There are a few terms you’ll need to know when going into a looping session. Some of these are better described in a live class situation, but I’ll do my best to explain on paper in the next few blogs. In this blog we’ll tackle Specific vs. group (or walla walla) cues
When you loop, sometimes everyone will be up and around the microphone at the same time (usually in a horse shoe or group formation), or there may be 1-2 individuals doing a “specific” cue. A specific cue would be where there is/are a specific person/people IN the scene that you are adding dialogue for. For example, there may be a couple walking by behind the principal character(s) that you can see having a conversation. Sometimes you will even be directed to cross by the mic in the direction the couple is walking for effect (make sure you wear lose clothing and no noisy jewelry and if you are wearing a hat to turn it backwards) Maybe there is a person talking on a cell phone. The closer these people are to the principal characters, the more likely you would want to HEAR these people in the final product. These specific cues are usually done separate and you would do that same scene (cue) again to have the entire group of actors fill in the sounds of the people you don’t specifically see (walla walla)
Some loop leaders I know will pre-assign the cues to the actors (there could be over 100 cues to get through in a day so it may be quicker to just say “Paula you’re up” than to explain the cue and get a “volunteer”), other times it is your responsibility to just “jump up” to the mic when you want to take a stab at a cue. The more you get up, the better you’ll do in my experience. If it is an “effort” you are doing (swallowing, getting punched, falling down, sighing, etc), you will most likely always do that same character’s efforts throughout the show. The same goes for voicing a specific character. If that receptionist you just voiced shows up two scenes later…you’ll voice them again! Food for thought…if it’s TV series and you voice a character in the background you may get a recurring looping gig out of it…my husband was a crazy Arab neighbor heard through the wall in many episodes of a popular show.
I’ll tackle some group terms you may hear in the next blog.