Do movie actors/actresses dub their scenes after shooting or do they use the audio that is in the scene?

Question

Do they record the audio separately? Or is it all taken in one shot?I think I remember watching some cheap indie films whose audio and video, particularly the speaking of the actors, are not very convincing. I was wondering if everyone records the audio separately.

Answer 1

Ideally, you try to use production audio (what was filmed on the day). The reason for this being: if the actor has to come back to re-record lines, that's another day you have to pay him/her for.

However, "redubbing," or Automated Dialogue Replacement (ADR) as it's better known, is still common on productions of all budgets. Sometimes filming conditions are not ideal for sound. For example, shooting in a flight path for an outdoor scene, lots of wind, shooting on location where a noisy piece of machinery was not allowed to be unplugged, etc. Again, you will still record production audio, and try to do as best you can on the day to record the cleanest audio possible. In these less than ideal situation, an experienced production sound engineer might ask the AD for time with the actors after the wrap takes to do what is known as "Wild Lines." This is grabbing the actors immediately after filming the takes to get the mics in nice and close (where they might have previously been in frame of the shot). The AD would call for quiet on the set, and you would close-mic the actors (with no film to sync it with [hence, "wild"]) saying their lines for the scene. The idea is that it will be a cleaner recording of the dialogue, even with the still-existing locational audio challenges. And since it's immediately after the shooting, often times, the actor's pacing and cadence while speaking is very close to how they said it on screen and should be easy to match.

When doing ADR, you typically have the actor in a booth with a mic and monitor screen, and they try to say their lines in sync with the edited picture. This is usually a last resort, when maybe no Wild Lines were recorded and audio was just unsalvageable through other post-production processing. On top of the extra money having to be paid to the actor, another downside is that, since ADR is usually done after the film has been edited, there may sometimes be months (and other acting jobs) that elapse before an actor is asked to not only step back into a character he hasn't played in months, but to try to match his same performance and emotion in delivering the line. The result is, as you pointed out, often unbelievable.

Always try to get good production audio whenever possible. ADR can be a good last resort when done well.