Sitcom miking

[nyvideo]

I worked for several years in TV/film studios in LA, though I didn't have much of a role when it came to interaction with productions. I had the good fortune, however, of getting in to watch quite a few productions shooting. At the time, I was focused on the director, cameras, sets, and actors. Now that I'm trying to learn to create my own work, I wish I had spent more time watching the craftspeople, especially gaffers, grips, and sound people.

Sorry for the ramble, but I was watching a sitcom recently and was trying to think about how the audio might have picked up. I have a vague recollection that there were mics on long booms that followed actors around when there were large sets.

Is it still done that way? For example, the living room sets in Friends or Frasier and the bar in Cheers are examples of pretty large sets for a sitcom. Are those large, movable booms still used for those kinds of sets or are they being replaced by wireless lavs or some other newer technologies?

Thanks in advance.

 

[gpforet]

Most of the sitcoms being produced today use a combination of wireless lav and boom. The only big changes in the last several years is the trend toward multi-tracking, where each mic is sent to an individual track on the recorder, thereby giving the editor more control over the final mix.

 

[Steve House]

FYI - the booms you're refering to are called either Fisher or Mole booms, depending on the manufacturer, and they are still in use in studio and soundstage shoots.

 

[fraustosound]

Haven't worked on a sitcom since the late 90's but I doubt things have changed much. We used to run two fisher booms plus plant mic's for any dialog that the boom could not reach (inside closets, doorways, etc.)

All mics were iso'd on VTR's as well as Tascam DA-88's (remember those!)

 

[nyvideo]

Thanks. I'd forgotten how long those booms extended, but with your help I located some images and specifications (more than 20 feet). I can see how a couple of those, with some as-needed blocking by the director, probably took care of most of a sitcom's requirements.

And I thought a boom pole for location sound recording at several hundred bucks was pricey. Looking at these mobile mic booms is a whole different tier. I know the fundamentals of sound recording are the same, but the budgets appear to go up logarithmically.

Thank you.

 

[manglerBMX]

i caught an episode of modern family, might have been the halloween episode? but i could clearly see the mic bump in Ty Burrell's center chest. it was the outdoor scenes when he's talking to his neighbor. i was just surprised to see that production let that slide. and as soon as i noticed it, my wife says, "whats that bump on his chest?"

 

[nyvideo]

It all boils down to money

It all boils down to money

One of the interesting things I learned about the episodic TV business, at the time at least, there were staff people who did the budgets for each show.

These folks worked with the producers, writers, and even the post-production folks for each episode to keep it within its budget. The negotiations could be a bit absurd to an outsider when you got into some of the nitty-gritty of the action-adventure shows. Though this example is not an actual quote, this was the essence of some of the arguments.

"We can't make budget if we have that Freightliner crash into the bus."

"What if the semi just tries to avoid the bus, flips onto its side, and that causes the bus to run off the road?"

"Hold on, let me do a quick calculation... OK. That'll work, but only if we get rid of the fire jump stunt into the river."

"Yeah, but then how are we going to get character A into the boat?"

"What if we don't use the Freightliner? What if we just have character A and the bad guy fighting in the front seat of the pick-up truck before they get to the bridge and they careen off the road down to the river?"

"I don't know. We wanted something more exciting there. Let me talk to the lead."
​

(This assumes that the lead might be an executive producer on the episode so s/he gets a say on the story.)

Shows that are easy (= stay on budget regularly) tend to have better relationships with the studio execs.

So many consider the artistic vision in their scripts as a bible, something that must be preserved and executed to the letter. It really was amazing to discover how a chase scene can be negotiated out of script because of the producer's desire to have something dynamic with expensive SFX happen, say, in a museum. The expense of either using the interior of a real museum (requiring a ton of rigging, extra insurance, payments to the museum, and the like) or recreating one in a studio has to be covered somewhere. So, instead of the climactic scene on a bridge, it might wind up in a museum. :undecided

Anyway, getting to your point about the lav mic on the character's chest, I'll bet someone noticed it shortly after (if not during) the shoot, but there were other budget constraints that prevented the producers from re-shooting.