Lessons Learned, Part 89

P

ptalsky

Veteran
Hey all,

Yet another day of lessons learned that I thought I would share.

The background on this shoot is that the project has been going on for more than 2 years now. It's being shot on Super 16MM film, and the director has been fitting days in when his budget and his talent have availability. :-)

For this shoot, we were shooting in both a hotel room and the hotel lobby.

So, here's some things learned on this shoot:

1. If you have to pass a cable under a door, where it might get pinched, use a short/cheap cable. I had to reposition a cable from the open side to the hinge side so I dropped a 1.5 foot cable I had in the door part, and sure enough the cable was ripped apart from hours of opening and closing the door. Only cost the director $5.00 instead of $50.00 or so if I had left my 50 foot canare cable there instead.

2. Man this project has been frustrating from the standpoint of not being able to use new gear. For example, I was running two lavs and a boom and I had to use my G2's instead of using the Lectros just to keep things matched (yes, I know I could have gone with the Lectros anyway, and had better sound, but the director has little or no post sound budget, so the closer I can deliver matching audio to him, the better.) But it really hurts to not to be able to use all of my new toys. :-)

3. If you don't have a boundry mic, get one. I picked up an EV model used, and it saved me on the lobby scene. We had no room for a boom in the shot, so I stuck the EV right on the counter, hid it with the computer mouse and it picked up great sound.

4. This was the first shoot where I actually had to throw away broken gear. First, the cable, and second the director's headphones. He paid for both, but still I feel pretty luck that it has taken this long. (Knocking wood and formica).

Anyway, just a few musings. I'll expand this a bit later.

Phil
 
Yes do expand if you have time - I wish there were more first hand accounts like this. Adding 1.5 ft cable to my list right now... Does the boundary give a more lifelike (as opposed to a very present sound) sound than the lavs?

What happened to the headphones?

Thanks for the musings!
 
Your boundary mic suggestion has me thinking. Do you have a small audio clip of the scene in question. I've never used boundary mics. the thought has crossed my mind several times.

-Vic
 
Okay, let me expand a little bit:

1. The setup was my HD-P2, with my 302 in front of it. (Working out of my Petrol bag, running off of my BDS). Two wireless (G2's, see note above about why I didn't use my new Lectros).

2. The scene in the lobby was two actors across the front desk from each other. Each was lav'ed, and the boundry mic was on top of the computer on top of the counter. So, it was about 2' from the actors. I definately was picking up some computer hum, but it could not be helped, as we could not turn the comptuer off.

3. I did get to bring out my new Schoeps to use to record a voice-over section. It sounded really good. (BTW, don't disount location-based VO recording. We had a really quiet session in the small business center of this hotel, which I just basically took over).

4. Each of the actors was wearing a tie, so I was able to hide the B6's in the tie knot for the first time. This worked out really well, especially since they also kept their coats on. I taped the cable down the tie, and slipped the Tx into the inner pocket on the coat. Worked like a charm, and no sweaty mic packs. :-)

5. Like a moron, I didn't bring the Schoeps mic stand clip with me (for the VO session). But, I happened to have both a Rode and an Audio Technica one with me (the AT didn't work, the Rode did). Lesson learned: Always bring all your equipment with you.

6. My small K-Tek boom has the bottom connector instead of the side connector. I finally bought a right-angle XLRF cable, and boy did it make the boom op's life easier. He could actually set it down on its end without me yelling at him.

7. I just found a quick sample - I'll upload it, though I downsampled it into an MP3 so it isn't quite so big. On the left is the boundry mic (it's a model of Electro-voice, I'll post which one tomorrow) and on the right is a B6 through a G2.

You can find the sample here:
http://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/1846/1184049910.zip

Okay, that's about it for now. Let me know if you have any questions.

Phil
 
boundary mic sounds good! But the B6 definitely has less computer hum. In post would you a) just go with the lav because it has less hum or b) try to remove the hum from the EV? The EV had a much more open quality. B6 sounded good though.
 
Yeah I learned the hard way that you don't want to give the Director and other people like that a pair of 7506s so they can hear the great job you're doing on audio... Frankly if I get a crappy boom op I'm hesitant to even give HIM a pair of 7506s! After my last gig (where I showed up with 7506s "all around")... I bought some Radio Shack $15 headphones... and from now on that's what they get unless I know I can trust them with nice stuff.

Audio gear brought to a set is no different then a post hole digger from a rental yard... nobody cares how much that thing cost or even how good of a job it's doing... they just want the hole dug and they'll beat the sh*t out of that tool to make it happen. Hence the COST to rent it.

Directors get excited and throw down headphones and all sorts of other crazy behavior... thanks to Phil I was able to eliminate that headache when I got his Comteks and put on the Radio Shack headphones... then everything was CLIPPED ONTO each person who needed production audio... rather then having them all stuck to video village (phones on... phones off... phones on... phones off).

I've never considered a boundary mic before... I'll have to check that out.
 
I've used my sanken cub a few times with good results, but boundaries are rather hit and miss I find. Sometimes I totally love the result, other times I'm less than impressed. Usually I whip it out for interior car gigs, its especially nice to cover the back seats if you can get away with it, in conjunction with mics up in the front.
 
Yep, I agree, boundry mics are not always a good choice. In this case, since I could not get a boom in no matter what, I figured I would throw it in as a back up to the wireless - in case of drop out, etc. As it turned out, other than a little clothing rub on the other actor during some takes (mostly while he is walking away), the lavs performed well.

In this case I would probably take the lavs and layer in the room tone I captured.

Phil
 
As a note from post. I would not worry too much about matching mics Except in the same scene. If you know your in a different local the the shots won't be inter-cut then go for the better sound. In a different location it's going to sound a bit different anyway. If he ends up with some $ for post they will have a much easier time crapping up the lower quality stuff that trying to polish the less that great.
 
Hey Scott,

Generally I would agree, but given that it has taken more than 2 years just to shoot this project, I think the likelihood of him finding post sound money is small.

And, the scene we shot Saturday was the other side of a phone conversation that we shot about 6 months ago, so I wanted to match the two together fairly close. And then when we moved into the lobby, I figured at that point I just wanted to leave everything as is, rather than start switching things out.

I did get to use my new Schoeps though for the VO recording. :-)

Phil
 
Hey Phil, another great posting.

Upon advice of mixers I worked under I never have given the director good headphones. It is almost cliche the way directors will toss them to the side between takes. Even though I give all my comtek users $20 headphones I still tell them they are expensive in hopes they might treat them with some respect...rarely works.

Don't even get me started on the Comtek abuse and neglect rant. :)

Cheers
 
Wabbit,

The headphones in question were $17.99 at Fry's (Panasonic "digital" folding headphones). The main reason I use these is that they have a volume control on the headphone cord - the Listentechs tend to run extra loud, so this helps protect their ears. Though I'm considering going away from this as lately I've had lots of confused people yelling at me that the monitors are down when they in fact had turned down the headphone volume control.

I saw Matt say he has 7506's - no way I would spend that much on them. Even my boom ops only get the Panasonics, which is the way it will stay until I get a "real" boom op instead of PA's that are suckered into booming.

:-)

Phil
 
LOL, never give them another volume control. I got people that can't wrap their minds around one...two would be PhD level for them. My favorite one was after being told the comtek wasn't working, he quickly realized he had unplugged the headphones earlier. I had to stop myself from falling down in hysterics as he stood there with a minijack hanging out wondering why he couldn't hear anything.

Cheers
 
Good choice, Phil. That was my exception. Inter-cutting would make one side sound noticeably worse.
 
ptalsky said:
7. I just found a quick sample - I'll upload it, though I downsampled it into an MP3 so it isn't quite so big. On the left is the boundry mic (it's a model of Electro-voice, I'll post which one tomorrow) and on the right is a B6 through a G2.

You can find the sample here:
http://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/1846/1184049910.zip
Click to expand...

...I bought a Sennheiser e912 boundary mic this Spring and I've been really happy with the results so far. I've never used a boundary mic before, and found the sound quality very natural and open.

Listening to your MP3 sample, the boundary mic is much crisper than the B6. I am guessing that the machine-like noise I'm hearing in the background is the Super 16 camera? Was it making the noisy hum too?

Just out of curiousity, I tried using the Sound Forge 9 noise-reduction plug-in on your boundary mic channel, which got rid of most of the background noise, with the resulting track sounding almost as quiet as your B6, but with a nice crisp high end.

At work we have a cheapo OPTEX boundary mic that is surprisingly good for such a cheap mic. I wouldn't use it for anything musical ( the upper range is dead ), but it's great to record voice, and rejects a lot of room noise, which I think comes from the crappy upper range.

Cool stuff.

:D
 
Dingo,

It was a combination of one of the noisiest Arri 16's I've worked with and the computer that the mic was sitting on top of. Glad to hear NR will work on it - though that's not my part of the project.

Thanks!

Phil
 
The volume on the headphone thing blows my mind... what happens to people on a film set anyway? Phil... you know my story... but just to get others up to speed... I was using my extra G2 set to feed the Director and Scripty a feed to video village... and I got the Radio Shack phones (as previously mentioned) with the volume control on them... that way they could set volume from the G2... seems simple enough no? NO! Not simple enough... finally I ran out of patience... I never lose my cool... but I wouldn't entertain embarrassing questions about the Director getting no sound... I'd just yell back "did you turn the volume down?"

Once I got the comteks which ALSO had a volume knob... man... that became rocket science! Sheesh!

But yeah... I went down there with 4 pairs of 7506s... and by the third day me and the boom op were the only guys that I trusted with them. The pair that I bought first, like 3 or 4 years ago, look almost exactly like a pair that I bought immediately before the trip. The wear on gear really WOWED me... that's why you can't give people too good of a deal on sound work... the gear will show the day's work whether it helped your wallet or not.
 
Yep, Matt, that's why I will often waive my day rate for low-budget work, but never my equipment rental fee. The wear and tear on the gear just doesn't make it worth it to take it out for free.

Funny story - I turned down a fill in job a few months ago because they were filming on the beach and I really didn't want to take my equipment out in the sand. Turns out the project got theatrical distribution and excellent reviews. Oh well...

Phil
 
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