A recent experience with "looping"

Wow, it's been a while since I've posted here! I've been incredibly pre-occupied with another blog for my movie, and haven't given this one near the love it needs (it is, after all, my first and original).

Yesterday I had the unenviable task of looping production audio - where you re-record dialogue in a studio because the audio on the shoot was unusable. Normally when I have to do this chore, it's for an actor or another speaker. But yesterday, it was all me. I had filmed myself outdoors for a new pitch video for my film's fundraising campaign.

(As a side note, I used a very cool app for the iPod Touch that turned it into a teleprompter. It actually worked pretty well, taped right underneath the lens. I have it for the iPad as well -- I'll be for sure using it quite a bit in the future.)

I had a lapel mic underneath my jacket, with some gauze to keep it separated from clothes, but the wind was too much for it. I decided I'd just go with it and loop the sound later. In the editing room, I worked with the scratch audio for the sake of editing. I knew I wouldn't be on screen the whole time, so I'd only have to match those moments; the rest of my dialogue could just be treated like good old fashioned narration.

The experience gave me some fresh insight into the looping process. I noticed for me, personally, that when I would focus on matching my words with the lip movements, I would focus so much on starting at the right time that I'd generally miss the right tone and inflections, and often would have inconsistent speeds that wouldn't match up on the timeline due to me trying to stay consistent with the video.

After about an hour of frustration, I decided to close my eyes and focus on copy-catting my audio, lip syncing be darned. I took it one sentence at a time, playing a line, then stopping the video and immediately repeating, with tone and inflection, what I'd heard. Amazingly, it matched up pretty well, much better than before. I think what did the trick for me was focusing on the content instead of worrying about pace. The pace took care of itself with the mimicry, and I captured the same energy that I had in front of the camera.

Here's how it turned out. Over all, I'm pretty happy with this pitch video, and hope it gets the response we're needing.



If/when we have to loop audio for the film, I'll be experimenting with this method.