MovieChat Forums > Johnny Mnemonic (1995) Discussion > I would have liked a lot less ADR and Fo...

I would have liked a lot less ADR and Foley

posted 10 years ago by airlight-europe
2 replies | jump to latest

So all the old tech aside, there is a layer of separation between me and the film when watching it. The reason is that most, if not almost all, dialog is ADRed. Whenever anyone is speaking, it's obvious that the dialog is not from the set. However the dubbing isn't good at all, and feels more like a foreign film translation where the voice and emotion and energy often seems slightly off from the visuals, since the same actors aren't dubbing the lines.

Here though the actual actors are doing the dubbing, but Keanu in particular in this film rarely has much emotion in his voice. It feels like he is in a sound booth, isolated and left to try and recapture what energy there originally was. At times the visual energy and articulation seems to hint at there being something there to begin with, but the audio is at odds with it.

Plus the ADR is so sterile, a dry voice with a simple reverb added. The walk through the subway with Keanu and Dina Meyer has no atmosphere or warmth at all, just disconnected voices and footstep foley against almost complete silence.

[–] jimmymack7 10 years ago

So all the old tech aside, there is a layer of separation between me and the film when watching it. The reason is that most, if not almost all, dialog is ADRed

Maybe you have a bad dvd....I have the Blu-ray and the standard dvd's, and I don't agree with you're critique at all. I'm curious, what proof do you have that the actors are doing their own dubbing?

"Lófaszt, nehogy már. Te vagy a Blade ... Blade Runner"

[–] airlight-europe 9 years ago

Well, the voices in most scenes have a sound booth sound to them, and in many instances the reverb added, like the subway scene, is static and doesn't modulate or react to a live, moving microphone in a real space.

ADR is common practice and many films are almost purely ADR depending on environment factors during filming. But Johnny Mnemonic rarely even has added room tone for the backgrounds, so the dialogue can feel like it exists so separated and isolated from the environment the characters are in.

It's probably a budget thing, maybe the need to ADR certain scenes meant they would have to do the whole thing to avoid obvious differences in quality and sound character from ADR to set recording.

I watched a bluray version aswell. :)