FADE IN: The A.D. squawks, “OK, this is the Martini! You need to walk in on a banana.” If it’s your first day on a set, you might not have any idea what the assistant director is talking about. Many of these terms are throwbacks to another era that have survived generations of filmmakers. The lingo can be somewhat daunting if you don’t have a glossary handy. As always, I’m here to help—and special thanks to my friend director-producer-actor Tony Bill for his amazing book, “Movie Speak: How to Talk Like You Belong on a Film Set,” which not only has an informative glossary but gives etymologies.
10-1The A.D. usually uses this term instead of saying the cast or crew member is in the “honeywagon,” a very sexy term for “bathroom.”
ADR-LoopingAutomated dialogue replacement, also called looping. During the editing process the actor is called to a sound studio where her scene is played back so she can rerecord her lines, often because of outside sound. Sometimes whole roles are looped; Andie MacDowell’s entire performance in “Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes” was looped by Glenn Close.
Back to oneIf you think of your beginning
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