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- [Voiceover] This episode of Film Jobs
is made possible in part
by the generous support of our patrons on Patreon.
- Hi, John Hess from FilmmakerIQ.com.
Welcome to this episode of Film Jobs,
a series of interviews we have with
people working in a variety of positions
in the motion picture entertainment industry.
I hope through these conversations,
you get a taste of the multitude
of positions and jobs available in film and television.
My guests tonight will be Anita Kalathara
and Wolfie Trausch of Loop Group West.
We'll discuss what exactly is Loop Group, or Group ADR?
How does a Loop Group session work?
What are the different kinds of work
that is required from a Loop Group?
And how you can get involved in the field of group ADR.
So now, probably a lot of my viewers don't know,
what is a loop group?
- So, a Loop Group, or Group ADR,
we're responsible for all the vocals
that aren't recorded on set.
- Yep.
Because while you're filming,
the background needs to be silent.
- [John] Mm-hmm.
- So we have to catch all those things that weren't covered.
- A good example would be like
if you're watching a hospital scene,
the principals are obviously mic'd,
but in the background, you have doctors talking,
and patients talking,
maybe - [Anita] Or people
- [Anita] in the waiting room.
- [Wolfie] Yeah, maybe somebody on the PA is speaking.
All that isn't recorded on set, so
we're responsible to come onto a sound stage
and record little tracks that can be synced into the scene.
- How does a loop group session work then?
- So generally, a production company
will give us a certain number
of contracts that we can use for a session,
and they'll give us about six usually,
sometimes it can be four if it's a smaller budget
or a dozen or so if it's a bigger budget,
and then we're able to bring
some of those actors in to a sound stage, and have them
kind of fill in for all the missing voices.
- So you're in like a big room, then,
like a stage, right? - Yeah.
- [Wolfie] So a lot of them go to a post-production house
or we'll go to the studio's ADR stage,
and we'll start with, we'll have the cue sheet,
and then we'll hire actors that fit for the project,
we'll assemble onto the sound stage,
and then one of us will be up
in the front of the stage directing the session
and calling actors up.
We'll all gather - [Anita] One at a time
around the mic - [Anita] or
or all together - [Anita] Or in a group.
- [Anita] Yeah.
- [John] Okay.
- [Wolfie] And then we'll go through the cue sheet
and just record each cue.
So yeah. - But usually the
- [Anita] Group ADR and looping
is multiple people having conversations at once
or a little pocket of people.
So if there are two people in the background of one scene,
we'll bring out two of the actors,
and have them have a conversation in front of the mic
or have, if they're in a room, we'll have it spread out
so that there's two people here, two people here,
two people here surrounding the mic,
and then having them talk.
- Let's say a diner scene,
and you see a family in the background,
would you bring up like the members
that represent the family?
- [Anita] Yeah. - [Wolfie] Yes.
- And then they would be in a pocket,
and then they would have another person
at the table to the left on the left side.
So we'll kind of get a variety of sound
based off where the mic is.
I keep looking up 'cause there's a mic here.
I realized that.
I'm like oh no, this is not real.
But the mic would be in front of you essentially,
and then you would just kind of space 'em out
so that it sounds like they're coming from different parts.
- So you're not layering different audio,
you're trying to capture like the sound scape, right, or?
- Well, it'll be layered.
We'll do multiple passes if it's
a large scene. - Yeah, and they'll move
it or, yeah, they'll move it around
and have us switch out the position
so that they can - And we'll change our voices
- [Wolfie] to sound like different characters
or sound a little bit older, sound a little bit younger,
different accents, whatever we can do
so that it doesn't sound like the same people talking.
- Do you guys have a way of identifying,
so you have a screen in front of you,
or projection, whatever.
How do you identify the person that you're
trying to do the ADR for?
- It'll usually be spotted beforehand.
- Yeah. We'll usually go through that the day before
or a couple days before, and identify what
we'll go through the entire movie,
and watch what needs to be covered,
and what needs to be accounted for in the cue sheet
and then we'll kind of have an idea,
even in our heads, of who we want to assign that to
if we already know who our group is.
So that generally helps.
- Do you have the finished audio as well
so you're hearing the actual dialogue that's in the scene?
- It's usually everything has been cut,
except for the background voices.
- Yeah.
- Okay, so now the obvious question is
what do you say in a session like that?
'Cause you're hearing the dialogue, right?
The finished product dialogue,
what do you say to not get in the way of that?
- Well, one of the keys in like
what makes a good loop group actor,
is that you want whatever you're saying
to be obviously on topic to the scene
and in the right tone. - Yeah.
- [Anita] Yeah.
- If we're shooting a period piece,
then it obviously has to be
the right period.
- Yeah like if you're
- [Anita] if you're doing a scene from 1920s Boston,
you wanna know, you wanna know
what 1920s Boston dockworkers sound like.
So the accents have to be similar.
Sometimes there's no accent at all, but
and the conversation topics have to be relevant.
So if you're at a Chinese restaurant,
you don't want to be talking about French food.
- And the key to it is to make sure
that you're staying on topic without being distracting.
So obviously you don't wanna be screaming,
"Oh my God, that man is shot" in the background.
It has to be kind of like topics that,
or sentences that wouldn't pop out from the audio track.
- So have you ever done a show,
and then you watched it back in a theater, whatever,
or television and like listened for your own voice?
- [Wolfie] Oh yeah.
- [Anita] Oh yeah.
- All the time, yeah.
- Just get distracted.
- Like you'll see a person walk by
and like oh that's me.
- Yeah, I forget like who, like certain characters
that I voiced or that somebody else has voiced
and it's kind of fun to watch back and
try to identify, try and spot yourself.
- So do you do much like lip reading
and try to match?
- Yeah, you do watch lip reading
so we're trying to figure out what they're saying
as accurately as possible,
especially if you can really see their mouth moving.
Sometimes we do cover dialogue that's not,
like you don't see their mouth.
They're turned around but you
can tell they could be talking.
So that's when you can be more liberal
with what you're improvising.
But when you see their mouth moving,
you do want to try to get as accurate as possible.
- We'll also handle efforts,
which are, if you hear somebody breathing, for example.
There obviously isn't a microphone
and they're up in their nostrils, so
we'll come up to the mic and do
(breathes in)
whatever, I will add - right, even silent
- [Anita] Breaths like that.
- Yeah, silent breaths if somebody's
tip-toeing in a horror film, for example.
We'll also do, like, monster voices or zombie voices.
We don't do the Walking Dead,
but on the Walking Dead, they obviously have zombies
when they come to life are growling, or whatever it is,
that's also something that we handle on set.
- So, now, do props ever enter your world?
Or is that, that's a complete,
that's foley, it's something different?
- Yeah, we're a separate department than Foley.
I've actually come across a foley artist
in the same time as the looping session.
We're usually spaced apart.
- But I would love to see that.
- Do you guys have a funny story?
Like something that happened on set
or a session that you can tell?
- We do a lot of, happening more and more
that we have to do orgasms.
- I opted out of that one.
I did not go to that session, he did.
He can tell
you this story. - Yeah, it was
- [Wolfie] We did a large orgy scene
and had to do many, many layers of orgasms
and yeah it as about - I was like, nope.
- [Wolfie] Five minutes and then
- So that's what we call efforts.
That's the effort, okay.
- And yeah, by the end of it,
everyone was pretty lightheaded
and just kinda like woozy from doing it
'cause it's exhausting.
- Yeah, I had a
Friend who went to it and - Exhausting with your breath
- [Anita] She was saying that it was,
she was beat for the whole day
- Oh yeah, it's exhausting.
- [John] Really. - [Anita] 'Cause it's
- [Anita] Exhausting, 'cause it's vocally exhausting
I'm assuming - [John] Okay.
- [Anita] To do it.
- Yeah, you start to get lightheaded and actually
- 'Cause a lot of airiness in the voice?
- Yeah, yeah.
- Yeah.
- Orgasms are monsters, or
- [John] Death scenes.
- Death, yeah, a lot of
I could sync a fight scene or a death scene.
- Yeah.
- We're doing the uh.
Whatever it is.
Or the punches. - Yeah.
- [John] What are you doing for fights?
I mean, just a lot of grunts?
Is that what you're
- A lotta, you wanna usually match the
so we'll watch playback of the actor
doing the fight scene and we'll just
kind of trail them slightly
so if they're doing
(grunts)
we'll just copy them and do the
(grunts)
and just add vocals too.
We'll copy their movements and just whatever comes out.
It's usually gonna be right.
- Well that's a subtlety about that.
You could, sure you could shoot a film and
show a film without that, but it doesn't have the
it's a subtle, it's a touch to it.
- If it wasn't there, you would notice.
That's the thing about loop ADR is that
when it's not there,
- You notice it.
- You feel like something's like off
in the back of your head
but you don't know what it is.
It's usually there isn't looping.
And from the indie world, it feels cheap.
Because it doesn't have that life to it.
- Whole life, yeah.
- Yeah, it definitely adds a lot to the production.
- Sure.
- Yeah, even like dancing, like
we're done shows, we're like,
there's a lot of dancing involved to like copy
- Prom scenes.
- The ballerinas move, or the whatever,
the hip hop dancers' moves
and just add the
(grunts)
whatever it is.
- Really? Okay.
That's not even something I would even
think about adding to like a dance sequence.
- [Wolfie] Yeah.
_ That's fascinating.
- Yeah, it's very, I mean,
when you listen back - It's not something
it's played back, - you think of
it's turned down so low, but you would
notice if it wasn't there.
- Yeah.
- Part of what I love about looping is that
as like a human being going about the world,
we're never bored because we're
always eavesdropping on conversations.
Like if you're at an airport for example,
we start listening to the PA announcements
and just like jotting down whatever they're saying
because that might become useful later.
Or if you're at a diner on the subway or whatever it is
- You've had to do like 911 jargon or like
- Yeah.
- Police station, that's stuff that you
hear sometimes, or, you know
- It's just stuff that like you
start to get interested in every industry
because you just wanna know what kinda language they use
and like what life is like because then
you might have to replicate that in the future.
- So what kind of skills you think
would make a good actor for a loop group?
- You have to be great at improv.
That's probably one of the bigger ones.
- And you have to be really interested in doing research.
'Cause a lot of people think that it is, you know,
easy, that you just bought a sound stage
and say banana, banana, banana
and just like make up conversation.
- No, yeah.
- But all the tracks are being listened to,
so all the dialogue has to be accurate as Anita said
for the time period, for whatever
the vocation is of the workers, or whatever it is.
- Yeah.
- Everything has to fit
so you do have to do a lot of research.
- Yeah, like, for example, I went to
I mean I had to do a looping job
for a movie that took place at Google.
And the entire, and all the scenes in the background
had a lot of technical jargon
that nobody would know normally
so I had to go and do tons of research
on what would be talked about in a place like Google.
There was even a scene where there was a quittage tournament
and I needed to know terminology for quittage.
And that's not common knowledge.
Well, I happen to be a Harry Potter fan,
so a little bit for me,
but if it wasn't me, then it would be
something that somebody needed to take time to research.
So then how do you do the research for this?
I mean are you just reading or what else?
- We, as coordinators, will spot
the film or TV show beforehand,
and then create a document of basically homework
to give to all of our actors.
- And we'll do a lot of it
but it still means you have to read through it and know it.
- And do your own research.
- So in a recording session,
besides yourself and the actors,
who else is involved with the recording session?
- The sound supervisor, the engineer,
It really - Sometimes a producer.
- [Wolfie] Sometimes a
director. - Kinda depends
- [Anita] On who they wanna bring in,
but yeah, sometimes it can be the directors,
the producers, sometimes the writers will come in,
it's just kind of
what the team - It's whatever the level
- [Wolfie] Of production is.
If it's like a network TV show
verses a low budget indie film.
Kind of just who is available,
what kinda standard procedure is.
- So you brought up, you have network television
verses like indie, what's your client range like?
What kinda people do you deal with generally?
- Well, looping's involved in pretty much
every genre of TV and film and even some video games
except for - So we've done like
- [Wolfie] Sitcoms.
That's the only thing where,
I mean, on occasion, if sitcom is being filmed
in like a grocery store and
they're being more like single cam,
but a multi cam is like pretty much
the only genre that doesn't use looping.
- So we've done independent films,
and we've also worked with production companies and networks
we've worked with Hulu, NBC, Netflix, Hallmark,
so we've worked with a few,
and then we've worked with a ton of independent films
and independent production companies too.
- So how did you guys get involved with loop group?
- I think it was after I had another actor friend
refer me to a looping job
just because they needed a specific voice.
They needed an accent that I could do,
and so I went on set to do that
and I got into it and I did it this one time for a feature
and after that I loved it.
I mean it was basically like doing improv
on set but without having to dress up
and you could wear your pajamas to work.
So it was kind of nice and after I told him about it,
then he was super interested
'cause he's a great voiceover artist as well
and it was just kind of like
let's figure out how to do this ourselves.
- So how do you make that leap from like a performer
to coordinator for a loop group?
- Yeah, well, we still get to perform too,
that's kind of the fun part.
And since we're actors ourselves,
we kind of know the business and know who to contact
but it was just kind of figuring out.
- Like the tune, like let's take the next step, right?
- Yeah, how to take the next step and do it ourselves.
We're both kind of like hands-on and we like to
kind of produce in general,
so this is kind of like the producer version of
what being a looper is.
- So a question about your training.
So what, I know you talked about training.
What kind of training did you guys get?
- Well, for looping, it's a different skill set.
So you kind of, you do have to be
trained before you go on set
because we use an entirely different set of jargon.
There's formations involved
and kind of just knowing set etiquette
and how to do your research.
- And specific lingo that you might not be used to
so you wanna know - give me an example, like
- [John] I hear walla.
That's a term we talked about.
What is walla?
- So like a walla bed would be
if you're watching a party scene
and everybody is, like a high school party scene,
and everybody is chatting in the background,
talking over each other.
That would be a walla bed.
Basically just people talking
over each other - Talking all at once
like this and you keep going - and you being
you keep going oh my God, - at a party
- [Wolfie] yeah, that was so fun
- So you actually started training
for doing looping specifically
where do you get that training?
- We actually teach a workshop.
But there are workshops in town, in LA at least
and that's usually the best way to get started.
- So what's the process?
I mean we go to a training session, go to the workshops,
then what's the next step after that?
- Contacting different looping coordinators
and seeing if they can sit in on a session.
We've had a lot of people do that
where you can just come in
if you have friends that are producers,
if you have friends that are looping themselves,
or hiring someone to loop,
just ask your friend if you can go in
to watch how a session's run,
because you wanna know how it goes
before you try it and say that you're experienced.
- Also, a lot of actors say that they're experienced at ADR,
but what we do is not just ADR.
Group ADR handles ADR, but ADR is not group ADR
in of itself.
So the best way is to get involved and just kind of
visit sets and see what the process is
and then if you know a coordinator, reach out to them.
- The business is not easy.
You know, it is one where you are
on top of the world for a second,
then you can't get a job for a long time.
Do you have any words of encouragement?
How do you get through those times?
- That's part of the reason that we started
our own company - Yeah, I think it's
- [Anita] being able to pivot.
Because I think that's like one of the things
that I learned about being an actor
is you know, I'm still an actress,
and I work like pretty regularly,
but being able to pivot and figuring out
things that you're good at too
like figuring out that we were good at voiceover and looping
and we write as well, and we've done kind of a majority
of different, we've tried a lot of different things
and that's because we're able to realize
you don't have to stick with just one thing
to do what you wanna do.
You can do - There's so many aspects
- [Wolfie] To the industry.
It's kind of nice to be able to go in one direction
then when that kind of dies out,
keep it burning but then go in another direction
if another opportunity comes up.
- It also fuels your creativity, I think
to not be constantly - [Wolfie] It does.
- [John] Like, you know, to keep hitting a wall
okay, let's go this direction for a little bit.
You know, then - [Wolfie] Exactly, yeah.
- [John] Maybe you'll figure out a way
to get around that all.
- Yeah, and it's nice to have a partner, too, to work with,
because then if, you know, he's busy on a project,
and I can't do something,
we have the ability to help each other in that respect too
and I think finding someone that you are
that you can relate to and then
kind of has a similar version
of what they want is definitely helpful.
- Now I'm just throwing this out there
'cause I mean, I know that you have a lot of actor friends,
and you know, actors, I'm not talking down to you,
but I don't think people realize when they go audition
like if you get a no, that's not
because they didn't like you
it's just you weren't right,
or somebody else was better a fit
for the part than you were.
And I think what actors can kind of benefit,
especially nowadays with all the technology
everything that's available
to take on more of a producer role.
- [Anita] Yeah.
- You know?
- Definitely.
I mean I think we both have been like that
since starting acting, we both just
started to do a lot of things on our own
and being our own filmmaker
as in our own writers and producers and doing
- Yeah, 'cause if you are just
auditioning for other people's projects,
you kind of leave all of the chance up to somebody else.
- Yeah, and all your eggs are in one basket.
You're just focusing on one thing
and it's gonna make you more stressed,
and probably you're gonna do worse at your auditions
because you're focused only on that.
So I think that's what's nice about
figuring out other things you're good at in the industry
because then you can kind of spread yourself a little bit
and not be so worried about one thing.
- I would like to thank Anita Kalathara and Wolfie Trausch
for a fantastic interview.
If you want to learn more about them,
check out LoopGroupWest.com
To see their resume and their upcoming workshops.
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Well, until next time, I'm John Hess.
Thanks for watching, and I'll see you at filmmakeriq.com.