So... I did a little favour and shot a little freebie something for someone which involved shooting a couple of interviews, face on to the camera. Visuals were dead easy - static greenscreen. I told them for the interviews to book a nice quiet room and a sound recordist. They agreed and what could go wrong?
Everyone turned up on time, I had a fantastic runner, a professional gaffer to help with the lights and I was feeling like royalty... until the sound recordist turned up.
He was the worst sound recordist in history. For a start, he kept falling asleep, pointing the mic at the floor and didn't want to use the mixer I'd provided because he didn't know how it worked. Just getting him to stay awake was difficult to impossible. I swapped him over with someone else who didn't really understand where to point the mic or even how to monitor the sound but at least they were conscious.
However, the really bad bit was the noise levels. They had picked the loudest place in the known universe to record quiet interviews. I went to a Green Day concert which was quieter.
We were in a studio complex and diagonally across the hall was a studio where they were shooting a hard rock music video with the sound cranked right up. Directly across the hall was a set of auditions involving yelling and shouting in German. Above us was a herd of mating rhinos (stage fighting workshop) and next door was an actors workshop which involved group screaming. And the room they'd booked had a door which didn't close. At one point I had to pop outside in the street because my head was hurting from the noise.
Anyhow, I did a quick and dirty cut and they've just complained there is some background noise on the vid and can I do something about it...?
* Rant over - thank you for listening *
Everyone turned up on time, I had a fantastic runner, a professional gaffer to help with the lights and I was feeling like royalty... until the sound recordist turned up.
He was the worst sound recordist in history. For a start, he kept falling asleep, pointing the mic at the floor and didn't want to use the mixer I'd provided because he didn't know how it worked. Just getting him to stay awake was difficult to impossible. I swapped him over with someone else who didn't really understand where to point the mic or even how to monitor the sound but at least they were conscious.
However, the really bad bit was the noise levels. They had picked the loudest place in the known universe to record quiet interviews. I went to a Green Day concert which was quieter.
We were in a studio complex and diagonally across the hall was a studio where they were shooting a hard rock music video with the sound cranked right up. Directly across the hall was a set of auditions involving yelling and shouting in German. Above us was a herd of mating rhinos (stage fighting workshop) and next door was an actors workshop which involved group screaming. And the room they'd booked had a door which didn't close. At one point I had to pop outside in the street because my head was hurting from the noise.
Anyhow, I did a quick and dirty cut and they've just complained there is some background noise on the vid and can I do something about it...?
* Rant over - thank you for listening *
dude that sucks. loved the title though!
