I’m a motion picture dialogue editor. I spend weeks, even months, locked in a small space with the actors that make up a film. I make them more articulate, sexier, and generally more appealing. I develop intimate relationships with them: At times I learn far more about them than I’d like to know. I study their regional accents and their breathing peculiarities. I analyze the cadence of their speech. I learn their moral, ethical, and personal makeup. In short, I’ve got them figured out.

John Purcell

The catch: This intimacy is not with the actors, but rather with the characters they play. After creating this closeness with the character, it’s alarming and usually disappointing to meet “the real thing.” The tall, bearded, swaggering cowboy outfitted with chaps and a thick Texas accent has transformed in to a short, bald, clean-shaven New England intellectual in a Hawaiian shirt. The barmaid with the exotic brogue—on whom I’ve secretly developed a crush—just isn’t the same when she drags herself into the ADR session sporting Middle American twang. Her corset has turned into a gym suit her and golden locks reduced to ahalf-shaved head.

I’m convinced that actors know me as well I know them. So when I first see them at the ADR recording session or at the premiere, I naturally want to rush up and embrace them like the most intimate of friends, the most comfortable of relations. But somehow I can’t. I must contain myself. If I let down my guard and give into that big bear hug, I’m met with (at best), “Do I know you?” Then I must humbly explain my job and my special relationship with them (which they never understand), beg pardon for my impertinence (which threw them for a loop), and apologize that I must take my leave, and then sulk away from the film’s aristocracy—to return to my plebian job. They often welcome my departure, so that they can spend time with other royals: the sound designer, actors, and director. I then resign myself to cleaning the words, removing he hungry belly sounds, calming the breaths, and controlling the footsteps of the my wrecked fantasies. My new friends—the characters I’d spent so much time with—have been kidnapped by their actors Armed with this new sobriety, I can now go about my business. I continue to look through their dailies for better takes in order to present characters and actors alike in a good light. I calm their nerves with noise reduction and EQ. I build bridges between quarreling regions using room tone and crossfades so that they can best comport themselves.

Still, I am disappointed that the characters in “real life” aren’t what they had claimed to be on the screen. Of course, there will be a new set of characters in the next film. Maybe they won’t disappoint me.

*John Purcell is one of the top dialogue editors and the author of Dialogue Editing for Motion Pictures