Dirtying up an ADR track

Question

End Goal: To make a clean dialogue track sound as if it was recorded with a lav mic.

Background Info: An actor was not mic'd during a production. I did not have access to any of the other lav mics used during production for the ADR recording. (A Neumann TLM103 was used).

I've EQ'd the dialogue to fit the space, mimicked the space of the location, added the room tone of the location. I've also added a very soft distortion, and even gated an AC noise generator into the dialogue track.

Yet it still sounds too clean to my ears. My next attempt is to Re-Amp the recorded track through an old mixer, a PA, or either a guitar or keyboard amp. (I wont have access to the production mixers gear, but I maybe able to get a list of the gear he used).

My question: Has anyone here had a similar challenge in processing a dialogue track and can share their techniques, or dos anyone have any further suggestions on what to try.

Thank You.

Answer 1

If you're not doing this already, try adding fill from the production track under the ADR. Another thing that might help is adding foley cloth. In the past I've had luck using production fill that has some movement on it, wether it be cloth, feet or background movement depending on if it works with picture. Granted this tends to work when it's just a line or two and not a whole scene worth. Hope this helps.

Answer 2

Greg is right about the necessity of filling with crap from the production tracks and Foley. That's probably the #1 requirement for getting ADR to seem real.

Varying the gain and EQ as the on screen actor moves about will help. Imagine what it would sound like if the actor were facing toward or away from a boom mic above the camera position, or something.

If you are using noise reduction on the production tracks in the film (or even if you're not), use the same processes on the ADR, it will help screw up the ADR a bit to sound like the production.