In this article Supervising Sound Editor and Re-recording Mixer David Barber from Juniper Post shares how he used iZotope RX 7 Advanced as a key part of the dialogue editing stage in the audio post-production of “The Killing Of Two Lovers”.

Recently, David had the pleasure of joining his friend, sound designer and re-recording mixer Peter Albrechtsen, on the mix of Robert Machoian’s “The Killing of Two Lovers”, which premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.

David was brought on to mix the dialogue and Foley, while Peter handled the ambiences, sound effects, and sound design. This was a very collaborative and creative mix—any idea that would help enhance the story was welcome and encouraged. David was really taken by the direction and editing of the film, as there were many long, single shots where the actors would use the entire screen as a stage—this made for some wonderful interactions and drama.

From this came the idea to pan the dialogue to follow the physical positions of the characters on the screen. However, this concept could only be achieved by David using iZotope RX 7 Advanced to create the discrete pannable audio files he needed out of the single source. To achieve this, for example, there are times where David needs to separate a door knock from the children playing, or children running off from a static actor.

In these two free video tutorials, you will get a rare insight into how David, as the dialogue editor, used many of the tools in RX 7 Advanced including Deconstruct, De-click and Spectral repair, together with the Instant Process feature to clean up the dialogue and sync foley to enhance the storytelling in the movie.

Because these are detailed tutorials on how to use the various tools in RX Advanced these are not short videos, but the extended nature of these free video tutorials means that we see exactly how David used RX 7 Advanced including times when David tries several different techniques, to solve a particular challenge, all excellent learning opportunities.

• 0:00 - Introducing David Barber

• 1:00 - Panning opportunity

• 3:51 - Presenting the bleed problem

• 4:43 - Center panning of scene 1

• 6:50 - Eliminating 'knock' elements in RX

• 7:42 - Using De-click to remove knock transients

• 7:57 - Using 'Instant process' with de-click

• 8:35 - Configuring Spectral Repair for added clean-up

• 10:05 - Before and after removing knocks

• 10:27 - Using Deconstruct to remove voices

• 11:13 - Advanced copy/paste techniques in RX

• 12:32 - Advanced scroll techniques to remove noise

• 14:07 - Before and after removing voices

• 14:47 - Panning lav microphones

• 16:03 - Removing VO bleed

• 17:06 - Using the lasso tool to clean with precision

• 19:00 - Verifying the panning work

• 20:17 - Using Insight 2 for panning confirmation

Having decided after shooting the film to walk down the road of tracking the sound of the characters as a storytelling tool, they knew that some scenes would be harder than others.

• 0:00 - Introducing David Barber

• 0:50 - Identifying the panning problem

• 4:04 - Sending audio into RX for separation work

• 4:17 - Using Breath Control

• 4:47 - Using Spectral Repair for surgical clean-up

• 5:15 - Calling on Deconstruct for extra separation

• 6:07 - Verifying panning in the scene

• 6:19 - Removing unnecessary breaths

• 6:30 - Three strategies for separation

• 7:00 - Removing harmonics using selection tools in RX

• 8:01 - Mastering the paintbrush tool

• 9:16 - Hearing the final separation in the scene

• 10:31 - Removing vocalizations with Deconstruct

• 11:37 - Using the EQ module in RX

• 12:38 - Using the 'play selection’ tool

• 14:09 - Listening to the final 'clap' audio

• 14:26 - Removing noise and claps from the boys' voices

• 15:34 - Hearing the final mix

• 16:35 - Parting thoughts