ADR & DUBBING
ADR (Automatic Dialogue Replace-ment) is a new process that has gained a great deal of popularity with sound studios. In the old days of Hollywood, it was called "looping."
Looping was the process by which dialogue lines were replaced during post-production. The scene to be looped was pulled out of the edited work print, spliced end to end, with an insertion of two punch holes at the head of the scene, running one and two seconds apart, then on three, (the third second or beat that follows,) the scene would start in the loop and be projected onto a dubbing studio screen, where the actor would be standing ready to "dub" in his line.
The actor would see the two holes pop on the screen and hear the sound "beeps" and then begin doing his line as soon as the scene popped on the screen and his character (himself) commenced speaking. The sound was recorded and played back in interlock with the scene and if acceptable from every respect, they went on to the next loop. They replaced a lot of dialogue this way and most actors were very good at this sort of thing. Sound was a major headache for many years, until field recording techniques improved. The invention of the Nagra had a lot to do with that.
ADR works in a similar way. The actor watches a video screen and hears the line. Then he delivers the line while standing in a soundproof studio cubicle. The video "engineer" will then play back the sound with the picture. If it sounds okay, they celebrate. ADR is easy, but time-consuming. Avoid it like the plague by doing wild lines whenever you have a problem than cannot be solved by re-shooting the scene immediately (especially if the reason is that you can't afford to shoot any more film, in which case you must never say, "We'll do it in ADR." Believe me, if you can't afford film, you can't afford
ADR!)
Dubbing is a word commonly used for dialogue replacement in foreign movies and for American movies "dubbed" in foreign languages.
Ingmar Bergman films used to be dubbed in English during the sixties. There was an audience for them, mainly I think because of their honesty in expressing a healthy sort of sexuality (which has somehow disappeared from movies now! )
Dubbing movies in foreign languages is done by the foreign distributors who buy American movies, so you don't have to worry about it.
However, you should be aware that you must prepare a music and EFX track, (commonly known as the "M & E Track") separate from your mix and dialogue tracks, for the purpose of selling foreign rights to your movies. The foreign distributors dub your movies in foreign languages, by ignoring your English language dialogue track and replacing it all with lip-sync foreign dialogue, and then mixing their version with the M & E Track to produce their own version of the release print.
That's how John Wayne ended up talking 150 languages! Certain dubbing "artists" specialize in certain characters and make entire careers as the voice of one of your favorite actors! They drive Rolls Royces and live in mansions with servants, while you and I "get no respect" in Hollywood!
Make sure you prepare a "dialogue book" as well. This consists of a list of dialogue lines from your movie, reel by reel, with minutes and seconds marked in for every line of dialogue listed on the pages (where it appears on every reel -- nothing else is included.) The dialogue book is what the dubbers use to translate from (and what translations! Your writers would be crawling on the walls if they knew what they did with their lines!)
Also, be prepared to make a dupe neg of your negative for foreign release. They pay for it, when they go theatrical with your movie in foreign countries. What an experience when you make a movie for $50,000 and it premiers in a small town in some foreign country, with huge cardboard cutouts of your actors in front of the cinema house (actors who are unknown in the US, soon to be "stars" in some outlandish location,) and your name becomes a household word in Timbuktu!