Dialogue Editing

CHAPTER 8
Managing Your Time
Unlike many kinds of fi lm work, dialogue editing is amazingly unsupervised.
If you’re editing the music or effects for a television special, or perhaps
a documentary, you’ll usually be working with a client or a supervisor. But
if you’re cutting dialogue on a feature fi lm, you’re mostly left to your own
devices. A dialogue job with a lot of work and only a deadline to guide you
requires planning and discipline.
Screen First
I like to screen a fi lm before I actually begin working on it, even before the
initial spotting session. And I prefer to do this any place but the picture
editing room, the worst imaginable listening environment. The ideal spot is
the dubbing stage where the fi lm will be mixed, ideally with the rerecording
mixer and someone from the production. This offers several advantages.
• You—and everyone else—will hear the dialogue tracks in all their
naked glory, not masked by the buzz of the Avid’s drives or disguised
by the small speakers of your editing room. The raw tracks almost
always sound their worst in the full-spectrum mix room, so the client
can no longer say, “Hey, it sounded great in the Avid.”
• You and the mixer can discuss ADR, hopeless scenes, and other
technical issues.
• There are few distractions in a mix room or screening room, so you
can better assess the dialogue as it relates to story and character.
• Screening in a mix room is expensive, so the producer probably won’t
let the meeting last all night.
The purpose of the initial screening is not to solve the innumerable problems
of the fi lm’s dialogue but for you to decide these issues.
• Do you want to do this gig?
• How long will the dialogue take?
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