Crickets and Birds... they're going to be the end of me.

K

kylevant

Well-known member
Just before I begin, a little disclaimer: I'm not a sound guy.

I know that on the bigger budget productions (read: Hollywood) they ADR the whole dialogue track so this isn't really a problem, but when it comes to recording audio on-location what do you folks do when the crickets and birds start making a racket? Do lapel mics help to reduce this kind of background noise?

I usually perform a bit of noise reduction on my audio but you can only go so far with that until you notice it affecting the actual dialogue. It usually works to a certain degree, as long as I layer the dialogue on top of some ambiance recorded at the location. But, you know, it's always best to get the cleanest dialogue track so that you can do a proper mix.
 
kylevant said:
I know that on the bigger budget productions (read: Hollywood) they ADR the whole dialogue track so this isn't really a problem...
Click to expand...

Wrong. This is a myth that somehow keeps getting perpetuated, even around here. ADR is a last resort, even with big-budget films. It's used when the production dialog is simply unusable, which happens when the footage was taken in an unfriendly environment (such as using a wind machine or next to an uncontrollable Interstate or...) or when the shooting conditions simply prohibited either wireless or a boom from getting in.

kylevant said:
...but when it comes to recording audio on-location what do you folks do when the crickets and birds start making a racket? Do lapel mics help to reduce this kind of background noise?

I usually perform a bit of noise reduction on my audio but you can only go so far with that until you notice it affecting the actual dialogue. It usually works to a certain degree, as long as I layer the dialogue on top of some ambiance recorded at the location. But, you know, it's always best to get the cleanest dialogue track so that you can do a proper mix.
Click to expand...

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. This is where getting proper "room tone" will help. By recording a minute or so of the bugs, using the same mics as used for the dialog, you can layer that in under the places where the bugs were quiet. Or you can try to shoot in the intermittent lulls of the bugs' chirping, but that's asking for trouble (and a much longer shoot).
 
Alex H. said:
Wrong. This is a myth that somehow keeps getting perpetuated, even around here. ADR is a last resort, even with big-budget films. It's used when the production dialog is simply unusable, which happens when the footage was taken in an unfriendly environment (such as using a wind machine or next to an uncontrollable Interstate or...) or when the shooting conditions simply prohibited either wireless or a boom from getting in.
Click to expand...

Interesting to hear that. Many "behind the scenes" documentaries perpetrate that they do indeed do the whole film (such as King Kong). Makes sense though, since that would be a huge job.

Alex H. said:
Or you can try to shoot in the intermittent lulls of the bugs' chirping, but that's asking for trouble (and a much longer shoot).
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's not going to happen here. If anything, waiting longer tends to make the birds even angrier (maybe we're interrupting their sleep?) and the crickets are just constant (which makes it easier to perform noise reduction in any case).
 
I encountered a similar problem on a recent shoot (crickets). Room tone is all good and well, until even the sounds in your room tone become distracting. I shot in a bar that was infested with crickets. Poeple might expect crickets to be chirping away in a pasture, but not in a bar. The things were everywhere -- under the floor, behind the counters. In the end, had to ADR. But back to poster's original question -- if you did want to live with it, or try to minimize it as much as possible, what would the best mics be? I'm guessing a good hyper would be the first choice?
 
kylevant said:
Yeah, that's not going to happen here. If anything, waiting longer tends to make the birds even angrier (maybe we're interrupting their sleep?) and the crickets are just constant (which makes it easier to perform noise reduction in any case).
Click to expand...

Noise reduction on something like this is likely to do more harm than good.

Step 1 is making sure to minimize the problem into the background. Lavs may work better than a boom, but it depends on how the boomed mic is aimed (and what the response pattern is) and where the bugs are in relation to the talent. A little trial and error will tell you what works best. Play around with it for a half-hour or so before the shoot and figure out what works.

Step 2 is getting tone to edit in underneath.

The other alternative is to find another (quieter) location.
 
jthabel said:
Poeple might expect crickets to be chirping away in a pasture, but not in a bar. The things were everywhere -- under the floor, behind the counters.
Click to expand...

I know the feeling. I arrived at a bathroom location once and the place was also infested with crickets, along with a birds nest in the roof. We managed to scare the birds off, but the crickets continued to destroy our sound. Unfortunately we never had the chance to scout out the location beforehand (I had to work from memory) and we couldn't re-shoot...

Alex H. said:
Noise reduction on something like this is likely to do more harm than good.

Step 1 is making sure to minimize the problem into the background. Lavs may work better than a boom, but it depends on how the boomed mic is aimed (and what the response pattern is) and where the bugs are in relation to the talent. A little trial and error will tell you what works best. Play around with it for a half-hour or so before the shoot and figure out what works.

Step 2 is getting tone to edit in underneath.

The other alternative is to find another (quieter) location.
Click to expand...

I really wish I had a dedicated sound guy, but I'll try to take your advice into consideration at this weekends shoot where there's sure to be a decent amount of crickets. And no, there are crickets everywhere over here. I've even come across crickets on-top of 8 story concrete parking garages. At the end of the day, if you're shooting outside over here; there will be crickets. Birds are a little easier to deal with as they usually disappear at night, but there are the occasional ones that seem to suffer from insomnia.
 
You could try making a loud explosion noise to scare the birds away for long enough to do a take? Might need to budget for M80 firecrackers or shotgun shells? :huh:
 
Here in Sydney we haven't had crickets for some years, wondered where they went.

To scare the birds off, try having someone running around with a childs windmill on a tall stick with silver paper strips attached,
and a ready excuse for the guys in white coats.

For Sydney Airport authorities and Sydney Water, we played loud recordings of scared birds on the airfield and at dam sites ..
it worked but that could upset your actors.

Cheers.
 
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Originally Posted by kylevant
I know that on the bigger budget productions (read: Hollywood) they ADR the whole dialogue track so this isn't really a problem...



Alex H. said:
Wrong. This is a myth that somehow keeps getting perpetuated, even around here. ADR is a last resort, even with big-budget films.
Click to expand...

On big budget "Hollywood" films yes, they do do a lot of ADR. When the actor comes in to do the lines that the dialog editing team and the director feel that they absolutely must have, as long as the talent is in the studio they will do any scene that is even remotely a problem. This is a more of a budgetary consideration than anything else - it's less expensive to have them come in for one long session than to have the actor come back over and over, having to pay for lodging, limos, and all the other accompanying expenses.

Most directors much prefer production sound dialog. It is the job of the rerecording mixers to do the Noise Reduction, and these guys and gals can come close to performing miracles when it comes to rescuing production dialog. The ADR is there for when the production dialog is completely unsalvageable. So even though the actors may have done ADR on a large portion of the film a much smaller percentage actually makes it into the final mix.
 
A trick I have used in noisy industrial plants is to record a second track of just room tone during the take with a separate mic off to the side. you want to capture as little of the dialog as possible so point a directional mic away from talent and toward the worst noise. Bring this into the mix and invert the phase of that track. It will cancel out much of the noise but leave your dialog untouched. You can adjust the level of the out of phase track in the mix to optimize the effect. You may have to shift the noise track a frame or so either way to line it up for best results. Won't completely remove the noise but it will reduce it significantly.
 
Richard Crowley said:
You could try making a loud explosion noise to scare the birds away for long enough to do a take? Might need to budget for M80 firecrackers or shotgun shells? :huh:
Click to expand...

It's primitive, but might just work. An unfortunate side-effect might be it causing the birds to swarm and not leave - making more noise. Also, it'll probably attract attention from security. But hell, I'll probably just give it a try.

Razz16mm said:
A trick I have used in noisy industrial plants is to record a second track of just room tone during the take with a separate mic off to the side. you want to capture as little of the dialog as possible so point a directional mic away from talent and toward the worst noise. Bring this into the mix and invert the phase of that track. It will cancel out much of the noise but leave your dialog untouched. You can adjust the level of the out of phase track in the mix to optimize the effect. You may have to shift the noise track a frame or so either way to line it up for best results. Won't completely remove the noise but it will reduce it significantly.
Click to expand...

Technically, this sounds like it should work. Unfortunately my audio equipment is a little low budget, so I don't have a second mic. But I'll keep this in mind for the future.
 
I was able to use iZotope RX to not totally remove, but significantly reduce crickets in the background of a scene. I could see the cricket sound in the RX display and just selected it, got a noise print, then applied gentle reduction in a couple passes. It made the scene tolerable at least.
 
Kyle,

You don't have a bird or cricket problem, you have a location problem. :)

I am reminded of the guy who wanted to hire me for an indy near Chantilly, VA. I asked the DP if he had accounted for the planes taking off and landing at Dulles Airport. He asked me if I'd drive to Chantilly to see if my mics would hear the planes. I assured him that wasn't necessary; they would hear the planes.

Get enough ambi with the mics on the set in the positions they are also used in to get dialog to bridge the gaps.

Regards,

Ty Ford
 
I'm dealing with this on a daily basis on a feature we're shooting. Most of my outdoor scenes are being shot either outside a home or in a cemetery. Around the home in the evening is constant cricket noise. Nothing wrong with crickets in the evening so I'm just collecting ambient sound for each scene for layering later. Main thing is to have the sound available so if you cut from a quieter scene to a noisier one, you can layer the sound underneath to make it more constant. The bird and cricket sounds actually add a lot to the production in the end, you just have to control them to the extent you can.

Today we dealt not only with sounds like birds and crickets, but also with trains, sirens , lawn mowers and weedeaters. We got rid of the lawn equipment by nicely asking the neighbor to take a break. We had to wait out the sirens and train horns, but only a few minutes.

Despite all the extra sounds, I'd much rather shoot outside. I've got a good shotgun mic that rejects the extra sounds as much as possible. Inside I use a hyper but still have to deal with room reverb at 2 feet , outside I get good clear sound from 4 feet away if necessary and only have to deal with a few added noises, because sound isn't bouncing around.
 
Why are you 2 feet away with the boom?

Because 12-18" sounds great on an instructional DVD, but in real practice doesn't always work. Like on many shots not tight enough to crop the actors hair, some medium shots, any wide shot. Believe me, I constantly tell the boom op to get the mic as close as humanly possible under the circumstances- but at the same time, can't risk having takes ruined by the mic dipping into the frame.

I've found 24" to be absolutely acceptable when recording sound outside or in a carpeted room full of overstuffed furniture. It's only in "roomy" sounding rooms that it poses a problem.
 
We're talking tricks to conceal the discontinuity when editing audio with intrusive background - however, this is a repair to a problem, that increases the imbalance between wanted and unwanted sound. The repair works of the crickets were not loud. If they were loud, then the repair hides the joint but produces a great cricket track with some dialogue in the background, making the cricket sound the featured artist!

The solution when recording is to get the mic as close to the wanted sound as possible. If it's a lav close in, and the crickets are distant - the difference between wanted and unwanted may be better. With the shotgun, then success depends on the pickup from the side and rear lobe - if any of these can 'hear' the crickets then the wanted/unwanted sound ratio with the shotgun out of frame might not be good enough. The only way to work is to try both and use the best.

Depending on the scene - you might also be able to make it work better by going into the audio track in the editor and dropping the level of each silent period between words. On it's own, the drop will be audible, but then your wild track of cricket noises at a lower level can be used to cover the gaps. So much depends on the script for this to work, but it can save the day at a push.
 
mainstreetprod said:
Why are you 2 feet away with the boom?

Because 12-18" sounds great on an instructional DVD, but in real practice doesn't always work. Like on many shots not tight enough to crop the actors hair, some medium shots, any wide shot. Believe me, I constantly tell the boom op to get the mic as close as humanly possible under the circumstances- but at the same time, can't risk having takes ruined by the mic dipping into the frame.

I've found 24" to be absolutely acceptable when recording sound outside or in a carpeted room full of overstuffed furniture. It's only in "roomy" sounding rooms that it poses a problem.
Click to expand...

Then, maybe

1. Work more closely with boom op and shooter to orchestrate their moves to allow for a tighter boom
Not saying this is you, but some video folks (versus film folks) are afraid to cut off the top of the talent's head or they inadvertently choose camera heights that force the boom into the shot.

2. Are these shots static? If so can you use a locked down boom to prevent your fear of the boom in the shot?

3. More blankets

4. Better boom op.

I forget, which mic are you using inside?

Regards,

Ty Ford
 
tyreeford said:
Kyle,

You don't have a bird or cricket problem, you have a location problem. :)

I am reminded of the guy who wanted to hire me for an indy near Chantilly, VA. I asked the DP if he had accounted for the planes taking off and landing at Dulles Airport. He asked me if I'd drive to Chantilly to see if my mics would hear the planes. I assured him that wasn't necessary; they would hear the planes.

Get enough ambi with the mics on the set in the positions they are also used in to get dialog to bridge the gaps.

Regards,

Ty Ford
Click to expand...

indeed, it's a location problem.

ALWAYS VISIT THE LOCATIONS AS A SOUNDGUY !!!!!!!! and that's an order yes....

I think it's more important for sound to do location visits then it is for camera/light.... sound = 360° around and a few miles
image is only the direction of the camera..
 
Does the boom op actually hear the mic - as in is wearing headphones with a clean feed of the mic's output, and does the boom op actually know where the frame edge actually is? When there are problems with sound - often the boom op edged out of frame too much, and if res-shoots cause you a major issue , you can't blame the boom man for pulling out to save getting the director's wrath for getting the mic in frame!
 
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