Apple Final Cut Express HD - Manual (Page 657)

Chapter 47 Tips for Better Audio 657
VIII
Change the pace of off-camera dialogue.
As long as the speaker is off camera, you can do other things as well. For example, you
can easily change the pacing of what’s being said, making the sentence sound more or
less dramatic. The key is to have footage you can cut away to that will seem plausible. An
audience shot or another actor listening are two examples of plausible cutaway shots.
Remember, if you create any gaps as a result of editing your audio, fill them in with
room tone.
Use the video from one take with the audio from another.
Sometimes you’ll have multiple takes of a particular shot, each with something good in
it. For example, say you have a series of takes of an actor saying “Wow! That’s a big
piece of pie!”
Each take is shot from a slightly different angle, and there’s one visual take that you like
more than the others, even though the dialogue in it isn’t that great. In another take,
the actor said the word “wow” really well. A third take has the best version of the line
“That’s a big piece of pie!” If the actor was good and the pacing of each of these takes
is roughly the same, it’s fairly easy to combine all three clips into one good take.
Be careful when combining dialogue from different takes.
People use different intonations as they speak a sentence, and it’s important to listen
for this. Sometimes, you’ll be unable to combine two sentences because they won’t
sound right together.
For example, suppose you have two clips of someone talking. In one clip the actor says,
“I’m going to throw that suitcase out the window!” In a second clip, he says “Should I
put the box in the closet?” You want to cut from the actor to a shot of the closet when
he says “that suitcase” so you can combine the line “I’m going to throw that suitcase”
with “in the closet.” Unfortunately, the second sentence is a question, so the two pieces
of dialogue don’t really sound right together. Since the difference is jarring, you’ll have
to try something else.