Recent challenges in location sound

G

gpforet

Well-known member
Thought I'd share some recent experiences with locations for a feature.

For the past month I've been the location sound mixer/recordist for a low budget feature. The writing and script were quite good, and overall it was a great time with great people.

Here's a few of the low points from the sound perspective:

Just a note to say that the sound department was not consulted when selecting locations

1. Dinner scene in restaurant. Private dining room. Booked during working hours of resaurant. Private dining room directly next to kitchen. Kitchen running at full steam with pots and pans rattling, dishwashers spraying, cooks yelling and singing. Degree of difficulty: 6

2. My favorite. Hotel banquet room. Four days before christmas. Shooting a meet and greet scene. The "Wild Men of Atlanta" (I made that up) were having their annual christmas party in the room next to us, divided by a folding full height wall. The "WMA" had hired DJ Boom Boom (I made that up too) for entertainment. We knew we were in trouble when they started sound check and I couldn't hear the director call action. Having spent the money on the location, the producer was not going to throw in the towel. So, we shot for 3 hours to the throbbing beats of the DJ. I had three actors on lavs, and was booming the shots as well. The actors' lavs were hitting -9 db on meters without dialog, and -6 when delivering their lines. The boom was doing only a little better with about a 6db difference between background noise and dialog. Occasionally, the DP would look over at me (when the music would swell to incredible levels) and I would just shake my head. We had to yell at each other to be heard above the music. The producer actually asked me if there was anything I could do to isolate the dialog from the wash of sound coming from next door. Needless to say, the entire scene had to be ADRed. Degree of difficulty: impossible.
 
good thread, i'll add to this:

was hired to record sound for a day for a religious dude's website. 3 videos on 3 different subjects. location was a large track of land outside of charlotte, nc. my friend was directing this thing and emailed me about a week before the shoot. it wasn't a few days before i was able to talk to him on the phone about the location and details of the shoot. so first things first, location. A- I want to know how far it is from my house cause its an early call time. B- I want to know if its in a flight path, as its all exterior. so pretty much the first thing i ask is: is it in flight path? "umm.. ya know i didn't even think of that, let me check and i'll get back to you". next thing, after looking at the location on google maps, which is always a good idea. how bad is traffic noise? there's a 4 lane highway that the property is off of. "well, we'll be pretty far away from that side of the property so it should be blocked by trees". i didn't have the best feeling with both of those situations, but you gota roll with it...

shoot day, we get there nice and early, as the sun is coming up. director shows me the 3 locations we'll be shooting at. 2 of 3 are less than 200 yards from the highway... awesome. another thing, its 80% steadycam. so that means lots of moving. moving = feet noise. 1 of the locations(the furthest from the road) is in the woods. so i get to clearing a path so we don't have to be walking on dry leaves. so that problem is solved.

another question that i had asked that was yet to be answered was talent wardrobe. so finally a get an answer. "just a simple button up shirt, but he'll be changing it for each video." and its pretty chilly out so i'm assuming he'll be wearing a jacket too. talent shows up. very starched out button up shirt with white tee underneath. "nice" i think, i'll just stick a b6 under his tshirt. well... dude doesn't want to have a mic taped under his shirt... it was kind of breezy so i didn't want a b6 exposed openly so i went with cos11 in between the overlap in his button up shirt(you know, where the buttons are). well then he wants his shirt unbuttoned more, so then i have to move it down another section. i'm not too thrilled with the location of the mic, but its the best i can do. another not awesome thing is the starched out shirt makes tons of noise when he walks. this can be heard in the lav and in my boom as well. of course i mention to the director, he's a cool dude so i don't have a problem trying to work things out with him. he talks to wardrobe, which is talents daughter. she then takes the other shirts and runs them in a dryer while we are shooting the first video, so that helped a loooot.

onto the actual shooting part. the actual shooting wasn't too bad. the first shoot was in the woods, pretty much all steadycam'd. about 3 takes in things get hairy. airplanes... seems there's a small airport about 20 miles to our east. so now we've got low flying, single and double prop airplanes flying at low altitude. which means plenty of noise. but we were able to work around it, so it wasn't too bad. the highway noise wasn't bad unless there was a big truck or loud vehicle noise. if it were in the summer the trees would def block all that out, but late fall was not the best time for foliage blockage. we had to hold for traffic just a few times. i'd mainly pick it up in the lav(since it was kind of far from subjects mouth) but the 416 was good at isolating the subject and rejected the road noise. i always made sure the gun was pointed away from the highway. since then i've gotten an mkh60, but not sure if that would have really made much of a change.

i'd rank the degree of difficulty pretty low on this one. it was just a bunch of annoyances more than anything. a week or so later the director called me to go over sound. he said it all sounded great, but at time he would suggest we shoot anyway when there would be a plane in the distance. his only major comment was, "i kind of wished we'd held for just a little bit longer when those planes were buggin you". but i guess music worked out well so the plane noise isn't heard.

gear used:
psc m4 mkII mixer
fostex fr2le recorder
lectro 211/um200c with sanken cos11
sennheiser g2 for camera hop guide track, we were shooting on a 5d
ktek boom
sennheiser 416
rode blimp
 
I hate starched shirts! Funny, when I started shooting this feature, I'd ask the actors if their shirt was new and if it had been laundered. The first time I asked they looked at me funny and asked why? I told them about the stuff they put in new shirts to make them look so stiff and how it adds to clothing noise. By the third day of shooting, the actors were taking new wardrobe to the cleaners, having them washed and then pressed without starch. I had one actor who showed up on the first day wearing a low cut v-neck t-shirt under his top shirt. I commented as I was wiring him up that having a cotton t-shirt makes things so my quieter with the lavs and he said "yea, I had another sound guy tell me that a couple of years ago so now, whenever I can, I wear one." I love actors who take sound seriously.

How are you liking your M4? I have really been digging my Alphamix.
 
the M4 has been great, but i'm about to put it up for sale. actually resizing the photos right now. i'm stepping up to a 552. and yeah, nothing better than a well laundered cotton shirt!
 
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