Should I storyboard the sound too?

[harmonica44]

Yeah I tried that while on set, but the noises did not match the mouths, in the best takes, so that's why I wonder if I should storyboard it, or at pre-plan the mouth movements. I know it sounds silly, and I'm not trying to troll, but I am trying to think outside the box to prevent the same mistake, and having to pay for it in post for my next project.

[jax_rox]

I'm not really sure what you could be asking them to say where it would be so drastically different, especially if you're getting wilds the day of. If you can hear them giving you the wilds at half the speed they said their lines in the shot, then pick them up on it. I'm not really sure what the issue is here, unless you've decided you'd rather have a character go 'ooh' when they're normally saying 'aah'.

TV shows ADR all the time, and you can quite often pick it. I've often seen shows where they've added in extra lines, or redubbed lines and you often see the editor cut away from the speaker's face to something else so that the audience doesn't pick it. To the layman, they wouldn't notice any difference, but we know better (of course it probably helps that the ADR'd lines generally sound like they were recorded in a studio rather than on the set at the same time as everything else)

[Alcove Audio]

A part of directing a film is actually KNOWING WHAT YOU WANT. The other is actually GIVING DIRECTIONS TO OTHERS SO THEY UNDERSTAND EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANT.

These are the main reasons why you let others handle the technical aspects of filmmaking for you. There will definitely be times where your only option is to do ADR. When you do the ADR session you must KNOW WHAT YOU WANT TO HEAR, then you must BE ABLE TO GIVE DIRECTIONS SO THE TALENT DELIVERS THAT PERFORMANCE. This is extremely difficult to do if you are handling the technical aspects of the session in addition your directorial responsibilities. So if you do not have the puzzle pieces you need to make the final product that you want it's you who FUBARed; you did not prep properly and/or did not communicate your vision clearly and concisely.

One of the challenges of low/no/mini/micro budget filmmaking is you very rarely have the resources (equipment, budget, time or talent [cast/crew]) to achieve exactly what you want. Then you must be able to compromise/settle for something less than exactly what you want. Low/no/mini/micro budget filmmaking is the art of compromise and "living" within your resources.







To quote Randy Thom, one of my favorite sound designers:

"A technician knows how to avoid mistakes;
An artist knows how to use them."

[harmonica44]

Yeah hopefully next time the sound person will stick, then I can just be free direct and not do the sound as well.

As long as the audience won't know that it doesn't match and it will pass. I mean the biggest example would be how in the video, a character is laughing with her mouth open, but in the audio, it sounds like it's closed. Or a character breaths heavy but the breathes are longer in the video, then in the audio. But as long as the audience will buy things like that in the moment.

[Shanked]

After reading some of the other replies and forming a general impression of Harmonica44's reputation on this forum, I'm just gonna say...

I'm writing a response NOT for H44 himself, but for people in general.

The topic of ADR is very near and dear to my heart. I've had some major projects need major ADR. And I've learned some painful lessons about what's what. I've also directed action sequences and, to that end, I want to say emphatically...

DO NOT STORYBOARD THE ACTOR'S FACES IN AN ACTION SEQUENCE.

This is bad idea for two key reasons. The first reason is safety. SAFETY! Why in the world would you add this extra burden to your actors, when their primary focus should be getting the movement right so that they are not hurt, and then, two, getting their emotions right, so the scene looks intense.

The second reason is that you are much better off by letting the actors react naturally. And then later, in post production, you can try to invent some new grunt or squeal and ADR it accordingly. If you try to script a grunt ahead of time, you will probably fail miserably. Your actor will look fake.

The odds of you being a good enough director that you can SCRIPT a grunt ahead of time and know enough about humanity to recreate the perfect sound in post to match that grunt... are low. You're probably not skilled enough to do that. So why invite that burden upon yourself? Find good actors and give them a good enough story to coax their emotions out.

Yes, you will need to ADR the dialogue in the action scene. It is extremely difficult to get perfect production audio in a fistfight (I say this with legit experience). But don't let that be a reason to force odd ADR onto your scene.

If you REALLY REALLY want a particular grunt... then storyboard your sequence so that your actor is facing AWAY from camera at that moment. Then you and your actor will have complete freedom in post to create a really fun noise.


Shanked

[AudioPostExpert]

There's some good advice here, such as: The more you ask actors to do or think about during filming, the less likely you are to get a good/convincing performance out of them and, always avoid ADR where possible. Of course in practice you can't always avoid ADR and as budgets get bigger it often becomes more difficult to avoid ADR. I was once on a set in Pinewood Studios where they were filming a green screen scene of the main characters in a storm. To create the wind and horizontal rain they used two huge fans and a small jet engine!! The director had to call "Action" with hand signals because you couldn't even hear him scream "Action"! There was no point even trying to record guide dialogue and after watching the first take the production sound mixer suggested we go and get some breakfast!

Originally Posted by harmonica44

I mean the biggest example would be how in the video, a character is laughing with her mouth open, but in the audio, it sounds like it's closed. Or a character breaths heavy but the breathes are longer in the video, then in the audio. But as long as the audience will buy things like that in the moment.

It's unlikely that you are going to get away with this, without distracting the audience enough to pull them out of the scene. It seems like maybe your ADR technique needs looking at because there's no point ending an ADR session unless you've got usable ADR. Maybe someone else has written this somewhere but just in case here are some ADR tips:

Preparation is one of the key elements to getting acceptable ADR. Create a detailed accurate ADR cue sheet to start with and from that move on to the laborious task of creating all the necessary loops. Make sure the loops are short, usually no more than half a dozen words at a time (often fewer) and place 3 beeps (1kHz tone, 1 frame duration) exactly 3 secs, 2 secs and 1 sec before the start of each and every ADR cue. Loop recording with bleeps will help the actor get into the rhythm of the dialogue and help them hugely to record at least one ADR take which very closely matches the mouth movements of the visuals. Usually you'll need to loop record at least 5 or 6 takes and circle the one you like best. In the case of grunts, laughs, sighs, breaths, etc., you might, depending on the skill of the actor, have to create an individual ADR cue for each individual grunt/sigh/sound. You can't move on to the next ADR cue until you have at least one take which closely matches the mouth movements. There are professional tools which can manipulate the ADR to match quite accurately the position and duration of each syllable with original production sound (which is why it's always worth trying to record production sound even if you know the scene is going to be ADR'ed). Without these tools though ADR recording is going to take much longer because you have to achieve an excellent match pretty much through recording alone. There are ways to make ADR position/duration match just through editing techniques but it's fiddly, time consuming and as often as not results in poor quality. So in the example I've quoted from you above, you just have to keep doing takes, and if necessary shortening the ADR cues to single sounds, until the actor gives you something acceptable. Lastly, file management! Make sure you name the takes as specified in the ADR cue sheets. You might end up with hundreds (or thousands on a feature) of ADR files and waste hours/days trying to find the right ones if your file management is poor.

This obviously is just the basics of the technical side of ADR, trying to get an acceptable performance from an emotional point of view is another whole subject area of ADR recording. For some excellent advice (without technical jargon) have a read of this thread on one of the professional audio post forums.

G