Background Noise

JimStrauss

JimStrauss

Active member
Hello everyone,
I'm in need of a little assistance. I'm directing a short, it takes place in a cafe. Basically the cafe will be filled with all 20 actors, everyone has a little line.
My question is, when the camera pans over to one table and the actors deliver their lines, what do I do about the background noise? or better yet, how do I maintain the background noise throughout the film? Do I add that in Post? How do I go about shooting background noise? I just want the atmosphere to look like a real cafe.
Thank You
Jim Strauss
 
I shot a scene in a restaurant once and what I did was get the shots where they're actually talking. Then I let them improv a conversation for a couple of minutes. I did that with each group of people I was shooting.

When it came to the conversations of the main actors in the scene, I had everyone be silent while shooting their conversation. In post, I dropped down the audio of the other people and overlapped each one to where it became an ambience of people chattering. I just put it underneath the dialogue of the main actors and it made the audio sound like it was a busy restaurant.

Hope that helps.
Ken
 
Needed something similar in my recent short and found this website: http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/

We used one of the restaurant sound files as b.g. in a scene. Did it all in post. Spent a lot of time on sound design with my editor.

Agree with Ken. When you shoot, keep your set quiet except for the speaking parts. Add in chatter, clinking glasses, forks on plates, etc. later.
 
The best thing is for there not to be any background noise. Everyone should be mouthing the scenes silently. You record all your lines clean. Then in post you layer in a consistent bed of background noise.
 
Hello,
Barry, what do you mean by 'Everyone should be mouthing the scenes silently?

Is that for when the camera is positioned at a certain actor, everyone in the background needs to look like they are in a conversation?

Also, would it be a good idea to just turn the camera on, point the boom pole and record all my actors in a conversation for 20mins? Then use that for background chatter?

Thank you
Jim Strauss
 
Yes that's what I meant -- the background actors act like as if they're having a conversation, but don't actually say anything.

And yes you could just record the background chatter after you're done, but using the boom pole might not get you what you'd want, you'd want a wider pickup pattern for a more ambient sound rather than a targeted boom. But just about every sound library out there has restaurant ambient (or, as Blaine accurately termed it, "walla").
 
Thank you again for helping me out.
Besides searching for 'walla' on sound libraries, is there anything else I need to be aware of before or after the shoot? (Regarding background noise)

Cheers,
I love this site,
J. Strauss
 
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