Where scratch dialogue helps
- Animatics and storyboards: time boards to real dialogue instead of reading the lines in your head.
- Pre-vis: hear a scene's rhythm before it's shot.
- Temp narration and voiceover for a cut in progress.
- Missing lines: a placeholder for a rewritten line until the actor records it.
- Pitch materials: a voiced proof of concept or a teaser.
How to set it up
- A project per film or episode, a script per scene, created in scene order.
- Convert the screenplay: dialogue as
Name: line, parentheticals and action out. See turning a screenplay into a voiceover script. - Cast scratch voices from short samples: team members, or your own voice in different characters. They don't need to resemble the final cast; they need to be easy to tell apart.
- Generate the scene and drop the numbered files into the timeline.
- Re-generate as the script changes: a rewritten line is one new take.
Keeping the swap to final audio clean
- One file per line means each placeholder occupies exactly one clip in the timeline.
- Mark it as temp. Put scratch dialogue on its own clearly named track, so nobody mistakes it for production audio.
- Keep the line list.
Lines.csvnumbers every line with its speaker and text, which doubles as a list of what still needs recording.
Scratch voices are not stand-ins for your cast
It's tempting to clone the cast's voices so temp lines sound like them. Only do that with each actor's explicit, written consent, and with their union or agent's terms in mind: many performers' agreements now cover AI use of their voices. Otherwise, use neutral scratch voices. And never use a clone of an actor to replace a performance they haven't agreed to give. See AI voices vs voice actors.
Tips from the edit
- Scratch dialogue works best slightly slower than you expect; actors usually take more time than a temp read.
- Use the Calm or Balanced style; you want timing, not a performance to compete with the final one.
- Share the project with the director with Can view, and collect notes in the comments by line number.