Use of Audio
While most of the dialogue in the film was pretty easy to understand, the overall audio had some issues. In general, the tone that was captured by the Apex 175 shotgun was too "bright", causing the actors to sound a bit too shrill. Additionally, the shotgun was a pretty non-directional, which caused a lot of ambient noise to be recorded along with the dialogue. (To prevent some of these issues in future films, it's not a bad idea to check out our article on recording audio for micro-budget films.) To compensate for a few of these problems when they got too excessive, the filmmaker used ADR.
First off, I really appreciate seeing when filmmakers use ADR in their films, as with very few exceptions, just about every film needs it in some way. However, it is a difficult process, and if it’s not done properly, it can be very distracting. Unfortunately, The Girl had some scenes that were extremely distracting due to problems with the ADR. (I'm going to go into some of the basic issues in the film, but click here to read a more in-depth article on ADR in this issue.)
The biggest problems that the filmmakers had was with their sync, tone, and with their ambient sound, which was largely evident in a redubbed diner scene. The sync evidenced what many refer to as sync-drift. This usually happens in situations where dialogue was recorded on the set, without looping or monitors. The actor's dialogue starts on cue but then gets out of sync due to the fact that most people never say the same line the same way twice. While SAG actors are very familiar with saying things the same way for ADR purposes, most local actors and theater actors have had no reason to learn this trait. The only way around this problem is to take your actor into the studio (rather professional or homemade) and loop them until they can get out each line exactly as they said it.
Now, t one is related to sync in that you have to have your actors match the body language of the scene in the tone of their voice. There were a couple of times where a clearly angry man was speaking with upbeat sounding words. It just doesn't work.
Finally, the ambient sound issue showed up in the way the diner scenes had two completely different sound qualities going at the same time: the "wild" (or "background") noise of the diner and the dialogue of the characters. The diner noise was recorded at the location using the shotgun mic, while the dialogue was obviously recorded in a completely different environment. To make the disparity less noticeable, lower the ambient noise so that it’s more in the background, get a good recording of the room tone of the location, and add that room tone to the ADR’d dialogue, so that it sounds like it came from that environment.
ADR is a valuable tool, and I’m very glad to see that Mr. Jarvis made use of use of it in his debut film. It is a learning process, but with some trial and error, I am sure that future films will show increased improvement in this area.
Use of Budget
For $6,000, I’d say that this film is right on the money. Most of it went to post-production (I’m assuming the twins sequences and ADR), while the rest went for food, equipment, and locations. As far as the “time budget”, I would’ve like to have seen more time go to improving the ADR (although, if you were paying for the studio time, I could see where more time would be a financial issue) and color/light balancing in post. For future films, I would also suggest adding some lighting equipment to the budget.
Lasting Appeal
The film is very good from a writing and performance point of view. There are several technical issues which need to be addressed, but the way I see it, it’s much easier to fix (or learn how to fix) technical issues than it is to fix bad writing or acting. And while the quality of the video and audio need improvement, the film itself is both funny and witty and would be one that I’d watch again and show my friends.
Overall Comment
Many filmmakers struggle with coming up with stories, characters, and dialogue that are funny and flow well; however, Mr. Jarvi has done a nice job of not only creating a good story with smart writing, but developing a distinctive directing style as well. There are some technical aspects that need improvement, specifically better overall lighting and improved audio. As these issues are addressed in future films, I think it's going to be very impressive to see where he goes as a filmmaker.
