Fred Brennan has worked in every aspect of sound editing during his 27 years in sound post in Toronto. As a supervising editor, he specializes in dialogue and ADR editing. His name appears on sound editing Genies for Sunshine, Love Come Down and Max.

Sound editing is in the midst of a quiet revolution. Changes in the agreement between the Directors Guild of Canada, which represents sound editors, and the CFTPA are serving to reestablish sound editing as a freelance trade. Instead of working through sound studios hired by a production, as it has been for the past 20 years, sound editors are again communicating directly with producers, directors and picture editors to find work.

Sound editors will again be seen as part of the creative filmmaking team, rather than as technicians attached to a studio. So as we enter this new era, some basics about the work are worth restating.

Like everything else in filmmaking, if dialogue editing is done right, you don’t notice it. If it is successful, you hear what the actors are talking about, and if it is not, you hear someone behind you in the theater turn and whisper, ‘What did they say?’

But the success of the dialogue track in a film is not the sole responsibility of the dialogue editor, and the concerns of the dialogue editor do not start only in post. The dialogue editor’s work starts with reading the script. This gives him or her a basis for conversation with the location recordist and others during preproduction.

These conversations can deal with technical matters that, if set right during production, can prevent unnecessary crises in post. They can also cover production issues such as music playback on set and locations with sound problems. The dialogue editor can also list wild sound and wild lines to be recorded during production that will be useful in post.

At the beginning of production, the dialogue editor can review the first few days’ sound rushes and give valuable feedback to the recordist. Having a sound editor this far back upstream can be useful for all productions – and particularly those now shooting on small video formats with differing technical standards.

When the filming stops, the cutting begins, and good communication between the picture and dialogue editors is crucial for the optimum outcome of the dialogue in a film. The picture and dialogue editors are often first to discuss in detail where a film may need ADR (automatic dialogue replacement), or where a performance in a scene can be built from outtakes. Picture and sound editors are collaborators. The picture editor and the picture assistants get to know a film in great detail, accumulating knowledge that can be very useful to the sound editors.

In sound post, the real work of the dialogue editor, while technically demanding and intricate, is an artistic endeavor. It’s about understanding the story and the characters, and working as far as possible to preserve the actors’ original performances. All the means of doing the work and the nifty modern computer tools serve not themselves but rather the film’s audience, who just want to hear what is being said.

Meanwhile, ADR is a dilemma. A lot of actors and directors don’t like it. This is understandable – it’s not easy work and they’re not doing it all the time. The dialogue editor and the director spend a lot of time choosing, line by line, whether to use the location sound or to rerecord the actors’ lines on the ADR stage. But ADR is not a second choice – it’s another choice. With the help of an experienced dialogue editor, a director and an actor can and often do recreate the feeling of the original performance.

On recent projects I worked with Ralph Fiennes, Deborah Kara Unger, John Cusack, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Bruce Greenwood – all of whom were able to recreate the subtlety of their original performances. Using their post-sync dialogue in these films actually gave their lines more dramatic clarity than the original location recordings.

In the end, the rules of dialogue editing are really quite simple. The dialogue should be in sync, the audience should be able to hear what is being said, the background atmospheres should be smoothed out from shot to shot, and the tracks should be laid out so a mixer can work with them. These are the basics. It can get complex, but if it’s done right, it returns to being simply the sound of a human voice speaking to you in a darkened room.