Dialogue Editing for Motion Pictures

CHAPTER 11

Image, Depth, and Perspective

So far we’ve concerned ourselves with making scenes smooth and believable. We’ve looked at ways to even out ugly shot transitions and examined what to do when faced with many tracks from which to choose. Unfortunately, these are the very procedures that some editors point to when claiming that dialogue editing is boring and wanting of soul. “Sound effects editing is filled with opportunities for artistic expression, but not so dialogue!” Rubbish.

You have to do your basic scene balancing before you can get to the fun stuff. It’s very difficult to manipulate subtle changes in the focus of a scene if you can’t hear past the room tone explosions at each edit. In the same way, you can’t paint your walls until ...