Dialogue Editing for Motion Pictures and Television A Guide to the Invisible Art

Preface to the Third Edition

Preface

Acknowledgments

1.        What Is Dialogue Editing?

2.        The Story of Production Sound

•        Introduction

•        Success Has Many Fathers

•        Early Attempts at Sound in Movies

•        Feature-length Talkies

•        The Modern Era of film and television recording[KP1] 

3.      Film Sound Workflows: Then and Now

•        Classic Film Workflows

•        Single System Workflows

•        Film/Video Hybrid Workflows

•        Working in an NTSC Environment

•        Working in a PAL Environment

•        Digital Cinema and Television

4.      On the Set

•        The Picture Team

•        The Sound Team

•        Other Departments at the Shoot

•        Sound Equipment

•        Syncing Picture and Sound on the Set

•        Sound Reports

•        Getting What You Need

•        Give the Post-Production Team What They Need

5.      The Sound Department

6.      A Quick Look at Picture Editing

7.      Moving the Film from Picture to Sound

•        The Picture Cutting Room

•        What You Need in Order to Get Started

•        A Brief Detour to Understand How Film Became Digital

•        Exporting and Importing Sessions Using OMF/AAF

•        The Edit Decision List

•        Metadata

•        Performing the Assembly

•        Filenames

•        Back Up Your File

8.      Working with Picture

•        A Brief History of Editing Sound Locked to Picture

•        The Trouble with Digital Picture

•        Timecode Burn-Ins

9.      The Spotting Session

10. Setting Up Your Editing Universe

•        Make it secure

•        The Monitor Chain

•        Sync Now!

•        Preparing Your Editing Workspace

•        Eliminating Redundant Regions

•        Scenes

•        Beeps, Tones, and Leaders

•        Wild Sound

11. Editing Dialogue Tracks

•        Organizing Tracks

•        Scene-to-Scene Splits

•        Where to Edit

•        Shot Balancing

•        Finding or Generating Room Tone

•        Shot Transitions: Basic Rules of Thumb

•        Working With Many Channels of Dialogue

•        Making Sense of a Scene

•        Production Sound Effects

•        Making Guide Tracks

•        Editing Dialogue for Television

12. Image, Depth, and Perspective

•        Dialogue in the Soundscape

•        Depth

•        Focusing on One Character in a Group

•        Perspective

•        Choosing the Crossfade

13. Dialogue Editing Tips and Tricks

14. Dealing with Noise

•        What is Noise?

•        Transient Noises

•        Fixing Transient Noises

•        Alternate Takes

•        Reducing Ambient Noises

•        To Process or Not to Process

•        Using generative AI

15. ADR

•        Replacing What Cannot be Fixed

•        Looping, ADR, and Postsync

•        Preparing for ADR

•        Organizing the ADR Process

•        The ADR Recording Session

•        Preparing Dialogue Tracks for ADR Editing

•        ADR Editing

•        Loop Group

•        Matching ADR to Production Sound

16. Managing Your Time

•        Ask the Right Questions

•        Set Daily Goals

•        Estimate How Long the Editing Will Take

17. Editing Production Sound for Documentaries

•        Documentary Sound Challenges

•        The Frankebyte

•        The Documentary Workspace

•        Typical Documentary Problems

•        Production Sound Effects

18. When the Picture Changes

•        The Reconform Defined

•        Automated Reconforms

•        Manual Reconforms

19. Preparing for the Mix

•        Talk to the Mixer

•        Check the Final Picture

•        Moving from One Platform to Another

•        Dealing With the Details

•        Packaging Dialogue Elements

•        Close the Cutting Room and Back Up the Project

20. The Dialogue Premix

•        Premix Goals

•        Planning the Premix

•        Mixing Models (A Bit of History)

•        The Mechanics of Mixing

•        Back to the Box

21. Other applications for dialogue editing

Afterword

Appendix A: Dialogue Editing in a Nutshell

Appendix B: Track Template for a Typical Small Film's Dialogue

Glossary

Bibliography

Index

Biography

Korey Pereira, MPSE, is an award-winning dialogue editor. He received a Primetime Emmy for his work on Stranger Things Season 4 and a Golden Reel for Prey. In 2023 he was elected to a second term on the Motion Picture Sound Editors (MPSE) board of directors. He is also an assistant professor of practice and audio area head at the University of Texas at Austin’s Department of Radio, Television and Film. In 2024 he was named one of the “Texas Ten,” the Texas Exes’ most prestigious teaching award. His writing credits include content for the MPSE Wavelength magazine, Pro Sound Effects, and Production Expert.