Dialogue Editing

CHAPTER 2
No One Works in a Vacuum—How
to Know Where You Fit into the
Filmmaking Process
Introduction
Most of the challenges facing dialogue editors are the result of decisions
made on the set. Location mixers must make choices about sound, story,
sample rates, timecode, and formats. These decisions will irrevocably affect
the future of the production tracks and hence your way of working.
You can’t undo incorrect sample rates, weird timecode, or improper timebase
references, but if you equip yourself with a knowledge of production workfl
ows, you’ll be better able to respond to the problems that come your way.
Since you inherit the fruits of the production, you need to understand how
fi lms are shot and how the moviemaking chain of events fi ts together. This
way, you can plan postproduction workfl ows before the shoot, before it’s too
late to do anything but react to problems.
The way we work today is the offspring of generations of tradition, technological
advances, economic pressures, and a good deal of chance. Current
cinema workfl ows are more complicated than ever, and with the introduction
of high-defi nition shooting, postproduction, and distribution, things appear
to be truly out of control. But remember that with each signifi cant new technology
in the fi lm industry has come a brief period of bedlam that quickly
settled into a state of equilibrium. And usually the pressure to get things
back to normal is so great that innovative, creative means are quickly devised
to rein in the technology and make things better than ever.
How We Got Where We Are
Sound recording and motion picture fi lming grew up at more or less the same
time. When Thomas Edison recited “Mary Had a Little Lamb” in 1877 to
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