Yesterday marked the beginning of the ADR process –
gathering all the replacement bits of bad-quality dialogue and miscellaneous
bonus grunts and groans from the cast.
Automated Dialogue Replacement, although I’d be interested
to know how the word 'Automated' found its way into the acronym as it was a far
from straightforward exercise. But Sunday was decided to be the moment to take
a day off from watching people running around on the telly to kick-start the
process of making Glen-the-sound’s life easier.
Step forward Rachel Nottingham and Joe Rainbow, Zombie Resurrection’s naïve teenager
Becca and officious party leader Gibson respectively. Good solid professionals
to call upon to play the part of cast guinea pigs. Nothing too strenuous
missing from their collection of on-set dialogue - just some extra sounds of
weeping, exertions grunts associated with various zombie bludgeonings, and long swathes
of the deranged kind of Tourette’s that arises during the slow transition to
zombiedom.
And a couple of lines from the first act of the film, where
the extraneous noises evident in pre-apocalyptic Portsmouth woodland simply
couldn’t be scrubbed out.
There is, it seems, an adage in getting good quality ADR –
if you’re replacing lines originally spoken outside, you need to get the sound
recordings done outside too. Unless you’re doing all your ADR in a perfect anechoic
environment, there will always be a little room reverb evident in what you
record in a recording studio. It’s OK for all the inside stuff, as you’ll then be
adding a whole load more fake reverb to the ADR tracks to make them match the rest
of the dialogue from the shoot. But once even a little bit is on
there it can’t be taken off.
In the great room-less outdoors, these lines will stand
out like a green sock on a bloodied stump.
And so we face problem number one: is there anywhere
in Hampshire that is suitably quiet? Somewhere acceptably close to a car park,
but away from planes, trains, automobiles, dog-walkers, fields of livestock,
chirruping crickets or tweeting birds?
Or, more importantly, bloody kids?
There is something about the eager squeals of children that
carries for miles. Too much car noise? Just head deeper into the woods.
Aeroplanes? Hang back for 20 seconds and it’ll be gone. But the sound of an eight-year-old having fun anywhere in the same postcode? You’re waiting for
nap-time before that’ll get any better. And while I can’t blame any parents for
wanting to take full advantage of the few days of actual summer that we’re
going to get this year, please know that your selfish pursuit of fresh air and
exercise is making our lives really tricky.
But, a hundred takes of all the swapped-out dialogue later,
and Glen-the-sound was finally happy that he’ll be able to fabricate quiet
versions of all our troubled chat, even if it’s a syllable-by-syllable
Frankenstein agglomeration of acceptably noise-less moments.
And so we get to head indoors, over to the recording studio
built at the back of Dale-the-tunes’ garden.
This is where all the movie music magic happens. A grown-up potting
shed into which Dale can escape from the wife and kids, and actually do
something worthwhile other than sipping scotch and pretending to whittle away
at a piece of wood while listening to the Archers. Sound-proofed, covered in
acoustic diffusers, and with a bloody-great piano in the middle where the
lawn-mower should be.
And it was at this point that everything took a turn for the
smooth. As Rachel screamed and Joe sweated, we powered through the rest of the
list with grace and agility. Outside in the garden no one was any
the wiser about the cacophony of shrieks and growls that have left me with
slight tinnitus this morning. Anybody needing to gut a pig or torture a suspect in
a residential setting could do a lot worse than phoning Dale-the-tunes up for
copies of his architectural plans.
And at eight o’clock last night we stepped outside into a
welcome cool breeze with 2/9s of our ADR firmly in the bag. To Glen-the-sound
and Dale-the-tunes, it’s an enormous Charmed thank you for giving over your
Sunday to our screamy silliness. To Rachel and Joe, it’s our eternal
appreciation for coming back to Winchester almost a year to the day after we
started shooting to re-enjoy the horrors of life on a zombie set. To all the
other cast members, prepare yourself for a phone call.
And to the parents of small children in the environs, what’s
wrong with the X-box or the cinema? If it’s fresh air and countryside you’re after, open a bloody window and buy a pot-plant. Incredulous.
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