Re-Making Noise

[Post by Caleb]

One of the most fun parts of making Taste-O-Rama was the Automatic Dialogue Replacement (ADR) process. The irony, of course, is that the piece has no dialogue. What were we replacing? We were re-capturing the hilarious noises that our actor, Tim Lewis, made during his performance. I always say that audio is 51% of a project – people will put up with bad video before they’ll tolerate bad audio.



Even though Tim did a great job on set, there was no way we could control all the sounds that were happening in the restaurants we used as locations. So, rather than try to cut out all of the shouting chefs, rushing waiters, crashing plates, and clinging cash registers – we simply decided to design, create, and mix the sounds at Studio Unknown in nearby Baltimore, MD.

Because we didn’t have to worry about sound on set, we didn’t have any problems with boom pole shadows, wireless mics creeping out of the actor’s clothing, or extra wires to trip over. The end result was increased efficiency. Using ADR also allowed us to enrich the collaborative process by gleaning extra ideas from audio engineers Stephen Joseph and Kevin Hill. The end result really highlighted some of Tim’s comic gold.