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redirected from Main.ADR

This is where an actor is called back to do the lines again, usually because something went wrong with the sound recording on-set. Also known as "automated dialog replacement" (ADR).

The fun part? Now the actor gets to do the line with the intended emotions while lip-synching themselves.

This is the standard way to record dialog in dubbed foreign productions and in animation, when the lines aren't recorded beforehand.

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Examples:

Film

• In Star Wars: Episode 3, Hayden Christiansen and Ewan MacGregor had to record grunts for when they were fighting. That's right. Grunts.
  • This is actually standard procedure for fight scenes, however, as such sounds made on-set tend to be drowned out by the sounds of the fight.
  • Looping was a fact of life for many actors in the Star Wars universe, like Anthony Daniels (Threepio). Most well-known case is Darth Vader, as no one would be afraid of David Prowse's voice.
    • Says you. A Psychopathic Manchild Dark Lord who sounds like Rick Moranis and whose Dissonant Serenity never breaks even when committing the most atrocious deeds could have been High Octane Nightmare Fuel in the right hands. Plus, considering Hayden Christensen's performance in the prequels, Darth Vader sounding like David Prowse makes perfect sense.
• The Lord Of The Rings: Return of the King was entirely dubbed: the enormous noise of the fans and the assorted background noise made it impossible to hear any of the dialogue. That is, the whirling bladed fans, not the squeeing or complaining ones.
• In the pre-Internet, pre-videotape, pre-digital era of actual filmed pornography, sex scenes were typically filmed without sound; performers would then add all the various grunts, groans and exclamations afterward. Most of the time this would be done haphazardly, with only minimal care for any visible Mouth Flaps; this often added an unintentional Hong Kong Dub quality to the scenes.
  • Still the case in quite a lot of digitally shot porn. Sadly, in most of the rest of the cases, decent audio normalization and levelling would be a huge help. Sigh.
  • This is hilariously referenced in Jesus Of Montreal where one of the actors is introduced while looping lines for a porno. Halfway through, he cries out that he's been reading the wrong lines and he's told that it doesn't matter and that no one will notice.
    • This trope is often completely averted with "gonzo" and "reality" porn, where all the live audio is left in, up to and including "actor" directions. There's a bit of a Broken Base as to whether or not this adds positives to the scenes (with the director acting as something of a narrartor) or renders said scenes unwatchable with the sound on.
• Hugo Weaving as V in V For Vendetta had to dub all of his lines, because of the mask.
  • Also because V was recast. He was originally played by James Purefoy, who left a few weeks into filming.
• In Dr. Strangelove, there is a noticable scene where Major Kong is saying "Dallas" but you hear "Vegas", in order to prevent a Funny Aneurysm Moment based on the recent assassination of JFK in Dallas.

Live Action TV

• Anthony Stewart Head had to loop many of his lines as Giles on Buffy The Vampire Slayer in order to incorporate the character's mild stutter. This was such a hassle that Head declared he would never play a character with a speech impediment again.
• The Babylon Five episode Comes the Inquisitor was originally broadcast with Sheridan referring to the historical murders in London's West End. Which is fine, I'm sure there were as many murders there as in the rest of the city... but they meant Jack the Ripper, who committed murders in London's East End. The error was pointed out in a usenet post and corrected for the subsequent broadcast. Not very well, as they hadn't intended to loop it and the camera was right on his face for the whole scene. Watch his mouth, and it's very obvious he says "West" when the audio says "East".
• On Jeopardy!, Alex Trebek often rerecords his reading of a clue if he stumbles over a word, but no lip-synching is involved because the screen usually shows the text of the clue rather than the host's face.
• Lost requires a lot of looping because almost all of the action is filmed outdoors in Hawaii. The ambient noise at times covers up the dialogue.
• It has been suggested that Donald Trump loops his boardroom speeches on The Apprentice. This may be to complete the editing "story" about why someone is getting fired, or simply to insert something more eloquent than what was actually said.

Unsorted Examples:

• The "chompers" scene in Galaxy Quest features Sigourney Weaver's character seeing the completely nonsensical hallway full of banging metal blocks and exclaiming, "Screw that!"—except that from the movement of her mouth it's entirely clear that she originally said "fuck". Presumably the line was looped to keep the film to a PG-13 rating.
  • This troper distinctly remembers her saying "Fuck that!!!" I thought it a valid, reasonable response, given the situation. Did I watch an "Unrated" version unknowingly?
  • The theatrical release was not censored, just the home video versions. Given that it was a perfect use of the Precision F Strike, it's too bad there doesn't seem to be a 'director's cut' out there.
• This is the standard method of recording lines in Super Sentai despite the fact that it's Live Action TV: the actors act out their scenes in front of the camera and then re-record every single line in a recording studio. According to one director, this is by far the hardest part of production, and also explains why most characters end up in a Milk The Giant Cow situation.
• The plot of Singin' in the Rain (such as it is) centers around this.
• This was standard practice in many Italian movies until about the '80s. Films with multilingual casts — such as many Spaghetti Westerns — were often shot without any microphones on set, and with each actor saying his lines in his own language. Hence, these films do not have one original or "official" language track; every version is a dub.
• A good chunk of the dialogue from The Descent had to be dubbed in, because the sets were polystyrene and sure didn't sound like a cave or rock while they were walking or moving around on it.
• Cillian Murphy rerecorded all of his lines for Twenty Eight Days Later during Post Production, replacing a faux-British accent with his natural Irish accent because he thought the British accent sounded too fake.
  • There was quite a bit of ADR going on, according to Danny Boyle. Several shots were actually set up to accommodate ease of ADR (faces in shadows, the actor out of frame etc) and a handful of new lines were added to otherwise wordless scenes.
• Used for comic effect in Garth Marenghis Darkplace - often lines either don't fit the Mouth Flaps, or characters yell random lines of expositions without moving their lips.
• An infamous goof in the movie Eegah was a result of the botching of one of these: at one point, while the main characters are walking, one of them suddenly "shouts" "Watch out for snakes!" despite the fact that the character isn't speaking and the quality of the line's audio not matching the rest of the movie. As such, "Watch out for snakes!" has become a Running Gag on Mystery Science Theater 3000, (where Eegah was shown) and went through a bit of Memetic Mutation as well.
• The scene in Love Actually where Aurelia removes the cup holding down a portion of the book Jamie is working on had to be redubbed due to the noise of the large fan sitting off camera.
• The So Bad Its Horrible Made For TV Movie KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park was heavily looped. This led to Peter Criss, already fed up with the filming and his bandmates, refusing to loop his lines — so all his dialogue ended up being looped by a voice actor. This is hardly the only problem with the movie, but it's by far the most glaringly obvious.
• Thunderball, the fourth James Bond film, shows Q introducing Bond to his new tricked-out briefcase, accompanied by the line "Now pay attention, 007". This line would later become one of many famous motifs in the series, but Desmond Llewelyn does not move his mouth.
  • In Goldfinger, Gert Frobe's lines had to be dubbed over because of his impenetrable German accent.
  • One actress, Nikki Van Der Zyl, was the voice of the Bond Girl twice (Dr No and Thunderball), the Bond Girl in From Russia With Love was also dubbed, and Robert Rietty voiced both an agent who is killed in Dr. No and the villain of Thunderball.
• The early Star Trek The Next Generation episode The Battle featured the appearance of Picard's old ship the Stargazer. The show was shot to the original script before the model shots of the ship were filmed, which had intended to use the old movie Enterprise model to represent it, and Laforge names it as a Constitution-class ship. However, the producers then changed their mind and made up a new model representing a previously unseen class. Levar Burton then redubbed his line using a similar-sounding but different class name, Constellation.
• There's a point in a Scrubs episode where Dr. Cox is yelling at someone, probably Elliot (that narrows it down a bunch...) and begs to 'Aiisha', even though it's very, VERY obvious for anyone watching his mouth that he's actually saying "God".
• In Hot Fuzz, Simon Pegg redubbed most of his lines from the second half of the movie to make his voice sound more like an 80s action hero.
• A semi-example - in The Unusuals, there's a bit where Delahoy sort of screeches, "My name is Ron Hasselmeyer! I live in ze forest!" For no particular reason, the camera only shows the back of his head, and upon rewatching, this troper got the distinct impression it was to prevent any of the actors from giggling during the scene or needing to reshoot if he wasn't up to the vocal acrobatics required to shriek with a German accent right at that moment. But don't let that put you off!
• A visible example shows up in The Godfather: Sollozzo learns that Don Vito Corleone is still alive after the assassination attempt he ordered, and says to hostage Tom Hagen "That's bad luck for me, and bad luck for you if you don't make that deal!" before apparently releasing him. However, if you look closely you see that Sollozzo actually just says "That's bad luck for me, and bad luck for you": there was a short scene that was present in the book but cut from the film, where Tom Hagen arrives back at home and exclaims "Boy, if I argue against the Supreme Court I'll never do better than I did against that Turk tonight!", having convinced Sollozzo not to kill him on the grounds that he could still negotiate a deal with Sonny despite the Don being alive.
• Musical films often do this by neccessity, having the singing parts acted out and then dubbed over with the official track for cleaner audio. example: Dr Horrible. Everyone singing is their own voice, but it's a dub of the official musical track over the scene. So they're essentially lipsynching to themselves.
• Evil Dead 2 has Ash, after his hand has been possessed, screaming and running around, then saying very distinctly "Tool shed." Those two words were looped in ADR, and it sounds like it. In fact, Bruce Campbell relates on the commentary that years later, when he met Clint Eastwood for the first time, Eastwood walked up to him, shook hands, and without preamble demanded Campbell "say 'Tool shed'."

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