ADR, Emmys, and Atomic Bombs

Part 2 of the recent online discussion of ADR and looping took place via Facebook email – on my asking permission to use her name in the Actors in tiny boxes post, Jill D’Aubery sent along some extra details about her experience as an ADR editor. Oh, and by the way, the project which she mentions below earned her an Emmy. Not bad.

Jill D’Aubery: The story behind my Emmy win is quite interesting since it was for The Day After way back in 1984. The TV special was originally 4 hours long, cut to 3.5 hours when it showed. But since over half of it took place after nuclear bombs fell on Kansas City and there was an EMP effect story-wise, and all the dialogue had to be replaced after the bombs fell because we couldn’t use any sort of white sound. The EMP meant that there was no electricity; so no air conditioners, no traffic noise, etc. I worked alone on that one project, no other ADR editors, and lived with those damned bombs for 6 months of my life. And the sound that was concocted for the actual bombing reel was incredible!!! I think, if I remember rightly, that we went out to some 93 reels of sound for that one reel alone…a great deal of which was added ADR.

Jeff’s added comments: Of course at that time, they didn’t have Avids, Pro Tools, Final Cut, any of that… sound was compiled on separate reels of magnetic film stock and eventually played back at the dubbing stage for mixdown on “dubber” machines like the one shown here. So when you see the term “rerecording mixer”, that’s literally what they were doing – the ADR and SFX editors had assembled all the sound elements on separate sound reels that were played back all at once in sync to picture and were literally rerecorded on the mixing stage to the final mixdown tapes. So as Jill mentions above, just imagine 93 dubbers spinning at once in the machine room of the mixing stage. Crazy.