recording a bar room scene

[Soldier]

How does one go about recording/mixing sound for a barroom scene? Do you get the extras in the background to mime speech and put general barroom audio in later so you can get clean dialogue from your talent? This seems to make sense to me and I suppose there are lots of ways to do it.

Thanks in advance for your input

 

[Alex H.]

Yes. The best/typical/sensible method is to have background actors mime. This is pretty much standard. All the background conversation (generally referred to as "walla"), and sounds such as glasses and silverware clinking, and music from the jukebox, are all added in post.

 

[unclebob6958]

A quick "trick"...

When you get all of the extras in place run about 10 or 15 minutes of audio while the extras are waiting for the actors. It gives you some walla/room tone for your library. The reason you run so much is so you can edit out any prominent voices, words or phrases.

 

[davefisk]

A quick "trick"...

When you get all of the extras in place run about 10 or 15 minutes of audio while the extras are waiting for the actors. It gives you some walla/room tone for your library. The reason you run so much is so you can edit out any prominent voices, words or phrases.

+1 on this. Might as well get this while you have all the people there.

 

[scottfs]

We just shot a barroom scene for our short film. Man it was a tight fit! We had cast and crew in a 20X50 bar. Anyway, we did the 'mouthing' of the extras while the main dialog was being filmed. And we did long room tone when people were just relaxing and drinking (water and tea).

The only real problem we had was with the reflections in the long mirror on the back wall of the bar. Nothing like seeing a boom pole reflection in a scene.

 

[marvinhello]

We just shot a barroom scene for our short film. Man it was a tight fit! We had cast and crew in a 20X50 bar. Anyway, we did the 'mouthing' of the extras while the main dialog was being filmed. And we did long room tone when people were just relaxing and drinking (water and tea).

The only real problem we had was with the reflections in the long mirror on the back wall of the bar. Nothing like seeing a boom pole reflection in a scene.

check out the VFX breakdown of the Black Swan, in a few scenes, the camera man was completely shown in the mirror, and then was digitally removed, nice and clean.