Dialogue Edit

The post-production workflow is cumulative.  A single missed deadline tends to delay successive assignments.

Objective: To improve performance clarity, enhance creative messaging, balance levels, and conform to technical parameters, a dialogue editor will organize, edit, and mix, the film’s dialogue stem.  The goal is a Premiere Pro sequence with one combined track of dialogue that runs the entire length of the film.
Assessment:  The individual grade will be averaged with other quiz & assignment scores.  The successful dialogue editor will demonstrate competence as specified:

  • Project Organization (Premiere). 
    • Replace unusable takes with alternate takes or ADR.
    • Separate/checkerboard dialogue by character, mic, and file.
    • Go to Edit > Edit in Adobe Audition > Sequence.
  • Project Organization (Audition). 
    • Select all the clips.  Choose “Lock in Time.” This prevents clips from shifting horizontally, which would knock them out of sync.
    • From the main menu, select Multitrack > Track Visibility.  Hide or show tracks to simplify your work flow.
    • Assign each character his/her own bus (Premiere Pro calls this a submix track).  Route character tracks to their respective bus.
    • Route all character busses to a the master mix track.
  • EQ and Processing.  Essential Audio processing
    • Loudness match all of a character’s clips in a given scene to a target of -23 LUFS, employing clip gain where necessary.  Repeat for each character.
    • Add micro fades at the beginning and end of each clip.  Adjust clip handles as necessary to accommodate the fades.  Try to overlap the fades of one character with the fades of another to keep the room tone from dipping noticeably between lines.
    • Apply dynamics and other processing (paying special attention to noise and reverb removal).  This is frequently no more complicated than choosing a preset from Essential Audio’s dialogue presets.
  • Level Mixing.  Remembering to adjust levels to account for microphone perspective and apparent distance from camera (i.e., long shots should generally sound farther away than close-ups), mix/keyframe to boost levels and remove peaking (in this order) from:
    • clip – use keyframes to deal with problem peaks or troughs.
    • track – combine the lav (intelligibility) and boom (environmental perspective).
    • character sub mix – adjust the characters in relation to each other.
    • To test the edits’ seamlessness, add a temp track of roomtone to each scene (to be replaced in a successive phase of post-production by Foley, Effects, and Atmospheres).\
  • Export to Premiere
    • Go to File > Export > Export to Adobe Premiere Pro.  The Export to Adobe Premiere Pro dialog will open.  Name the file and browse locations to save it into the proper server folder.
    • In the Options section select Mixdown session to and then select Stereo File.
    • Check the box Open in Adobe Premiere Pro.  Click Export.  Premiere Pro will open.
    • Select the Premiere Pro project file that audio will be imported to.  Click Open.
    • In the Copy Audition Audio Tracks dialog select New Audio Track.  Click OK.  The audio file will be imported into the new track.
    • Mute or delete all of the other dialogue tracks.  Playback to check for sync.