Technician, not Magician

[Terry "Skeet" kelly]

Hi Guys, I'm sure we have all had nights like this, a tvc, shot on The Red Camera, the Scene is a dude dressed up as a "wandering minstrel" playing a Lute and singing. The thing that made it different was fact that we were shooting this out side a block of apartments on one of the main roads out of Sydney in Peak hour, I'm talking serious traffic noise .
The Production House is one of the better and busy ones in Sydney, Director is a great guy with lots of shoots under his belt, the Agency also great, The thing is, they think we can do the impossible.
After a few takes the Agency Writer came up to my trolly and asked if I could hear the heavy traffic?
I replied that I could hear little else, with a horrified look on his face he said "but it has to sound like the year 1594. I said that this is the first time I have even seen the location, which, by the way was about 2 Km from the Airport, By now I was surrounded by Agency asking what I was going to do about making it sound like 1594. I smiled and asked had anyone here been involved in picking the location. Thought not, it seems no one had thought about Sound before signing off on the location, lots of looking at the ground and mumbling that they had only seen photos of location. I think the Prod Designer loved the look of the Apartment Block. Anyway, all I could do was put on a Radio Mic on one track and a neumann boom on other track, then as we jump in for a c/u I pulled out an old dynamic (Reporter Mic, every kit should have one) and put that on third track. By this time, it was pouring with rain. After finishing that scene I went inside and did wild tracks for everything (handing the whole sorry mess onto the Editor) There was one more Scene that was shot in the rain and wind, by this time it was a 14 Hour day, Producer looking very stressed, people living in the apartments very annoyed with the lights and noise. At wrap, all I could say was "ADR" I know the writer was disappointed that his little masterpiece was not quite what he envisioned, the Producer was disappointed because She had the extra cost of an ADR session. I was disappointed that a location that was totally wrong for what we were trying to achieve was signed off on without even consulting the poor sap Sound Recordist who has to deal with it . I can count on one hand the amount of times I have been invited for go on a Tech Recce. In big Fx layered features, ADR is the norm, but in my world it isn't. I'm not really bitching about being hard done by, because this is what we do. It seems many would go home with a smile on there face if the RIGHT location was picked in the first place, Believe me there was no reason to shoot were we shot. It seems Sound wasn't even thought about
I'm sure there are similar stories to share. Skeet.

[Aron Dyer]

Hey Skeet

A sound mentor of mine in WA, Kim Lord started a group - 'West Australian Sound Professionals'. One aim was to contact Production Companies and let them know that if they needed a Sound recordist's opinion on a location, that one of the group members could give a couple hours of their time to see the location and give them their thoughts - if the hired sound recordist was not available for the tech recce.

That was a while ago while i was still in WA.

Also, just a quick comment on a job i swung in WA, the sound recordist came up to me a said - "better do a good job Aron, no ADR budget" as he said this i laughed. The show was set deep in the forest so you needed to get the sense that civilisation was 100's of miles away, yet we were shooting 10 metres from one of the busiest HWYs in Perth. Hmmm, hope the post guys had their 'peak hour traffic remover filter' lined up.

Aron

[Bill White]

Hi Skeet,
There was a similar post on RAMPS some time back. On that occasion, it was some form of noise being generated on set. The sound recordist spoke to those responsible asking if they could relocate it or 'tone it down'. They laughed at his request.

Knowing it would be impossible to remove in post, the recordist resorted to calling out 'guide track' before the ‘speed’ call. The DP glared quizzically before asking why? The best answer was to let the DP listen via his cans as to how loud the noise was.

The noise source was quickly extinguished.

Not so easy when it’s a freeway nearby. On one remote reality show, local kids used to ride trail bikes in the area on weekends. While you are looking for the 'peak hour traffic remover filter' in your sub-menus, keep an eye out for the two-stroke bike filter and the squeaky floorboard filter. I’ve never been successful but this new technology confuses me at best.

I’m still trying to figure out how to prerecord TV shows on my Beta VCR ;-)

Bill

[Peter Mega]

Hi Skeet,
I know we've all had nightmare locations as far as sound goes!
I recently worked on a show which is currently on air. One of the locations was at St Peters, directly under the flight path. The planes were so low, you could see the tread on the tyres. Completely deafening. With the added noise of power tools (yes, reno show), you can imagine how much of a nightmare this was for the soundies.
Anyway, saw that ep go to air the other night and they got around it by cutting in umptine cutaways of planes flying over! Seemed to work though.
The only good thing about being that close to the airport is the planes are so low, they come and go quite quickly, rather than lingering way over head.
Mega

[Predrag Malesev]

Hey Skeet,
What an amazing short film you've just been in.

I would have loved to have seen the face of the agency guy.

Predrag

[Manel Lopez]

Shoot: My Place
Age on screen: 1880
Location: Newtown, Annandale (the closest part to the airport), Alexandria, on the canal that goes to the airpot between factories.
And they roll their eyes when we say, PLAAAAAAAANE! TRUCK! CONSTRUCTION over the fence... And they did a location recce, but they wanted all the locations close together and there was no budget for anything else... soooo there you go.
Looks good though!