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I want to talk about OTS's


Mike Robertson

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I have a pet peeve when watching tv shows or film, and on an over the shoulder shot, you catch the shoulder actor's out of focus mouth moving up and down out of sync w/ their dialog. It's noticeable virtually every time and takes me out of the scene for a moment. When I record shots like this I like to keep the shoulder actors lav running to hopefully minimize this. How does anybody else feel about this?

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It was especially terrible on the new Arrested Development. Sorry if anyone here worked on it. I don't mean the quality of the audio itself was terrible, I mean the fact that, as you said, former president Bill Clinton, they regularly had the shoulder actor's dialogue clearly not in sync. 

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There are editorial conventions, procedures, that have been the norm for as long as I can remember, that in over the shoulder shots the dialog from the person whose shoulder we are over is taken from their closeup (or complimentary over the shoulder) and not from the sound during the over the shoulder. This is done for many reasons, some of which I do not agree with, and the result is often that this "cheat" does not work --- when we see the side of the person's face and the mouth-jaw movement is not correct, it is very disconcerting. Annoying as well is the over the shoulder shot where we hear dialog but there is obviously NO mouth movement, no one is speaking but we hear a line or two, sometimes a wild line (to fix or add to a story point) or just a line stolen from some other shot in the scene. I will add that their other problems, less frequent, where the boom operator (or the mixer if on wires exclusively) fails to actually make the dialog from BOTH actors work properly in the over the shoulder shot. Also, there are times when an actor intentionally messes up their dialog ("you don't see my face, do you?") to insure that their performance will play on their "side" or in closeup.

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Former Mr. POTUS,

 

I don't know how much experience you have in post, but 9/10 times, shots are selected for best visuals rather than sound.  Because actors rarely give the same performance each time, editors often continue a line from the previous angle into the next OTS/dirty shot, and in cases with overlapping dialogue this can be even tougher. 

 

On the other hand, general audiences typically don't notice, since we've trained them to look at what's in focus.

 

It was especially terrible on the new Arrested Development. Sorry if anyone here worked on it. I don't mean the quality of the audio itself was terrible, I mean the fact that, as you said, former president Bill Clinton, they regularly had the shoulder actor's dialogue clearly not in sync. 

 

Ian, with its reshoots, several green screen additions, location issues, and other time crunches, I'm guessing AD had bigger fish to fry than off-camera or secondary OTS dialogue problems.  It's one of those shows where comedic pacing is most important. 

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Hi, and welcome, Bill...

Perhaps we would appreciate your little rant a bit more if you introduced yourself, perhaps in the "Who I Am..." thread.

jwsoundgroup.net is primarily made up of Sound Mixers, and mostly Production Sound Mixers...

 

Your concern comes from results of the editing (sound and picture) that occurs in post production, and is typically driven more by artistic, visual, and technical issues, with the sound syncing of off-camera dialog way down on the list of priorities.

regards to Hill...

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There are editorial conventions, procedures, that have been the norm for as long as I can remember, that in over the shoulder shots the dialog from the person whose shoulder we are over is taken from their closeup (or complimentary over the shoulder) and not from the sound during the over the shoulder. This is done for many reasons, some of which I do not agree with, and the result is often that this "cheat" does not work --- when we see the side of the person's face and the mouth-jaw movement is not correct, it is very disconcerting.

 

I have been in the room when editors have made this decision, and they'll usually say, "if we're lucky, the viewer will only be looking at the other guy, not the person saying the off-camera line." I'll mutter that see it, but they'll retort, "yeah, but you're in the business and you see stuff like this." 

 

A lot of times, this is a last-resort issue to try to repair the scene, and they've cut in a pause or some other line read that works aurally but not visually. So Jeff is right: it doesn't work to us, but it's a crutch they use as best they can. Short of using CG to animate the over-the-shoulder actor, I dunno what they can do. George Lucas, Jim Cameron, and Peter Jackson all now use editorial techniques where literally the guy on the left may be from Take 4, and the guy on the right may be from Take 11... and they stitch them together in VFX, even with a moving camera. In those cases, the mouth and shoulder movements will be correct, but it ain't cheap.

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I have worked with a few actors that insist on running lines when the camera is over their shoulder. They cite this as one of the reasons, the other being courtesy to fellow actors.

I have found it very rare that an actor will NOT run the lines when it is over their shoulder, they do run the lines and perform properly for the most part on ALL angles of the scene. That said, some actors perform differently when they assume that the performance (when over their shoulder) will not be in the movie.

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There are editorial conventions, procedures, that have been the norm for as long as I can remember, that in over the shoulder shots the dialog from the person whose shoulder we are over is taken from their closeup (or complimentary over the shoulder) and not from the sound during the over the shoulder. This is done for many reasons, some of which I do not agree with, and the result is often that this "cheat" does not work --- when we see the side of the person's face and the mouth-jaw movement is not correct, it is very disconcerting. ...

 

So very true. This is something I noticed many times, many years before I was in the business. 

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