Suppose you’re shooting a movie. The actors do their work, and you also record their voices while they’re acting. Additional audio stuff like music and sound effects is added later.
But now suppose you want to dub the movie in another language. You can’t just slap music and stuff onto the project, but you (somehow) need to remove the voices of the original actors and then slap those of the new voice actors onto the film. Except if you cut that out, you’d also have to cut out all environmental noise, etc. And if you do that, you’d basically have to recreate every single sound required.
So how exactly does this work? Are movies shot with and without sound simultaneously? Or is there some technological means to separate the sound from the image?
In: Technology
I work in audio post production. In almost all movies/TV shows/Documentaries/etc, pretty much every sound you hear that isn’t dialogue has been added in post. All the atmosphere sounds, footsteps, any time someone puts a cup down or opens a door. Gunshots, explosions. Everything.
Sometimes even the dialogue is replaced for various reasons (audio quality/lines changed/etc), this is recorded in a studio and is called ADR (automated dialogue replacement).
Having all these things separate means that the person doing the final mix has much greater control over all the elements and can create a richer soundscape overall.
As well as a full mix, one of their deliverables is what’s called an M&E stem. This stands for music and effects, and contains a mix of everything except dialogue. This is what is sent to other studios worldwide to be dubbed into other languages.
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