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Recording Sound for a Phone Call

So I have this scene where the main actor is talking to someone on the phone, who isn't visually there during the conversation. What's the best way of going about recording the audio for this scene? Should I have the voice on the other end be a voice over added in post? Or should I have the whole conversation actually take place through a real phone line?
 
Voice over in post is best, cause you will not be able to record acceptable sound from a the end of a phone. Then you can just add the sound effect of the person being on the phone in post. Do you have any audio mixing programs?
 
It all comes down to your budget and your desires. I've worked on films where both ends of the conversation were visually and aurally recorded at the same time using two (2) cameras, mics, etc. or both voices but only one set. There's the standard someone reads the "phone" dialog off-camera and the phone voice (actor) is recorded as wilds or as ADR during audio post.

No matter what, you want the unseen phone voice to be recorded as cleanly as possible so you can degrade/process/whatever during the mix; it gives you A LOT more control.



BTW, this is dialog by an actor (no matter how or where/when it's recorded), NOT voice over. A voice over is a narrator.
 
Oh okay that makes sense. When I read screenplays, all phone call conversations are referred to as voice overs in the script, if you can only hear the person on the other end. I always thought that voice over should be considered for narration only, but for some reason, a lot of scripts call a phone call a voice over as well.
 
It's a terminology thing.

In the scriptwriters world it is a voice over, because in the screenplay the person on the phone is not seen.

In audio post a narrator is a disembodied voice talking over the visuals. 99% of commercials have a voice over the visuals, everything from "This Friday, at...." to the phone number and sped up disclaimer at the end - in addition to movie narration, which is a voice over. So in audio post any voice not associated with a specific person speaking in sync with the visuals on the screen is a voice over.

In a phone conversation in a film it's just that - a dialog between two people, so even though the person on the phone is unseen it is actual dialog, so is a part of the dialog tracks. The phone dialog may be put on or sent to a "Futz" track (where we futz around with the sound - phone effects, special effects, you know, the fun stuff), but it's still a part of the dialog stem.

So both interpretations are correct; one applies to scripts, the other to audio post.

It drove me a little crazy when I started reading scripts, so ingrained was the audio interpretation of the "voice over" thing; it took a while until I got used to it.
 
I agree that it in scripts the term is a bit inaccurate. I think instead of saying (V.O.), perhaps they should write (O.S.) instead, but they only use O.S. for if the person is actually in the scene. Or they could say (THROUGH PHONE).
 
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