How do movie makers keep unwanted sounds out of films especially older movies that didn’t have digital audio?

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I know they can add audio in post by Foley artists, but how do they keep sounds of equipment, people, or other background noise that isn’t wanted out of the movie?

I’m especially curious about older movies that were made before the rise of digital audio.

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9 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

If it was too loud, they did ADR. A majority of films from the 60s and earlier did this. The original track was very noisy and useless because the cameras were very loud, but used as a guide for the actors to dub their voice over it.

Then there was analogue gear that could reduce noise in the background, and later with SFX it sounds great. (Think of being on a busy street in NY… ) The BG noise would be mixed with sound fx, and have a “compander” to pull down the bg noise when a voice wasn’t prominent. This is the whole purpose of a ***dialogue editor***, they make sure the dialogue/background are mixed to sound coherent.

ETA: cameras were very loud

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