A Trip to MoMI

Last week, I took a trip the Museum of the Moving Image with my friend and fellow film student, Trine Fjordholm. After taking our time and gawking at the beautiful array of antique film cameras the museum has exhibited, we finally made our way to the demonstrations on Foley, ADR, stop-motion, and flip-books. We had a field day with these and spent a bit too much time at the stop-motion table.

I had a few epiphanies at the ADR demo. Of course, dubbing my voice over Eddie Murphy's during a scene from Coming to America is going to be ridiculous in any given situation. As the scene images played on the screen in front of me, I listened and  clumsily read aloud the pieces of dialogue that were to replace the original. In this experience, I truly realized the amount of precision and attention to nuance necessary on both the actor's part and the sound editor's part. What primarily seemed like a straightforward task was really quite involved and time-consuming.

It is hoped that the use of ADR goes unnoticed by viewers because its job is to perfectly sync the sound with the images. In the digital age, sound has become one of the main criterium to determining what makes a good film. With the use of Foley, ADR, and sound effects, the sound design of a film carries much more weight than it did in early sound films. Nowadays, the viewer is immersed not only in the images and the narrative, but the sounds that surround them.

We ain't pretendin'.