Lavs on Doctor Clothing

Joshua Milligan

Joshua Milligan

Well-known member
Hey guys! I've been getting a lot of work lately in the medical industry and a lot of what I have been shooting is interview style videos for various doctors. I usually am filming one to two doctors at a time with three cameras and some stationary boom mics. I typically use one or both of my Sennheiser MKH 8040 cardioid mics as my main source of audio, but like to run wireless lavs as backup mics in case, well, something goes wrong at any point. Plus, I like to have the option to bleed lav audio in with the cardioids as sometimes that sounds really good to my ears.

My problem is that no matter how I hide my lav mics, I always get that dreaded scratchy clothing sound. I'm guessing it's because of how their clothes are typically made. I'm wanting to see if anyone here has suggestions on how I can work through that. I'd hate to have to give up completely on using lav mics during the interviews, especially since I'm a solo shooter without a sound guy. The extra sense of security I get from having a backup audio source is priceless when having to do everything! Do you guys have any suggestions for how I can resolve this issue?

Thanks in advance!
 
"I'm guessing it's because of how their clothes are typically made "
- > Some material is more abrasive that others, but most sound folks can hide a mic effectively with most materials and have the mounting expendables on hand. For instance, the well known Rycote Stickys + Overcovers/Undercovers, Topstick, ecp, ect. I often put a white B6 on white jackets and shirts which disappear in plain site.
I recommend purchasing Thomas Popp's Udemy video course "How To Put A Microphone On Talent". It is very comprehensive and well done.
 
I agree with Rick, but to reinforce with two words, Rycote Overcovers. Not the only solution for noiseless lav placement but the simplest, easiest, fastest to rig IMHO. They have changed my life with lavalieres. The URSA foams are good too but there dozens of ways to skin this cat.
 
The starched white doctor coats are extremely loud. If you are shooting people wearing those coats, I doubt it has anything to do with the clothing rubbing on the mic. It is probably just the clothing rubbing on itself.

You have a couple of options for hiding the mics. I would suggest the white foam hush mics placed in the fold on the front of the coat flap for mounting the mic. Then, I would take a bunch of Joe's sticky stuff and make sure the coat can't rub on itself or against the other clothing near the mic.
 
cpreston said:
The starched white doctor coats are extremely loud. If you are shooting people wearing those coats, I doubt it has anything to do with the clothing rubbing on the mic. It is probably just the clothing rubbing on itself.
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Hey guys, thanks for the replies. What cpreston said here is more of what I am experiencing. I have Rycote Over and Undercovers, foam style mounts with Topstick, Hide-a-Mic B_Flex Silicone Concealers (which I really like for my COS-11Ds), along with other lav mounts, but no matter what I do, I pick up that noise. It doesn't happen with any other shoots I do, just doctors with their scratchy jackets/shirts. It's the material rubbing against itself that I believe I'm picking up that I don't know how to combat other than just sticking to overhead mics only.
 
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Unless a client demands it, I rarely use lavs for just that reason. Especially on sit down interviews with people in any type of uniform.

Really, the only option is to use snot tape or Joe's sticky stuff and stick all of the layers of clothing together so that it can't rub. You could use the topstick, but that has a tendency not to come off.
 
puredrifting said:
I agree with Rick, but to reinforce with two words, Rycote Overcovers. Not the only solution for noiseless lav placement but the simplest, easiest, fastest to rig IMHO. They have changed my life with lavalieres. The URSA foams are good too but there dozens of ways to skin this cat.
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Drift, please make a video about how you are using the overcovers. I had no success this weekend using them. I wish I took pictures to show placement. I had 3 talent. I put one lav in the women's cleavage, which worked well. One woman had a tight top on with no cleavage so I put it in a fold (sort of a cloth cave) of her hoodie. With the overcover it was nothing but rustling noise. Without it, it worked pretty good. The man had a tank top and stuffed nylon jacket. The only place I could put it was under the collar of the jacket. It was the same thing; with the over cover, lots of rustling. Without it, I had issues, but it was much better.
 
Paul F said:
Drift, please make a video about how you are using the overcovers. I had no success this weekend using them. I wish I took pictures to show placement. I had 3 talent. I put one lav in the women's cleavage, which worked well. One woman had a tight top on with no cleavage so I put it in a fold (sort of a cloth cave) of her hoodie. With the overcover it was nothing but rustling noise. Without it, it worked pretty good. The man had a tank top and stuffed nylon jacket. The only place I could put it was under the collar of the jacket. It was the same thing; with the over cover, lots of rustling. Without it, I had issues, but it was much better.
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That's strange. My first and last resort is always the overcover. I buy the Rycote round stickes and sandwich the mic between the stickie and the overcover. Then I just stick the mic in the best location that isn't noticeable. The thing about the overcovers is that they cause the least amount of transmitted sound when a piece of clothing rubs across them of any mounting method that I have seen. That is why I am not sure why you would be getting more noise rather than less. Make sure you aren't trying to use the undercovers. Those are less than useless.
 
cpreston said:
That's strange. My first and last resort is always the overcover. I buy the Rycote round stickes and sandwich the mic between the stickie and the overcover. Then I just stick the mic in the best location that isn't noticeable. The thing about the overcovers is that they cause the least amount of transmitted sound when a piece of clothing rubs across them of any mounting method that I have seen. That is why I am not sure why you would be getting more noise rather than less. Make sure you aren't trying to use the undercovers. Those are less than useless.
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This ^^^^^

I've used the Overcovers in some insane situations (on skin with tight Lycra smashing the mic down on the chest with runners, etc.) where I shouldn't have had any usable audio and they deliver every single time. You are either mounting things backwards or using Undercovers? The Overcover Fur is magic. The only situation they don't do well in is in the wet, if your talent is in the rain or water, then the Rycoate stickes don't stick and you have to use alternate methods.

As far as lab coats, I've dealt with those for years. My suggestion would be, unless the coats have patches or insignia on them, buy your own and wash them with fabric softner and while you are at it, you might experiment with a tea rinse to knock down the nuclear lighting reflectivity by making the coats off white, slightly brownish just to take that 255 white edge off. I HATE white lab coats, they are probably one of the worse wardrobe I've ever dealt with. The ones I've bought used for a buck or two at Goodwill or thrift shops were soft Cotten and silent. If your talent wears just plain white labcoats, you are good to go, supply your own and make them work for audio and video. If they are custom and have patches and insignia, names sewn onto them, you're kind of SOL.
 
J.Brown said:
Pinmic.
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Joshua Milligan said:
I've looked at those, but read some sketchy reviews.
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Just watched a doc where they used them. DISTRACTING AS HELL. Big black windscreen on everyones chest, nowhere remotely close to where a normal lav would be placed/clipped. I can't believe the producers were fine with that look. If you're not hiding it, why in the hell would you use one of these? Meaning, if I'm not hiding the mic, just clip it in a normal place that is much less distracting than using one of these things placed in a conspicuous manner. I don't see the point of these, the way that they were used. A COS-11 or B6 clipped externally would have been visually WAY less obvious.
 
Run&Gun said:
Just watched a doc where they used them. DISTRACTING AS HELL. Big black windscreen on everyones chest, nowhere remotely close to where a normal lav would be placed/clipped. I can't believe the producers were fine with that look. If you're not hiding it, why in the hell would you use one of these? Meaning, if I'm not hiding the mic, just clip it in a normal place that is much less distracting than using one of these things placed in a conspicuous manner. I don't see the point of these, the way that they were used. A COS-11 or B6 clipped externally would have been visually WAY less obvious.
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Pro sound mixers avoid those things like the plague from what I've see for the same reasons Run & Gun states, why?
There are so many easy ways to effectively hide and soundproof lavs, can't figure out why so many people do so many
things that simply don't work. Hide your damn lavs, seeing lavs in shots look amateurish and distracting.
 
puredrifting said:
... I've used the Overcovers in some insane situations (on skin with tight Lycra smashing the mic down on the chest with runners, etc.) where I shouldn't have had any usable audio and they deliver every single time. You are either mounting things backwards or using Undercovers? The Overcover Fur is magic. The only situation they don't do well in is in the wet, if your talent is in the rain or water, then the Rycoate stickes don't stick and you have to use alternate methods. ...
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I'm not using undercovers. Those things are worthless. Having you explain how you use overcovers and rave about them along with other endorsements makes me feel like one dumb sombich. I'm using them as you all describe. I'll just have to play with them off set and see what I'm doing wrong.
 
Joshua Milligan said:
My problem is that no matter how I hide my lav mics, I always get that dreaded scratchy clothing sound.
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Years back shooting a lot for the Navy I encountered the same problem when shooting officers with their starched white shirts, jackets etc. My eventual solution and I still use it now with pretty reasonable success is to use the following procedure or something similar. I run one or two strips of about about 12-18" length of this tape along the mic cable. Being double sided I then press the cable to the shirt with the mic cable sandwiched between the shirt and the tape. Once that is done I run another two strips 12-18" long of this double sided adhesive tape parallel and about 2-3" either side of the stuck down mic cable but with the top of those two strips about 4-6" above the mic capsule. I then firmly press the outer clothing, jacket, coat or whatever to the three strips. What this effectively does is to stop the two layers of starched stiff clothing from being able to move independently of one another. If you can stop the movement of one layer moving and rubbing against the other you are a long way to solving the problem. Sometimes I've had to use more strips to immobilize one layer of clothing against the other. Like when I've had a subject walking around on a presentation and lifting his arm when using a laser pointer on Power Point slide shows. My ultimate solution was to use this tape method and Sony ECM-88s. The two combined makes for very easy hidden super quiet lav mic recording regardless of most material and movement issues.

https://www.amazon.com/Scotch-Create-Removable-Double-Sided-FTR-1-CFT/dp/B07BYVYK1W

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgZ0vM8qiNw

Chris Young
 
cyvideo said:
Years back shooting a lot for the Navy I encountered the same problem when shooting officers with their starched white shirts, jackets etc. My eventual solution and I still use it now with pretty reasonable success is to use the following procedure or something similar. I run one or two strips of about about 12-18" length of this tape along the mic cable. Being double sided I then press the cable to the shirt with the mic cable sandwiched between the shirt and the tape. Once that is done I run another two strips 12-18" long of this double sided adhesive tape parallel and about 2-3" either side of the stuck down mic cable but with the top of those two strips about 4-6" above the mic capsule. I then firmly press the outer clothing, jacket, coat or whatever to the three strips. What this effectively does is to stop the two layers of starched stiff clothing from being able to move independently of one another. If you can stop the movement of one layer moving and rubbing against the other you are a long way to solving the problem. Sometimes I've had to use more strips to immobilize one layer of clothing against the other. Like when I've had a subject walking around on a presentation and lifting his arm when using a laser pointer on Power Point slide shows. My ultimate solution was to use this tape method and Sony ECM-88s. The two combined makes for very easy hidden super quiet lav mic recording regardless of most material and movement issues.

https://www.amazon.com/Scotch-Create-Removable-Double-Sided-FTR-1-CFT/dp/B07BYVYK1W

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgZ0vM8qiNw

Chris Young
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Nice, I hadn't seen that tape before. Looks good and I will have to try it out. I've always used Joe's sticky stuff for the same purpose. One nice thing about the sticky stuff is that it doesn't make any noise if the adhesive tears away from the clothing, but it can be a bit awkward to apply and it doesn't actually look as safe and nontoxic to clothing as it actually is.
 
wjauch said:
I would suggest not hiding the lav at all, it's not a film your doing but an interview. Here's a medical infomercial type piece I did a while ago, lav's visible throughout.
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It's not so much the hiding of the Lavs. I hardly ever hide them unless a producer requests it. Generally I prefer the sound of unconcealed mics but I have one corporate producer who hates the sight of them on boardroom type shoots. His call so I oblige. The main thing is whether they are hidden or not is to minimize that annoying cable rubbing noise when having to work with talent wearing those sorts of noisy scratchy overcoats, jackets, uniforms etc.

Chris Young.
 
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