Is my director going to ruin his movie?

H

harmonica44

He likes to do everything in one take. Unless the actors screw up, in which case he will start over. He has the actors rehearse like literally 10 times, without the cameras rolling. Then when he thinks they could be ready (or their is just no more time), he turns the cameras on for one full take of the scene. He shoots with three cameras at a time, and gets all the shots he wants with those, in one take.

I'm the boom guy, volunteering. But I feel that this one take thing is going to ruin his sound. He already had to reshoot a scene cause of a couple of words of dialogue that had unwanted background sound, and the PSM could not hear it while shooting.

It seems if he would just shoot more takes he would have back up and wouldn't have to reshoot. I feel that he really should rehearse once, and then just shoot all the rest of the takes, instead of having literally 10 rehearsals before turning on the cameras.

I suggested that to him and he says he doesn't have time to go through multiple takes in the editing and that he has deadlines to meet.

I am also concerned for the sound. He has put so much effort into the camera and lighting portion of the movie, but he nor his PSM, don't use sound blankets. Just a shotgun mic in all these indoor locations which I am booming around, not knowing what kind of different reflections it is picking up, and the PSM is not doing anything about it, if their is. He just adjusts the faders and that's it. But what do you think?

I mean it's not my problem, but I am taking time off work and such, and I want the things I work on, to be good enough to put into a portfolio, so when professionals ask what I have done, I don't have to tell them that it's crap, because of the director and producers.
 
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Zensteve said:
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
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I just can't resist anymore......

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLKiMbC6s2k
 
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knightly said:
I'm going to go back and ask what you were recording if you didn't have headphones while pointing the boom? I challenge you to be a camera op of an action scene with a blindfold on... it won't work.

If you're on a hyper cardioid or a shotgun, the pattern means that if you turn the mic a couple of degrees, the "color" of the dialog will shift, like turning the treble knob down on your stereo in the middle of a song -- extremely noticeable!
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Well I am not the PSM so I thought the PSM would be the one to plug into his own headphone jack. I thought him wearing the headphones was more important since he's doing the mixing.

The director got pretty argumentative since an wanted background sound was caught which the PSM did not hear in the headphones. That is his error I guess, but it would have helped if the director decided to do more than one take.

The last shoot we did I had to boom between two people. One of them had a vent behind them that was making noise, which we were not allowed to turn off. We tried covering it up with blankets but you could still hear it as the boom swung from one side to the other, the vent gets louder.

I did tests before shooting and noticed that the hypercardioid did not pick up the vent quite as directionally when booming back and forth. I told the director about it and suggested we use the hyper, but the director said no, and that the shotgun was made to cancel out background noise cause it's more directional. And that we should know what. But no matter how accurately I aimed the mic, at the base of the actor's throat, it did not cancel out all of the vent sounds. So either I did it wrong or the director and PSMs sound planning sucks, and I got blamed for aiming the shotgun wrong.

As for my personal opinion on multicam... well I guess I don't like cause of the locations as well. On older productions that used sets and sound stages, there was room to hide the cams and crew from being seen. Realistic locations are smaller, and less room to hide. Also using multicam results in having angles that look like a sitcom or soap opera. Which is okay for some shots, but I don't want all my shots to be like that, in an effort to hide other cameras and crew.
 
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harmonica44 said:
The last shoot we did I had to boom between two people. One of them had a vent behind them that was making noise, which we were not allowed to turn off. We tried covering it up with blankets but you could still hear it as the boom swung from one side to the other, the vent gets louder. I did tests before shooting and noticed that the hypercardioid did not pick up the vent quite as directionally when booming back and forth. I told the director about it and suggested we use the hyper, but the director said no, and that the shotgun was made to cancel out background noise cause it's more directional... But no matter how accurately I aimed the mic, at the base of the actor's throat, it did not cancel out all of the vent sounds. So either I did it wrong or the director and PSMs sound planning sucks, and I got blamed for aiming the shotgun wrong.
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A mic is not an intelligent device, it doesn't cancel out anything, it will record whatever enters it's polar pattern. A shotgun can reduce the recording of background noise simply because it has a narrower polar pattern but if, as in the situation you describe, the source of the noise is behind the actor, roughly in line with where you are pointing the mic, a shotgun's narrower polar pattern will do nothing to reduce the noise. Another consideration it that acoustics is in practise an incredibly complex and unpredictable phenomenon. Every room has not just an extremely complex overall acoustic response but an extremely variable acoustic response in almost every different part of the room. There are some very simple tests you can do with your speakers in your own editing room which demonstrates this phenomena quite shockingly. It's for this reason that a hyper-cardioid, a mic with a wider polar pattern than a shotgun, is often preferred when recording production sound indoors. It's not that a hyper-cardioid picks up less noise than a shotgun indoors, just that it picks up a more uniform noise when changing the position or direction of the mic, whereas a shotgun will pick up and highlight more of the acoustics specific to that part of the room where the shotgun is pointing.

You have to consider how the brain works; with regard to sound the brain is largely a pattern matching machine. Changes in the "pattern" are therefore more noticeable and emphasised. Even with very low levels of background noise, a change in the pattern is usually perceived by an audience, even though this perception may only be at the subconscious level. There are times in post where we can use this fact to our advantage but most of the time changes in the background noise of the dialogue within a scene is a problem which occupies a great deal of time and effort for professional dialogue editors/mixers. This psychoacoustic fact also makes it extremely difficult to record usable room tone in practise.

Lo/No budget indie film makers are largely unaware or are more tolerant of these issues than the public because once these effects reach or approach the level of only subconsciously perceptible they consider it to be "good enough" and no longer an issue. Ultimately though, these issues pull the audience out of the scenes and is one of the main reasons why the public tend to view low budget indie films as uninvolving and therefore boring. When it comes to sound, "good enough" is usually a very fine line and an extremely difficult decision for a whole bunch of reasons.

It seems like your director is pretty much unaware of all of this knowledge, both on the technical side and on the side of the audience's perception and indeed he doesn't need to be fully aware of all of it, providing of course he employs people who do and listens to what they advise. He can NEVER succeed as a professional director of commercial content until he learns this! This doesn't help you much though because until the director learns this truism of commercial film making he will continue to try to blame others (you!) for his own incompetence. This is a perennial problem for those involved in the audio side of film making when working with directors who have little commercial experience.

G
 
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Yeah. I told him how the hypercardioid works compared to the shotgun, but he said that that's not true and that the shotgun, being more directional, will cut down on acoustics. I just went with what he said just to get the scene over with and he's the boss.
 
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Learn from this experience as a director. When you hire professionals, take their advice for the best way to capture a scene. Hire people smarter than you are in their areas and trust them.
 
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We usually use multicams just to get more coverage in less takes. If we know that a portion of the dialogue is good on one side then we'll just continue with the other.

But, because we're low budget, we go one cam. And if you're good enough, you'll think ahead of time in editing and know where you're gonna cut so that you can move on from certain dialogue cues and get cutaways so that can easily continue on the line that was messed up. There's many shortcuts.

But the 10 rehearsals and 1-3 actual takes is quite tasking on an actor. Most directors don't understand the perspective of an actor and just go with what they want without consideration. It's easier to work with actors when they themselves understand the process and/or acted themselves.
 
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1-3 takes is not bad, but this director so far is ONLY doing one take. That is if the take is good and their is no line flubbing. But you think you could get a couple of more in their, just for variety at least.

He told me he likes the shotgun mic better indoors after listening to it, since he reshot the scene, since he did not like the hyper, before. He says the shotgun is just a warmer thicker sound, that sounds better, and still wants to use that from now on.
 
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That director obviously has no idea about sound but is about to learn a hard lesson about the price of ADR. You've done your job as best you can, you've raised your concerns, maybe they are planning on ADR but I doubt it. If this was a paid gig I'd say just carry on and pocket your paycheque. As you are volunteering it's more complicated. To a great degree you are wasting your time. Yup you are learning a lot about how not to do things but ultimately if this film sounds bad you will look bad. The next producer you will work for probably knows as little about sound as this director.
Personally I hear multi-camera I think multi mic.
 
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No he's not. The director even said he doesn't believe in doing ADR, cause the actors will not be available aftor, so he wants us to get it right. I'm not learning anything new really since he is doing things wrong.
 
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You're learning what not to do... which is often more important than learning what to do... when you get to learn what to do, you'll appreciate the knowledge more and have a stronger framework supporting that education.
 
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I wanna see a clip of or trailer for the finished product when completed.

H, if you could link us when anything's available I, and likely others, would appreciate it. :yes:

Could be a cluster-eff.
Could be meh.
 
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Yep.

I already new what not to do before going in on his set, but maybe I will learn more along the way.

I wanted to post something but he says he is not sure if he wants it shown on here. Might have to wait till its done it's festival run or something.

He says he is satisfied with the shotgun mic sound, which means either we lucked out with the reverberations on the locations, or he misjudging the quality.
 
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rayw said:
I wanna see a clip of or trailer for the finished product when completed.

H, if you could link us when anything's available I, and likely others, would appreciate it. :yes:

Could be a cluster-eff.
Could be meh.
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the director will have set fire to the film by accident with water so thats a no go im afraid.
 
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Yeah, it's okay if nothing comes of it though. I just wish that I had done something that hopefully gets finished that I can put in a portfolio, that's actually good. Well I guess I did one good thing, but won't know till I see it.
 
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