In December 2004, Sony made its last portable DAT recorder for sale outside Japan. This seemingly insignificant event marked the end of a pivotal era in motion picture sound. Film's final transition from analogue to digital sound was complete. For 20 years, DAT provided a bridge between Nagra and Cantar, between analogue tape and digital hard disk recorders. Our embrace of this format, however ambivalent, enabled us to adjust to the digital world. These two decades gave the industry time to change its culture, not just its technology.
At the same time, cinematography was moving from film to Digital Cinema, an image format with a resolution and “look” that rivals film. Extremely high-resolution cameras and all-digital picture processing have radically changed how films are shot, edited, and seen by moviegoers. And an ever-faster Internet gives filmmakers easy access to postproduction talent and resources the world over, thus altering the way people collaborate. These changes inevitably affect the sound people.
It was in the midst of these developments that I wrote the first edition of Dialogue Editing for Motion Pictures: A Guide to the Invisible Art, so some of its technology descriptions and workflow models got a bit creaky over time. In this, the second, edition I've brought these up to date, and I've had the chance to explore new topics.
Sprinkled throughout the book are quotes from location mixers, rerecording mixers, sound designers, SFX editors, and even a Foley artist. Each shares his or her thoughts about dialogue and dialogue editors. Some names you'll recognize, others you won't. But each casts a fresh light on our craft. Each offers a unique perspective of the ways that dialogue editors contribute to the success of a film.