Fish(er) Tales

It’s interesting that when you do audio-post on films, docs, and such that you discover a myriad of DUHs by the production sound mixer and/or boom operator. I’m not knocking their work. It’s hard, hard work to deal with our noisy world and try to get the best dialogue recordings possible. That’s no easy feat if you’ve ever been on a film set.

But you can’t live by the “we’ll-fix-it-in-post” mantra either. You also have to take measures during production to reduce noise and record those dialog recordings well.

Yes, I can do some amazing things with EQs, noise gates, expanders, and iZotope RX. And I do. But while sometimes the results are stellar, other times they are, to quote my pal Douglas Spotted Eagle: “Polishing a turd.” It is indeed a shinier turd, but still sounds like crap.

So, instead we should chant “fix-it-in-PROduction” and, in many cases “fix-it-in-PRE-production.” If you take steps at every stage, the end result is far, far better.

Sometimes these steps are big and require an immense amount of time and effort. More often, though the difference between an OK recording and a good-to-great one is a simple, simple fix.

Case study: I’m dialogue editing the final scenes to Scott’s Dead. It’s an emotional scene, well-acted, directed, and shot. Two actors sit on the ground leaning up against a car parked in the street. As the actors shift their body positions, their legs and feet drag along the ground. And all the crunchy sidewalk gravel noise gets on the dialog track.

It’s a difficult to impossible task to get rid of that noise in post.

But during production, the solution was simple: a $20.40 blanket. The shots are in close-up, so the actors could be sitting on the blanket. And if the crew is moving, they too should have mats or blankets underneath. Dealing with the noise upfront is always the better solution.

Do you have any production sound war stories that you’d like to share?