Pat Heigham

On “The Bunny Caper” AKA “Girls Games Play”, when I was booming, I was asked to climb into bed with the lead lady, because I was the only one on the crew who had a short haircut which fitted the role. I refused, not because I didn’t fancy the lass (I did!) but because I couldn’t stand the fact that all the sparks would be taking the piss out of me! It was fun to work on!

Bernie Newnham

A top show – Games Girls Play

[Ed:  The young daughter of high-ranking political figure gets into trouble when she and her friends compete at bedding the foreign diplomats.]

Pat Heigham

“Games Girls Play” That’s the one! I remember a lovely sunny afternoon, filming a skinny dip sequence in a swimming pool, with all the lovely girls totally starkers. Slim MacDonnell was the underwater cameraman, and when we watched the rushes, the director said: “Lovely, Slim, but I can’t use any of it” It was a bit explicit, with the camera swooping between their legs! So maybe 1200 ft went into Slim’s private collection. That’s the occasion where I flooded the Sennheiser 125, attempting to pick up some underwater FX. All we heard was the Arriflex, because sound travels very well through water. One of the girls wanted to talk to us soundies about hi-fi kit, and plonked herself in front of us, carelessly letting her robe fall apart, revealing everything. Hi-Fi? Forget it!

Chris Woolf

[Re: Sanitising a microphone] Schoeps have pointed out that for many purposes slipping a thin plastic bag over the mic is the simplest way to avoid contamination.  Provided it isn’t pulled tight, it does relatively little damage to the audio, and can be disposed of later. Saves all the hassle.

Nick Ware

[Re: Sanitising a microphone] Personally I would go with the formidably solid combination of Schoeps and Woolf advice, because it seems obvious to me that cling film will (by definition) cling to the microphone grille causing an obstruction (forming lots of minute diaphragms), whereas a loosely fitted thin poly bag will pass air movement more freely. Simple physics. Personal mics: it’s the cable that suffers most from constant handling/fiddling, so go easy with anything solvent or chemically aggressive.

Alan Taylor

Cling film can achieve a similar result, with the advantage of staying in place and looking fairly inconspicuous, although it’s not particularly durable. Peeling it off can be fiddly, but I use slips of paper as identification labels and put them discreetly just under the last layer of wrap so that if you peel from there, it comes off easily.

Graeme Wall

I thought condoms were the approved method, but possibly not in church!

Geoff Hawkes

I heard a story once about a sound assistant being sent to record an effect of someone in the shower, who had the bright idea of using one of those to shield the mic. and a lady who offered to help, either with fitting it or doing the acting – or maybe both. If anyone tries it now, I hope they use a non-lubricated one.

Pat Heigham

I know that story, and so does the perpetrator, who is well known to me!

Mike Giles

We used condoms on personal mics when people got gunged on !!CRACKERJACK!! But I don’t remember having to tweak the equalization much more than normal.

David Denness

Many years ago when I was still at the BBC and Television Centre crew 17, working on a series of ‘It’s a Square World’ with Michael Bentine – a real gent – the finale was of a village fete experiencing a heavy shower causing the roof of the tent to release a deluge of water onto the head table and participants below. I cannot remember the SS but he decided a STC 4037 on a table stand would be a suitable microphone, and Buster Cole – of course – had a condom in his wallet which was applied to successfully waterproof said microphone. Afterwards he submitted a claim to the props department for reimbursement, then received the reply “If worn, consult wardrobe”.

Roger Long

When we were in Corfu shooting the BBC “My Family and other Animals” in the 1980s, we had a storm sequence with wind machines and their boat. I had 6 diversity Microns, which we prepared with Cling Film from the Caterers. In the event we did it all with a MKH816 in a real storm. On return to base I submitted my T&D and claimed for a Rolling Pin (which I rolled the industrial cling film on with) and a box of condoms for the mics. This was passed without comment by the authorities (Mavis!).   I was amazed.

Nick Way

…my Australian Venue Technical Manager at the 2012 Paralympic Swimming was taken aback when I asked for condoms – non lubricated.

Pat Heigham

Alan’s mention of cling film reminds me of a need to waterproof a mic to obtain some underwater effects in a swimming pool. I was using a Sennheiser MKH 125, their lavalier personal mic of the day.

See photo, there is a raised rim around the diaphragm.

Stretching cling film, tightly, over it and swathing it in Blutac was eventually very successful. The first attempt flooded the mic, so it was dismantled and allowed to dry out in the sun.

It sounded good in the open-air, so I surmised that the outer covering of clingfilm acted as a primary diaphragm, and the air trapped between that and the real diaphragm was working as a linking piston. In this case, the film was not close to the real diaphragm, so was not obscuring the holes, due to the design of the casing with the rim feature.

Roger Long

I’m amazed you got away with this! The MKH 125 was a full RF capacitor mic. The electronics were in a head amp separated from the capsule with unbalanced cable. It was a version of the MKH 405, a cardioid TPower boom mic of very high quality. Normally dynamic mics were put in a condom for underwater FX. (AKG D109, Sennhieser D211).  That an RF omni condenser survived is testament to its construction. They were lovely mics, with a gentle rising presence, but expensive compared with dynamics and electrets. I have 6 of them still. Hydrophones are P48 powered, DPA do a cracker, but they are heavily shrouded and the cable armoured to withstand sea water and pressure.

Pat Heigham

Well, we did get away with it! My Production Mixer (I was working as Boom Op in those days) was a splendid engineer, he helped me convert two Nagra 4-L to two-track for running playback for “Fiddler on the Roof” having orchestra and vocal separated. Another tale of waterproofing a mic was for a Thames TV Magpie insert – Jenny Hanley was to undergo the training for undersea escape from a downed helicopter.  The Navy had a rig at HMS Vernon in Portsmouth which duplicated the result of a chopper ditching. The Head of Film Sound at Euston gave me a mic to use, so I carefully wrapped it in the recognised fashion, and submerged it – there was an underwater camera involved. On return to base, I gave it back, saying that it worked perfectly, and still did. His face fell – “I’ve already put in an insurance claim and ordered its replacement!” So I had to write a report stating that the mic had suffered total immersion, and could no longer be relied upon!

Alan Taylor

I was working on a show where the director casually asked if I had a hydrophone to bring along the next day.  I didn’t have one, but I decided to try improvising using a stethoscope with an ECM 77 pushed into the acoustic tube instead of the Y piece feeding it to each ear.  The idea was that the microphone could remain above water while the diaphragm of the stethoscope was submerged. It worked impressively; I assume that the diaphragm within the head acted to better match the microphone to the water.

After that show, I removed all the tubing and made a simple adaptor allowing me to push the ECM straight into the stethoscope head.  The head can be twisted round, one side is the diaphragm, the other has an O ring seal and a short horn leading to the tube. Either side is useful under different circumstances, the O ring side usually sounds best.  It was small enough to live in my ECM box and could be used to pick up difficult FX.  Obviously a heart beat and tummy rumbles was easy. Another time I needed the sound of a futuristic machine.  The director suggested that it should sound like the finest Swiss engineering, but on a huge scale, but still subtle.  Well obviously a Nagra is the finest Swiss engineering, but it’s nearly silent – until you put a stethoscope on it and play that recording back at reduced speed. It was one of the easiest sound design challenges I’ve ever done.  

Another show needed the sound of an ant running up a blade of grass, which had been shot mute using a macro lens in a laboratory.  I stuck a little piece of Blutack onto the stethoscope diaphragm, pushed a blade of grass into it and placed an ant on it by means of a small twig.

Ten minutes of messing around resulted in the ant running up and down the grass and producing a decent recording.  When we put it to the picture, it only needed minor tweaking to look perfectly in sync.  People asked what we used to get that effect, expecting it to be some sort of Foley and they assumed it was a wind up when I said that I recorded an ant running up and down a blade of grass.

Roger Long

I was in Greenland shooting a under ice presenter doing a ‘Piece to Camera’ about sleeper sharks.  He was equipped with a full face mask and rebreather kit plus a dry suit We were out on the sea ice in March. He had a Sony MiniDisc in a waterproof housing and a mic in the face mask, all good kit. I also had a DPA 8010 hydrophone which had only recently become available to non military use. The camera man and presenter went down an aperture that the fishermen had augered out of the 2′ sea ice. There was a strong current running underneath of 2 or 3 knots. I dropped the DPA down to 30’ and ran a simultaneous track on my Foster PD4 Dat machine. When the presenter started his piece I could hear every word, he was some distance from the mic, water is very conductive to sound. Unfortunately he sounded like he was in Gloucester Cathedral, under the ice was considerable inverted formations of cliffs and caves. When the editor laid the clean MD recording with my ambience recording, it was quite amazing, however production did not use it as they thought no one would believe it…

The Greenland shark is 5m long  and can live to 400 tears, they can survive deep submersion to 7000’. Our shark had been caught by deep netting, a call was put out on Greenland Radio and we received several offers for the filming. The poisonous flesh is considered a delicacy when buried, fermented and eaten rotten.  It produced effects similar to alcohol and chews like a rubber tyre.

PS:I did a shoot with Jenny Handley when she had an enema on camera in a Harley St.  consulting room.  The contents of her bowel were seen in a long transparent tube and discussed by the Doctor: it was part of a recognised Wellness regime. The miracle of TV.

And finally ….

Pat Heigham

“To Olivia” has been released – the story of Roald Dahl and Patricia Neal. I worked on a US/UK production “The Patricia Neal Story” with Glenda Jackson playing Neal. Glenda can be somewhat terrifying. The first scene was shot in a garden, and all the principal actors were wired with radio mics, but it was quiet enough to use only a boom mic. Glenda had not yet appeared on set, and I was sent to de-rig her, she glared at me, saying: ”Don’t I speak?!” “Yes, but we’re doing it a different way”, which satisfied her, but I was still scared of her! Later, at a BAFTA screening, she was at the bar, saw me, held out her arms, saying “Where’s my hug, then!”