Okuzeka
Film & Television vocabulary · Sound and Music

ADR

Meaning in film & television, with examples

/ˌeɪ diː ˈɑː/abbreviationCommon term

In film & television, ADR means: Automated dialogue replacement: re-recording an actor's lines in a studio after the shoot while they watch the scene, to replace bad or changed dialogue.

In Turkish: sonradan seslendirme, post-senkron, dublaj

How it is used

Needed when location sound has noise, wind or traffic, or when a line is rewritten. Actors do an ADR session and try to match their lip movements. British crews also call it post-sync or looping.

Example sentences

  1. The airport scene was too noisy, so both actors have ADR on Thursday.

  2. Good ADR is invisible; bad ADR sounds like it was recorded in a box.

Common collocations

  • ADR session
  • do ADR
  • ADR stage
  • ADR lines
  • ADR mixer
  • dubbingReplacing the original dialogue of a film or series with a recorded translation in another language, performed by voice actors.
  • dialogueThe words that characters speak to each other in a film, series or play.
  • FoleyEveryday sound effects such as footsteps, clothes rustling or a cup on a table, performed and recorded in a studio in sync with the picture.
  • sound designThe creative work of creating, choosing and shaping all the sounds of a film so that they support the story and the atmosphere.
  • boom micA directional microphone fixed to the end of a long pole and held above or below the actors, just outside the frame, to record dialogue.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Sound and Music

Practise with graded reading

Reading at the right level is the fastest way to make new words stick. Pick free English books by level: