Letus Extreme and Hardwood floors

[jamesc]

Couldn't find this tip while searching, but hoping it might help someone out. If you're using the Letus Extreme on hardwood floors, put a rug underneath the tripod.

I was DP on an indoor shoot today for a short film. During the bedroom scene, our sound guy suddenly found a patch of low hum as he was booming and following the leads. We had everyone lav'd for better coverage and he said it picked up on both the lavs and boom.

We stopped the shoot and he spent a few minutes hunting for the source of the sound, but couldn't figure it out. It was very strange because we thought it might be the Extreme vibrating, but when he pointed the mic at the camcorder it wasn't picking up the same low hum. The hum appeared at a random isolated spot on the floor.

We we moved rooms, we heard it again and finally figured out that it was the vibration of the Letus Extreme down the tripod. It would only cause looser sections of the hardwood floor to hum. We put some rugs underneath the tripod and it went away.

 

[Ted Ramasola]

WOW! Your sound guy must be a former sonar operator in a ballistic trident submarine! LOL Thanks for this heads up! This is something to watch out for when troubleshooting hum.

Seriously, was it very audible? What was the tip of the tripod you were using, metal or rubber?

 

[jamesc]

In the bedroom, we had a hard time hearing it sans amplification, though once listened through the mixer it was pretty loud. When we moved to the living, one spot on the floor was audible to everyone even without amplification.

It was a manfrotto tripod, not sure what model the legs were but they had rubber feet.

 

[PhantomVideo]

our brevis did this on our HPX502 big rig, get a piece of carpet the size of your tripod footprint , its wierd because they tend when tightened properly to translate all of the vibration, I can touch the brevis and not feel the vibrations but i can when i touch the handheld handles, or the tripod legs, or the base plate of the dolly