ADR in large budget features!!!

[Kirk Anderson]

Hi all,

I'm in film school and have always heard, or read in books, that most films have over 60% ADR in the final production. I know that every film is different and you can't gerneralize an entire art form to a mathmatical percentage of actual sound recorded on location, but I was wondering with everyone's knowledge on this forum I might get a sense of how much ADR is really used in a film like "Wedding Crashers" or " V for Vendetta" not an art house film, but a large scale production. I know in other countries the syncing of sound doesn't seem to be as important as it is in America, but I'm curious as a film maker, how I should go about recording sound. As meticulously as I can on set? , or if most sound is recorded in a studio later and they are just so good, I can't see it in the theatre? I'm just kinda curious, and it kinda influences weather I should be looking for an eclair, or BL over my arri s. not trying to start any MOS vs. sync wars around here, just curious.

any comments would be awesome.

kirk

[Jiekai Liao]

I made my first short film with an arri-s, with no sound recording. i can only say that doing 100 percent MOS is painful. I spent weeks collecting, matching and syncing sounds. Yet because the sound was meticulously collected and matched up, the sound works better than any of my other stuff shot with sync. :-p

 

I think that shooting sync is a good backup, in case dubbing just sound too fake. But sound designs or sound effects in post is still important. Time is also a factor. If you are shooting in extreme conditions, or it is a shoot-and-run situation, getting the picture is still the priority.

 

my humble opinions.

 

jiekai

[Guest Giles Sherwood]

When he visted my school, Kelly Baker, who was Gus van Sant's sound designer for a long time, said he would be incredibly pissed if he had to ADR more than 2% of a film.

[Matt Workman]

I can't speak for BIG BUDGET productions but on micro-budget or low-budget shoots ADR is not usually budgeted at all. Meaning 95-100% location sound.

 

Sound people have shotguns, lavs, dual-ambient, etc. mics to deal with varying conditions and can most of the time nail usable dialogue.

 

The only time I have encountered ADR is for shooting in a cars, extreme wide shots, noisy exteriors, voice overs (obviously), shooting near water, action, etc.

 

Although your post is "ADR in large budget features" your real question is about shooting low budget with an Arri S vs. a sync camera. I can't think of any producers that would recommend MOS shooting. ADR requires more time for the actors ($), script sup ($), sound recordist ($), etc.

 

Modern cameras are "sync" for a reason and older MOS ones have barneys. Foley and sound design is a different subject.

 

Just my opinion.

 

Matt :ph34r: