ADR and 5.1 Mixing

 

This is a piece I’ve been working on currently and is coming along quite nicely.  I found a short film online that has some good dialogue in it called Expo.  I gutted the entire piece after gaining permission from the films creator and sound designed the piece from the ground up.  The most important thing for a piece like this is the dialogue, and getting great sounding recordings that match the lips of the characters in the film.  To achieve this you must have your voice actor loop the dialogue until it matches the appropriate tone of the piece and the character they are portraying.  Because all of the characters are in space helmets throughout the piece I am working on, some filtering with EQ must be done to make their voices sound like they are indeed in a helmet.  For the voice of the computer I recorded my own voice for the very short lines, and using elastic audio compressed the time slightly so that the voice sounds more like a computer.  I added some little flanging and some pretty drastic EQ-ing to get the perfect sound.  After listening to it back I find it hard to believe that it was once my voice. Realizing that, I knew that I had done well.  Casting the right voices for the characters is one of the hardest parts about the ADR process.  So far my two actresses for this piece are doing great, and I am excited about the final product.  This will also end up being my 5.1 mixing project which I’m very excited about.