obscure-studios

[obscure-studios]

Picking Takes vs. Dialogue Editing vs. Sound Design — a Beginner’s Guide

How do you tell these three apart for audio drama? Here’s how I do it, in case that’s helpful.

Picking Takes: Taking the raw recording from the actors and deciding what take to go with when multiple were recorded. This is often the director’s job, but it sometimes goes to the dialogue editor or showrunner (if those people are distinct from the director). Sometimes this involves opening a DAW and deleting the takes you don’t want, other times it involves listening through and providing your dialogue editor with written instructions of what take to cut in.

Dialogue Editing: Taking the selected takes and ordering it according to the script. The biggest thing a dialogue editor does is decide timing, which is especially relevant for asynchronously recordings. However, timing takes properly is an art no matter the format of the recording session. I’ve noticed that the dialogue edits I do on live-but-remotely-recorded sessions involved tightening the dialogue by removing lag from the call.

Sound Design: Taking the dialogue edit and building the audio world around it. There is action sound design (adding SFX for what the characters are doing) and environmental sound design (adding SFX to represent the environment). Often, the sound designer is in charge of mastering the audio, which includes cleaning and leveling it.

Example under the cut!

Keep reading

[obscure-studios]

Our founder, Jonny Eberle, has a podcast about writing, travel, and the creative process. In the first few episodes, he talks about Sherlock Holmes, reviews pandemic fiction, and reads his short story, “How to Steal Copper Wire.” If you’re looking for a “delightful bite to enjoy with a cup of coffee,” find Dispatches with Jonny Eberle wherever your listen to podcasts.

[obscure-studios]

Feeling a little nostalgia for the old camera today. This little hotrod red Canon FS-10 was our go-to run-and-gun solution for video anytime anywhere for many years. We filmed hundreds of hours of content on its SD card in what at the time felt like crystal clear 720p resolution. The trusty Canon has long since been relegated to the obscure dust bin, but we’ll always remember how much it made possible when we were learning the ropes. RIP Canon.

[obscure-studios]

Why We Do What We Do

I recently watched the film, Be Kind Rewind. In the movie, the main character works for a small video rental business on the verge of losing everything. When all of the VHS tapes in the store are accidentally erased, they remake the films in a nearby junkyard and become local celebrities.

Hollywood is in the filmmaking business to make money off of you; to take 90 minutes of your time for the price of a movie ticket and go live in opulent mansions far from people like you and me. At Obscure Studios, we have yet to turn anything akin to a profit off of our work and that’s okay, because we don’t do this for our wallets or our egos. We do this because this is what we love.

I certainly don’t want to treat anyone like a dollar sign to be exploited. I want to remove you from reality for a few minutes and provide you with original entertainment. If only you could see the love and care that goes into everything we do here. People give up their time and energy, skipping out on leisurely activities and spending their precious free time making the little works of art that we feature on this site. Filmmaking is a passion, and as long as you’re enjoying it, we’re happy and we’ll continue to work hard to bring you more.

We’re far from perfect. We haven’t achieved the level of technical prowess as the big studios in Hollywood, but at Obscure Studios you’ll find more originality and more heart. We’re dreamers and storytellers, not corporate tycoons. If that makes the big studios better than us, that’s fine — but they can’t match our small studio where it counts.

I dare you to find a more talented and dedicated group of people than all of my friends who have bought into my crazy dream and turned Obscure Studios into a reality. I thank them for making this little business come to life and I thank you, our small band of viewers, for having fun with us. That’s what makes it worth the time and effort. It’s all for you.

– Jonny Eberle, Founder and CEO, 2010

[obscure-studios]

We are Obscure Studios, an independent production company making podcasts and short films on big dream and a small budget since 2004. Our current project is a retrofuturistic sci-fi audio drama called “The Adventures of Captain Radio,” which pays homage to the radio dramas of the 1930s in an alternate history where we got flying cars instead of the Great Depression. Season 1 is available wherever you find podcasts and two more seasons are currently in the works for 2023.

Got a question? Want to know how we create our world? Want to share some fan art? Hit us up!

Find us on the interwebs at obscurestudios.net.