Clean Dialog Track from Actors Noises (object handling etc) ?

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gzabetas

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I am using the Sennheiser MKH 416 boom mic. Is the boom technique wrong? in that i am picking up the actors movements and object handling overlapping with dialog.
How does one get that noise free dialog track in scenes where the actors are walking and handling objects? Maybe re-recording wild on the same spot without the movements, or a LAV instead of the boom. Just looking for anyone's experience with this.
thanks
 
It depends what they're wearing and or handling. Someone wearing a polyester jogging suit and handling some christmas bells, you'll certainly hear them :tongue:.
 
If you absolutely can't get clean dialogue due to clothing noises or necessary handling of objects, then re-recording at the same location is an option. Lavs are usually not a particularly good alternative and wouldn't solve the problem entirely anyway -- not to mention introducing a whole set of new ones.

But you can do things like pad objects to eliminate their sounds and add the sound in later.
 
thanks for the tips.
its odd, watching Law & Order episodes there seems to be mayhem going on in the backgrounds, D'Onofrio leafing thru pages while talking over it, a guy kicking a punchbag next to him. (are they miming this stuff?)
and you can tell the mix is superb (meaning only dialog was captured).

meanwhile i have a $1,000 shotgun over an actors mouth while its also picking up a truck outside.....
 
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There are a number of "answers" depending on what your doing. One thing that really hurts low budget filmmakers is the idea that they want to capture all the sound when shooting. In a big budget narrative film everything that can be is made silent. The bottoms of cups are padded, shoes are padded etc. You want to ONLY be recording dialog. The catch is that if you do that really well you need to do a real sound post to add all that stuff back in.

Now some of that stuff always ends up in the takes no mater how careful you are. Getting rid of that is the dialog editors job. You cut out all the little sounds that got in and stick them on a junk track, just incase you want them back for some reason, and paste in Room Tone where the sound was. Traditionally if you had a sound on a line you would look for alternate takes to pull a snippet of the same word with out the sound and see if you could futz it in. Now days with tools like Rx they may be salvaging the original. That part is definitely happening on the small post scale but I'm not sure if they are letting dialig editors on big films do destructive editing. It used to be a no no but since tracks are free I suspect they are having them clone the bit and clean the clone as an alternative (Alt.) take.

From what you describe I doubt there is much you can do with mic technique. It's more of a costume and art department job. I would talk to the director and suggest they pad down some of the problem props and maybe even make some costume changes. The last depends entirely on the scale of production, if actors are bringing their own clothes then it's definitely on the table. If there is a costume designer then probably not and if it's a bigger production I would stay clear. You could mention that your getting a lot of rustle off the costumes but tread softly.

And if you are the boom op and you are working for a mixer talk to him/her about it DO NOT bypass them or your but is in a sling. People get very protective of the picking order, for very good reasons, so whoever is the head sound person is the one that needs to bring sound issues up the chain.

You didn't say what level of production this was so...
 
There's a scene in the Marx Brothers film, The Cocoanuts, in which Groucho and Chico have a humorous dialogue over a set of blueprints. The blueprints themselves were dipped fully in water to remove the sound of paper crinkling during the scene.
 
I have to second what Noiz2 said. If you can't re-shoot to get clean dialogue, then get a good dialogue editor, and give them the select takes and all the alt takes. A really good dialogue editor can do amazing things by just editing. I know a great dialogue editor who has done a bunch of Jet Li movies, and whenever she's done with her work, people think Jet Li has better english, when in fact she's cut in consonants and other things to make his dialogue more understandable.

But to re-iterate what Noiz said, put padding on the bottom of shoes, cups, anything that makes noise that is made of a hard substance. Turn off air conditioners, refrigerators, or anything with a motor. The padding we are referring to is often times called "foot foam", and you should be able to get it at any production sound dealer. I used to literally sell it by the yards back in the day. It's a thin, high dense foam that is sticky on one side that goes on the bottom of shoes, cups, mugs, or whatever you want.
 
gzabetas said:
haha even back then.....
i wonder if this is what noiz2 was referring to when he mentioned Rx. looks promising...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07n-qZyH8WM
Click to expand...

That must be an old post. Rx is much more than promising. And that is an old video Rx2 is out now and is a bit better at removing and replacing. I have used it a lot in Doc work to get rid of odd sounds. The new version is much more flexible in selecting what you want to get rid of.
 
thanks for all the info here.
PS was able to see some behind the scenes youtube videos of cop dramas and they always had 2 booms or so going....
the dialog that they were getting --premix --- sounded almost perfect. wonder if they are compressing at that recording stage.....
 
Probably not. I don't know of any production mixer that uses a compressor on production. That is a BIG no-no. Speaking as someone who has done production and post, the most signal processing I want the production mixer to do is maybe some low end roll off. Other than than, leave it to the dialogue editors and re-recording mixers to do any signal processing.
 
a ok, i read the same thing in another article.
its possible they are possibly treating/mixing/sweetening even the making ofs-behind the scenes . or the microphones are superb.

check this video out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzdSUnwJ8Jw

the voices sound sexy as hell. those sizzling S's, the rich bass.
are they EQ'ing maybe to boost?
 
"Behind the Scenes" videos are almost all "produced". On low budget films you might get something raw but anything with a budget is going to polish it to some extent. So it wasn't, probably, a full dialog edit but someone did some clean up and mixed it.

On the production end I would add limiting, though if your levels are good that really isn't kicking in so...

One doesn't want to use compression in production because that will also raise the noise floor and you can't sit there and tweak it in the way that you can in post. That is sort of the reason for not doing anything destructive in production, rolling off the lows being the exception. You don't have the control we will have in post and you would be doing in with out context where in post they can adjust it in relation to everything else in the mix.
 
yeah seems like they are 'produced', so to say.
i actually took the 416 outside and took all possible angles of my mouth talking to get the sweetest spot.
when i brought it in post, only after i boosted the 4K range a bit did it start to sound similar to that video, but that one still surpassing any of my efforts.
one i am watching now is this one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeZFg3I7ww8
if their voices were guitars it almost sounds like a slight chorus effect on them (from my music days).....of course i know its not true, its just what my head thinks.......
 
Well it sounds like they are using lavs. But this I assume was post sync sound since the camera is obviously not the one shooting the scene. I don't really hear the phasing, but I'm listening on a laptop, but it could be that the BtS folks just took all the tracks and mixed them. That would certainly fit with some of my experience with BtS content. If so then the boom is going to phase a bit with the lav and lav bleed is going to phase a bit also.

They don't have a lot of time or budget usually for BtS content so its usually pretty, as the brits say, rough and ready.
 
a ok, so maybe there is a hidden lav and the difference between that and the boom (when added together) is adding that "air in between' or presence. not out of phase per se. very good observation. never thought of that.
 
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