Audio friendly clothing material?

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xhridhar

Active member
Going to meet a costume person tomorrow to discuss the costumes for my upcoming narrative movie. I would like her to consider only audio "friendly" clothing. So what material should I advice?

I suppose anything made out of silk is a big no no for close up scenes? Is cotton also not good?

Please advice..

Thanks
 
It's great that you're getting a chance to have a smidge of input *before* the shoot !

Soft cotton is your friend. Synthetics and silk can sound harsh and "raspy" as the talent moves. That's first choice, I would say.

Stephen H
http://sound.facesproject.org/

xhridhar said:
Going to meet a costume person tomorrow to discuss the costumes for my upcoming narrative movie. I would like her to consider only audio "friendly" clothing. So what material should I advice?

I suppose anything made out of silk is a big no no for close up scenes? Is cotton also not good?

Please advice..

Thanks
Click to expand...
 
Try to have not to much layers. Sometimes what you hear is not the clothes rubbing the mice, but 2 clothes rubbing eachoter...

Also the mic placement is important, about 8 inch under the chin. But when it sounds better at "another" place around 5 - 8 inch under the chin, it's good also
 
Many male actors wear cotton T-shirts as an undergarment. This is not necessary a bad thing but I will often use a bit of tupee(sp) tape to keep the two pieces of fabric (under and outer shirt) together in the vicinity of the lav. Cotton is definitely the preferred fabric. Also, if the garment is new, have it laundered and pressed without starch. Laundering washes out the "sizing" with the stuff they put on new fabric to make it look freshly pressed when purchased.
 
I have been given now the first 2 costume designs for the Movie. As it is a sci-fi fantasy, there are some warrior costumes for the leads. My costume person after listening to the advice given by all you kind people, has designed the costumes mainly with soft cotton but she was wondering if she can use leather or suede?

She also has put in some metal bands for the warrior ( worn very tight to the arm) . I suppose that is not going to create unwanted noise?

Can leather or suede be used as long as they are very tight to the skin?

Thanks once again for your advice
 
Also, try to launder any NEW clothing before the shoot. Most new clothing is treated with "sizing" to hold a crease and make the garment look "just pressed". This stuff is like starch and causes lots of headaches with regards to clothing noise. This also brings up "no starch" in preparing wardrobe for the shoot.
 
Leather, especially new leather, creaks even if worn tightly. Suede tends to be better, but doesn't look quite the same.
 
The other thing that should be mentioned is that the choices are most important for the areas that the mic is going to pick up. So if you were using a lav on the actor things like corduroy pants are not such an issue. Of course if your booming a lot more of the body comes into play. And BTW this is also a set issue. If you have them sitting on squeaky leather chairs it sort of undoes the careful costume choice.

There are also fake leathers that might be better than the real thing sound wise? But you also need to think about the look. As long as you stay away from really bad choices (starched taffeta ruffles around the collar for instance) and pay attention during shooting (and maybe make some alterations) the rest should be OK and the odd noise here and there is often removable in post. What you need to avoid is the constant noise issue.

This assumes you are doing some audio post and not just adding some sounds to the production track.
This is also NOT a do whatever and fix it in post suggestion. But post can fix some things, it just takes skill and time. So if you have a few issues then you probably can fix them. If you have a lot of noise issues then you probably can't fix them. The other thing is that if it's not on top of dialog you can probably remove it if you need to. If you have a character that doesn't move when they or others talk you could probably dress them in bells and not have a problem.
 
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