ADR Sessions for TV and Movies

Working on dialog recording sessions for major movies and TV shows is not the exclusive domain of Hollywood. Cotton Hill Studios in Albany, New York, has been busy doing ADR (automatic dialogue replacement) sessions with a number of high-profile clients for a diverse set of TV shows including Battlestar Gallactica, Flash Gordon, Jericho, and Kill Point, as well as for the movie Love in the Time of Cholera.

Actor Michael Gaston with Cotton Hill engineer Aaron Scher

A typical ADR session involves not only the recording studio and voice talent, but frequently needs to include producers, directors, and vocal/dialog coaches located in other parts of the country. The remote parties are added to the session via ISDN so that everyone can interact in real time. The artists need to hear the original set dialogue, music, sound effects, directions from the production team and coaches, cues, playback of the re-recorded parts, and talkback from the control room.

"It's not unusual for us to have seven or eight different sources to feed to a talent when working on an ADR session for broadcast or movies. These sessions typically involve ISDN," says Margherita Petti Krug, the studio's general manager. "Our engineers treasure the flexibility that the Aviom mixers afford especially when it comes to ADR and ISDN broadcast sessions. The individual control we have over the different signals allows us to help an actor complete an ADR session comfortably and efficiently," she adds.

Actor John Leguizamo was at Cotton Hill for two projects recently. Working with Wildtracks Studios in Los Angeles, Leguizamo recorded replacement dialogue for the USA Network television drama The Kill Point. He also did dialogue replacement for his movie Love in the Time of Cholera with the production team located in London.

Cotton Hill Studios owner Ray Rettig with John Leguizamo

Ray Rettig, president and chief engineer of Cotton Hill Studios, Inc., adds, "In the world of ADR and ISDN, when you are feeding seven or eight monitoring signals, nothing gives you more control or makes it easier than the Aviom personal mixers."

Cotton Hill, with Aaron Scher engineering, worked in conjunction with Larson Sound, a Burbank California studio, via ISDN to record actor Michael Gaston's dialog for an episode of the CBS hit show Jericho, where Gaston plays Gray Anderson, a main character on the show.