Don’t Always Neglect Film Credits; You Might Learn Something

“Do you fear death? Do you fear that dark abyss? All your deeds laid bare, all your sins punished? I can offer you an escape.”

“You and I are alike and there will come a moment when you have a chance to show it. To do the right thing.”

“I love those moments. I like to wave at them as they pass by.”

Over Spring Break, I re-watched (for the probably the 200th time) one of my absolute favorite movies, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. In the credits, I noticed one of the roles listed for the movie was “Dialogue Editor.” Of course, being in a technical editing class, I was immediately interested. My first reaction to seeing that title was “I wonder if dialogue editors for movies share similar responsibilities as technical editors?” and “What do dialogue editors do differently than other editors?”.  I did an online search and found two helpful resources that give brief, but informative overviews of the tasks dialogue editors perform.

According to Berklee University’s website, “the core job is to ensure that dialogue audio is clean, matches the visual action, and fits with the world of the production.” In an interview for Waves.com, John Purcell states, “A dialogue editor is responsible for every sound that was recorded during the shoot. He takes the more or less finished film from the picture editor, makes sense of the edited sounds, organizes them, and finds out what works and what doesn't.”

In short, dialogue editors heavily focus on the audio and sound of a production. They work with anything from the quality of the dialogue including clarity, volume, articulation (Berklee), removing filmmaking noises like camera adjustments and crew movements (Purcell), and manipulating the voices of the actors to create the desired auditory effects, such as making it sound like the voice is coming from a phone call or radio (Berklee). Since this is new information for me, and I don’t want to paraphrase anything incorrectly, I’ll link the two sites down below if anyone needs further understandings. Both sources are very straightforward.

Dialogue editors and technical editors both share the same goal: to produce a work that is complete, organized, well-developed, interesting, and meaningful (among other characteristics of course). Both must have proficiency in their designated skills and apply their techniques to make the final product as perfect as possible. Both need to be attentive to details and find ways to improve upon any perceived issues. Editing within film and technical fields requires cooperation among different individuals. Like technical editors, dialogue editors may be employed by a particular organization or company, or they can work as freelance editors. Both face constraints in each field. Technology and the advances in technological products both impact the way these two types of editors edit.

Since reading a little about dialogue editors, I want to return to the above quotes. I think they are some of the most iconic lines from this Pirates movie. The dialogue editors probably needed to make careful decisions regarding sound, volume, the actors’ vocal tones, and clarity of speech. A successful deliverance of these lines would result in the audience reacting in the expected way (anxiousness at the lines about death, laughter at the wittiness). I will provide links to YouTube videos of the two scenes these quotes come from incase anyone wants to hear the actual film audio.

Berklee: https://www.berklee.edu/careers/roles/dialogue-editor
Purcell: https://www.waves.com/john-purcell-dialogue-editing-for-motion-picture

Davy Jones Scene (first quote):




Elizabeth Swann and Captain Jack Sparrow (second quote):