More about personnel no longer trained by the BBC … And sound in Feature Films
Graeme Wall
I was watching Janina Rodriguez’ programme on the West Window restoration at York Cathedral (2015). During a number of the interviews the sound appeared to go dead, not even atmos, between some of the answers, presumably at edit points. The sudden loss of atmos came as a jolt.
John Howell
I played some of this programme and, taking the interview with Richard Marks as an example (10:50 in), the editing has been done to suit the wording required and the reverberation has been cut when it continued under the next unwanted speech. The ear gets used to the flow of a sound track and when something unexplained comes along it is a jolt.
There are ways around this problem but they are time consuming (ie expensive). Sometimes you can add more reverberation to the whole track but it has to be very sensitively handled.
I don’t think what you heard was a technical artefact.
Jeffrey Booth
iPlayer is transcoded from the TX version once ingested into the automation. Sounds like a deaf editor!
A trained sound recordist would have recorded some clean atmos for dropping into the track.
Probably shot, directed, edited and sound dubbed by the same trainee runner.
Graeme Wall
It was actually shot quite well, though the cameraman was on a hiding to nothing trying to film stained glass windows in churches and the presenter with no, or little, additional lighting.
Proms
Bernie Newnham
Did anyone watch the Swing Prom 28 August 2015? I sort of felt that the sound mix was – I don’t know – flat?
Brian White
I listened to the live Prom courtesy Radio 3: this was excellence personified!
Right through the chain from Wolfgang himself, piano concerto No 23, performers Maria Pires, Bernard Haitink, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, every tweak of every fader, right through the ‘air waves’, even my humble elderly equipment, all were magic.
Pat Heigham
I did watch, thought it was great and closely matched the original recordings. I suppose it depends on your monitoring system, maybe and the level played at.
Listening via Freeview from DVD recorder as tuner and audio fed via Quad amps to BNS (Dutch) speakers.
I was impressed with the ability of the radio clip mic on Mike Lovatt’s trumpet to handle what must have been some severe sound pressure levels, yet it did not sound compressed. And the drum kits were properly pushed – this had been lacking on the Wilson concerts, to my mind.
I had the chance to run the first Wilson concert (the MGM tribute) in the theatre at the National Film School in Beaconsfield – that was fun!
Roger Long
Doing Jazz in the Albert Hall is not easy. However the bands lacked discipline, and understanding of the original dynamic. No space given for a solo, a struggle to be heard above a mass of brass. Lack of ribbon mics and just too many mics robbed the occasion of style and vivacity.
We had a Prom solo fiddle Bach evening, no mics in shot. A full symphony orchestra may have 80 in shot at any time at the Proms,
Alan Stokes
I watched a delayed replay from my Humax satellite box and was thinking the audio was pretty good. I must admit that I gave it some “welly” so that may have been a clue, were they monitoring at high level?
There is one other possible consideration. I understand that the Proms on TV are being mixed, or some are, in surround. When I was listening to the John Wilson Prom, I was a little disappointed with the vocal balance, listening in two channel stereo. I phoned a good friend who was also thinking the same. We wondered if the programme was being mixed in surround and compatibility was not so good..
I then went looking around and found that the “Audio Description” channel of the recording on the hard disk was also available. Selecting that, there was no audio description going on but there was a two channel audio feed for those who leave it selected. The audio balance on that, still monitoring in two channel stereo, was much better. This leads me to think that the feed to audio description is a separate two channel stereo, derived (at source?).
On the matter of credits, I would have liked to have seen a name for the actual mixer/supervisor. I would guess that The Audio Alliance wanted it credited that way.
Pat Heigham
For what it’s worth, “Time-Life” issued a wonderful series entitled “The Swing Era”, up-to-date modern stereo recordings, but sticking to the original arrangements and where they were still alive, some of the original band members.
Re: the Swing Proms – I was pleased to see that several of the ‘session’ guys that John Wilson uses were in the line-up. Mike Lovatt, lead trumpet, Matt Skelton, drum kit, and Howard McGill, alto sax.
Derek Nash
I was working yesterday with Winston Rollins (trombone) , one of the two bandleaders that night, he hasn’t heard the TV broadcast yet, but was very happy himself with the Radio Broadcast, but I think it was two different mixes , one for Radio and one for TV.
AGC
Maurice Fleischer
I have just watched a transmitted feature film (Sony distribution) “WWII Christmas Story”. Produced in Canada.
All location sound was shot using auto gain control. There were long silent periods between the characters speaking and the rise and fall of amplifier gain was quite alarming. I have never heard a feature film shot that way. I happened to notice the location mixer was a women with a French name.
I’m speechless.
Barry Bonner
That may have been done for the transmission. Some ‘unattended’ film channels can’t be bothered to check the levels so they put it through an AGC system.
Patrick Heigham
Any chance that the AGC was put in before transmission?
Who knows what goes on nowadays.
We always used to have bars and tone at the head of a programme, but do the transmission guys know, now, what they mean?
Gary Critcher
I work in TX at Discovery at Chiswick, and I know that NONE of the guys I work with would know what bars and tone or a scope would do. I do, as I’m the oldest one in the office!
John Howell
So how do they check the levels? or don’t they?
Gary Critcher
No, it’s all done before in Ingest.
In TX now, you can’t tweak audio levels (there’s no mixers!!), video, nothing!
Even back in 1992 when I started in TX at Carlton, we still had everything to fiddle with; we would play in voiceovers off a manually run Beta Sp, likewise crawls etc. Nowadays it’s ALL done by the computer.
Dave Plowman
I tend to watch a fair bit of old stuff on TV, and in general, ‘they’ seem to get the picture ‘levels’ close enough. But sound is all over the place, level wise.
But then the same applies to plenty of current stuff too. One of the worst current offenders is BBC1 national news followed by BBC1 London news. I’ve measured a difference in peak levels of 10dB between the main presenters on them. Perhaps the pictures are just as bad.
Peter Neill
There really shouldn’t be any difference these days. The same pool of staff sound mix both on identical desks with the same automation system. All I can think is that there’s an anomaly in the opt chain.
Peter Cook
Exactly the same thing happens every day in Oxfordshire at the junction between National and Local News. The sound level goes up noticeably. This is both at 18:30 and 22:25, watching on Freeview. There is a similar difference between local and national weather forecasts. But I have to watch TV with remote control in hand, because much drama dialogue is very quiet and music, whether part of the plot or incidental, is fearfully loud. And then one has to be able to switch aspect ratio as ‘Auto’ does not always crack it. Both these phenomena, sound variation and squashed frames, were exhibited on ‘The Duchess’ (tx Saturday 08 August 2015 BBC2).
Bill Jenkin
I’ve noticed that (aspect ratio not changing) on BBC SD but it seems OK on HD for some reason – on Freeview.
The level change between National News and Regional News is also a big jump in the Midlands.
Terry Meadowcroft
You may be interested to see the material I have sent to Andy Quested at the BBC.
Preceding program:
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Studio
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Dave Howell
BBC1 London News (July 2015) transmitted a complete item shot entirely on a mobile phone. Coincidentally it’s about an artist being held by police for using a 13amp socket on an overground train to charge a mobile phone. (The sockets labelled “Not for Public use” are actually used by cleaners when stationary).
This is surely the start of standards falling off a cliff!
Chris Harnet
I learned a good part of my broadcast skills at the BBC when it lead the world. Sadly it is light years behind these days, the result of gross mismanagement and clowns calling themselves producers with little of the skills to do the job.
It is very easy to be carried by the system and your talented technical staff, especially inside a large institution. The only solution is to make the organisation directly accountable to its customers. Live by your quality product, I do and did for the last 26 years as a technician and independent producer.
As to Sky, wise up people, they are leaders technically and commercially because they care about their products and have to survive on that ethos. They also do not tolerate the legions of time servers and sycophants that the BBC now does.
Those of us still actively practicing our art mostly shudder at the technical garbage the BBC presents to viewers on far too many occasions now. It is often not of merchantable quality and I see no reason why I should continue to pay for it on a blanket tax. I find this is the view of most of my active colleagues too. I will be doing 4K at home as soon as projectors fall below £3k. I am not expecting a UHD service from the BBC anytime soon, there will be 3 commercial service providers by 2016 however. Technically light years behind, as I said, couple that with rampant political bias and it is very sadly a mere shadow of its previous stature. The old BBC of the 1960s and 1970s has gone, I loved it and owe my career to it but now?
Albert Barber
Sky have the money. I don’t think you have worked through the arguments to say Sky is on the creative forefront. I don’t disagree on the quality of their content but it’s very much American biased and within certain boundaries of creative calculations. This excludes experiment and daring to get things wrong. All is not good at the way the BBC is today but to say that it can’t hold a key in the present climate to what the present discussion could hold in the outcome is destructive.
