ADR for Beautiful Brooke

Had the awesome, fun and educational opportunity to record Automated Dialagoue Replacement for the first time ever this past weekend in my hometown of Chicago!

As Beautfiul Brooke, formerly titled Pictures of Us, is rounding the bend on post-production, our wonderful director, Michael P. Noens, flew me home to Chicago to record ADR for some of my scenes in the film. We worked with Tom Haigh, our sound editor, at his studio at ARU on Michigan Avenue, The Magnificent Mile, off of the Grand Red Line stop in Chicago!

ADR recording is an interesting part of an actor's job. You step into a booth which is almost devoid of all exterior sound and wait for instruction. You can see your director and the sound editor on the other side of the glass window discussing how to attack the next bit of recording and it almost makes you feel like you're on Law & Order in the interrogation room and you actually can't see them, but they can see you and they are studying your every word and breath and heart beat! But once you get over the intimidation of it all, it's rather fun! The artistic science that goes into this specific kind of detailed movie making is awesome.

So, they hook you up to a lav mic and there's a big stick mic hanging in front of you with a light shining brightly down on your script, so perfectly annotated by your wonderful sound editor, sitting on a music stand in front of you, with a helpful highlighter and pencil to mark beats, pauses and breaths you may have forgotten you acted in the original shoot.

A few feet in front of that is a screen floating just above your music stand playing the film in front of you- reminding you how you said this line, and what motivated you to say this line this way, and unfortunatley, your clothes are rustling against your lav or the boom operator must have been in another room because the sound is completely muffled or remember we recorded this outside Daley Plaza and there was a teacher's strike that day? Well, we've got to re-record all of that right now! You have to become that character again in that situation in a matter of minutes as your sound editor replays the orginal recording for you a few times so you can not only get into character, but listen to your pacing, cadence and pitch so you can do your best to match it in this totally different and controlled environment!

Tom is truly an artist when it comes to sound recording and especially ADR. He was able to give me directions about my own delivery of a line sometimes I couldn't even hear! He would tell me to pick up the pace at the end of a line, or tell me, "it sounds like you're more unsure of what you're saying here in the original recording," and as soon as I would record another take with his direction, it would sync up perfectly! Or he was able to take a couple different recordings I did and chop them up and mix them together to create something that sounded completely honest and natural! It was a pleasure to work with him and listen to his wonderful British accent in the studio and witness another facet of the magic of movie making I was previously rather unaware.

At first it was hard to decide if I should just do my best to sound the way I did and deliver the line as honestly as I could without looking at the screen, trying not to just match my lips, fearing a robotic delivery, but I soon realized that you have to trust your original performance, especially because it's the one everyone's going to see, and trying to watch my lips while performing my lines became the easiest way for me to do the job! It also made it easier to get back into the feeling of playing that scene again if I watched it and remembered my choices and trusted them! Some of my recordings were so spot on it was hard for me and my director to tell if Tom was playing the old recording or the new one, except for the new, crystal clear sound!

I only had three pages of lines to re-record, and we worked in the studio for about four and a half hours. It was very specific, extremely detailed and precise work, so while it was an exercise in patience and precision, it was delightfully fun and rewarding.

Soon, Annie Rix, fellow Illinois State University alum, fellow sketch comedy comedienne with The Babymakers, my good friend and the leading lady of Beautiful Brooke, came in to do some of her own ADR for the film.

It was such a pleasure to get to see her again and to be working on this project we worked so hard on together again! It was interesting to be on the other side of the glass as she recorded and to hear what an actor sounds like on their first take versus their second take versus their final take with Michael, our director, and Tom, the sound editor, discussing direction and executing it with her!

So, I hope this is only the first of many adventures in sound recording and ADR for film and the magic of movie making, and I look forward to hopefully recording at ARU in Chicago again and getting to work with all of these amazingly talented artists again!

(Michael P. Noens, myself and Tom Haigh)

UPDATE 2/24/16: From the sound editor, Tom Haigh:

"Last weekend reminded me just how fun and satisfying ADR can be. We got some great performances from Caty Gordon and Annie Rix, and it reminded me just how powerful tweaking dialog in post can be. Many times we matched the read of the production audio, then adjusted our direction and came up with an alternative which became our select. Thanks to Michael P. Noens for the booth panorama shot!"