How are TV series dubbed in other languages while keeping the sound effects and ambient noises?

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I’m talking about actual fully fledged dubs where the original voices are completely gone and replaced with matching voice actors, NOT voice-over dubs where they lower the volume of the original audio and have someone speak over the video in a different language.

I’ve always wondered how the original voices were removed and separated from the rest of the ambient sounds. I know for animated shows, everything is recorded on separate tracks, for example for a scene where two characters are having lunch in a busy restaurant,
the conversation would be recorded on its own track,
the sound effects the characters make ( picking up forks and knives, glasses, drinks being poured, footsteps etc…) would be on a separate track
and the ambient noises (other customers talking, distant traffic sounds from the road etc…) would be on a separate track.

Now for the same scene being filmed instead of animated, wouldn’t all of these end up on the same track? The actors would be talking while creating their own sound effects by moving plates, pouring drinks and all that, the background actors would be talking in real time around them and everything so wouldn’t the microphones pick all the sounds up at the same time?

I’m rambling but I guess my question is, how are they able to isolate and remove ONLY the voices of the actors talking and leave the sounds of everything else around them intact?

Again sorry for rambling but I’m terrible at explaining

In: Technology

7 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

I am an amateur film actor, and our production usually films our lines at least twice – once on set to get video of our mouth movements, and once in a dedicated audio recording area to record the actual words. The sound effects are usually recorded separately or pulled from an existing catalog. The tracks are all merged in post-production.

Anyone with enough of a budget to do multiple languages will do something similar, adding a different dialogue track depending on where that version is going.

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