Dialogue Editing

Alternate Takes 205
Find the Correct EDL When you printed the EDLs for each reel, you added
the header “Title, Reel , Audio CH 1-4 [or 5-8, or 9-12, and so on], page .”
Perhaps this seemed unnecessary when you made the printouts, but now it
pays off. The secret of success at this point is to fi nd the material as quickly
and painlessly as possible so you don’t lose your excitement and creative
spirit. When you made the printouts, you were still clueless about the fi lm
and were hardly in the heat of creative passion, so you could afford the time.
Now you don’t want to slow down for anything.
If your EDLs span 9 or 12 tracks, you don’t know in which one you’re going
to fi nd your shot. However, most fi lm editors edit with the production sound
on the fi rst four tracks, using the rest for temporary sound effects, music,
temporary mixes, and the like. Odds are good that you’ll fi nd your problematic
production sound in the list “CH 1-4.”
Find the Event Always follow the same sequence of EDL columns to track
down your alternates:
Record In and Record Out, the two rightmost columns. Unless
something is terribly wrong, your EDL will be printed “A-mode,”
sorted in ascending Record In time. The easiest way to locate an event
is to look through the Record In times until you fi nd a timecode that
matches or is near the region you’re looking for. Next, look at the
Record Out time for the same event and make sure that your
highlighted region falls between Record In and Record Out. Be
careful—it’s not unusual to fi nd two events with the same Record In
time, so make sure that the event you’ve marked in the EDL is the
most likely candidate.
Confi rm scene and take. To make certain you’ve found the EDL event
describing the region you’re trying to replace, look at the Comment
fi eld immediately under the event line. A decent picture department
will insert Comment fi elds that contain scene and take information.
Confi rm that the event listed in the Comment fi eld is indeed the same
as the name in your session region.
Determine the source tape. Look on the source tape column to see which
DAT or other source the recording came from.
Find the Correct Tape Go to the pile and fi nd the tape in question.
Check the Sound Reports In the sound report that comes with each sound
roll, you’ll fi nd a list of the tape’s contents. Usually it won’t include timecode,
but this is no real loss. There are many useful items in a sound report, but at