TD7s and other decks
Alec Bray
What were the old heavy cumbersome record decks in the Television Centre studios Sound Galleries in the mid 1960s? I think they had moving coil pickups (they were heavy) and had straight arms: mainly ran at 78 rpm if I recall correctly …Doug Prior
It was a BBC TD7In my earlier radio studio testing duties we were told the method of setting the tone arm was to place the needle on you finger – increase the weight till it drew blood and take it back a notch. Happy days
John Howell
A TD7 tracked at 2.5oz. If you’re talking of the 1960s I don’t believe there were ever any at Television Centre.‘Grams’ at Televisin Centre were twin units called RP2s and were Garrard 301 turntables with fast start facilities. They had Tannoy variable reluctance cartridges which ‘turned over’ to give a choice of fine or coarse groove stylii.
The last TD7s in West London Television were at Lime Grove Studios D,E, G, and R and were replaced just as I started on Grams (just as well really).
Pat Heigham
In the very early days, Lime Grove galleries were fitted with 78rpm turntables (TD7), with radial tracking pickups, and old-fashioned steel needles. It being impossible to back track the discs, one had to groove count before the mod of the effect happened, either by counting turns from the run in, or by gently clicking the needle from groove to groove, on pre-hear. If you got it wrong, it was either late, or halfway through! Later, the DRD5, equipped with a stereo stylus that had vertical compliance, allowed the disc to be rotated backwards from the start of the effect and so cued in with a bit of anticipation. This seems to be the mainstay of the exponents of today’s scratching DJ artistry, but let’s face it, chaps, it’s not new!The turntables with which Television Centre sound control were equipped (RP2), were a dual unit, usually two of these, providing 4 turntables. These were modified Garrard 301s and the modification was that the bottom bearing for the turntable spindle was fitted with an electric cam which could raise the turntable up until it connected with an aluminium plate upon which the disc rested. Thus, with the turntable already spinning, pretty fast starts could be achieved as the support disc came up to speed quickly. At 78rpm, and initially all the BBC Sound effects discs were at that speed, (7” 33 1/3 microgroove came in the later 1960s), the disc could be backtracked to a quarter of a revolution from the start of the mod, stereo stylus again, and with a bit of anticipation, the effect could be spot cued.
They were also vari-speed, the correct setting being achieved with strobe holes on the extreme edge of the aluminium disc, a 50Hz neon lamp underneath. When the ‘holes’ appeared stationary, that was the correct speed. One point of interest: the BBC rotary faders had a 180 degree travel, thus, from nothing to full was extremely fast, with a dexterous flick of the wrist.
John Howell (Hibou)
One of the design features of the TD7 was its "parallel tracking" tone arm, I don’t recognise your term ‘radial tracking pickup’.Dave Mundy
… not forgetting it’s 25gm. tracking weight, a little more than the Decca ffss cartridge, invented by Bill Bayliff, H. of Tech. Ops. when I joined Television Centre.Mike Giles
The TD7 had two turntables and three rotary faders on the front panel. The middle fader was for a microphone to allow the operator to make announcements ~ largely applicable to Bush House, I believe. Unlike later turntables, the stylus was angled, so you couldn’t scrub to locate an in-point. This also reminds me that recordings requiring more than one disc often had alternating tracking, so that the first disc would play from the outside in, then the second would play from the inside ~ this enabled less noticeable changeovers as the quality of recordings deteriorated towards the centre of the disc, where the stylus to groove velocity reduced with decreasing radius. For continuous material, mainly music, there was usually a significant overlap between discs, to allow the operator to sync the succeeding disc with the one currently on air and I remember practising changeovers at Wood Norton, but I never had to do it in earnest.Alec Bray
One day at Wood Norton myself and my oppo were mixing between two gram decks (as described). The idea was that you set a 45 or 78 rpm record going on one deck, then, as it was playing, you had to cue up the same record on the second deck so that you could then mix between the two sound sources with no “join”. The record(s) we were using was Jimmy Shand and His Band playing “Eightsome Reel” (it was very popular at the time). It was a very tricky job – very little defined differences between the phrases but we had to hit the exact changeover. For light relief we took a feed from The Light Programme – as it was then – to mix to – only to find that the Light Programme was playing exactly the same record!Dave Plowman
I don’t remember those 78 rpm only decks at TC. TC had Garrard 301 based decks with a ‘normal’ pivoting pickup, the RP2. Which could also play 78 rpm discs, as well as 33 and 45.The parallel tracking 78 rpm decks were to be found in Lime Grove. etc.
Dave Buckley
TD7s could also be found in the AP dubbing suite, which had a bank of them at the back of the mixer room. There was also one RP2, a cartridge machine, and a reel to reel machine. This setup was probably there until news moved out. The dubbing theatres in TVC all had RP2s, a cart machine and a reel to reel machine.Press Briefings
Alan Taylor
I was intrigued by the main photo in [the story in “The Guardian” (25 Match 2020) about a sexual abuse ring in South Korea blackmailing women and girls.]
Conference bridges usually consist of a device taking the feed from the microphone and outputting it to maybe 12 or 24 individual XLR outputs so that journalists can simply plug in and get a feed. I did a conference in a France where they had an interesting arrangement. It was quite a large fan shaped wooden box with a small loudspeaker at the narrow end with a radiating arrangements of gently padded chambers. Those wanting a feed bring along an ordinary stick microphone and stuff it in an empty compartment pointing at the speaker.
The guy looking after it saw that I was amused and explained that it’s simple and reliable. You can Easily check it’s working by listening to the speaker, everything else is down to the user. If your microphone works, you’ll get the feed and there’s no chance of one poorly earthed lead creating hum for everybody else.
Roger Long
When doing a NHU doco about the Exxon Valdez tanker disaster , we were on film, all the press corps were on video and would daisy chain recorder to recorder, from one mic, sometimes 20 of them .Watching their network outputs the difference in quality was amazing, all over the … place in SQ.
Later, when doing a Monica Lewinski /Clinton doc in Washington, the press pool was in action, again on film, we turned up late for a chaotic PC, I put a tram and Micron on the main mic wind gag in front of a huge posse of reporters, who looked astonished at this affront to etiquette, a mere mention of BBC 2 was enough to stifle opposition.
I knew there was nothing on my frequency, I was on VHF , a Beeb channel.
Again in Grenada US invasion, with the press corps, on film at the contested airport, a CBS cameraman with his wives gold tooth on a chain round his neck (all he had from a divorce!) looked at my Rycote blimp on a pole and said BBC 2, better quality wind noise …
Pat Heigham
Before the re-unification of Germany, and before the wall came down, I was working on a doco for NBC on the ice skater Katarina Witt. She was addressing the East German parliament about something so we went in with our camera.There was an audio feed of the lectern mic supplied to a socket under one of the steps at the back of the auditorium, but it was a Tuchel! The highly helpful PA chap asked if I wanted an XLR, and duly produced an adaptor. Then said “I’ll send you tone”. Setting my SQN knob to the usual position for a line level, it came up at exactly PPM4! I was much impressed.
But I did have a problem with my VHF Audio R/M mics. Working on the West Berlin side in the Unter Den Linden, early in the morning, all was hunky-dory except that the female presenter could not get her spiel right, and promptly at 8am the East German TV tower went on air, completely swamping my radio. So I had to switch to cabled mic. Trouble was I did not have my own kit, it was rented from the camera facility, and none of the connectors matched for the mic to switch from transmitter input to cable! So a different mic had to be fitted to the presenter.
I made sure that I used my own kit from then on, all connectors are interchangeable and all mics are in phase.
Alan Taylor
A couple of press conference stories.At a fairly small press conference, I got there nice and early and spoke to the guy on the sound desk and arranged to get an Aux output from the sound desk of just the microphone feeds. We tested it, everything was hunky dory and I waited for the event to start. Then a Sky crew turned up. The cameraman seemed a bit amateurish, but the sound guy was in another league altogether and not in a good way.
He asked me how I was going to pick up the panel microphones and I told him I took a feed from the sound desk. He went off to do the same but came back and asked me if I had a double male XLR adaptor. I didn’t think to ask why, but just gave it to him. He returned moments later, listened to his cans and complained that all he was getting was hum. I asked him where the sound guy asked him to connect and he said that the guy wasn’t there so he just took the next available channel. I soon sussed that he wanted the gender changer because he was trying to plug into an input channel instead of an output.
The conference was soon going to start, so to quickly get him sorted I said that I’d give him a feed from my mixer as we were both listening to the same thing.
I gave him a lead, he plugged it in and then looked horrified. He reckoned I must have broken his mixer because if he turned up the channel the tiniest bit, it was hopelessly distorted and if he turned it further down it was completely muted.
I said that it was a line level feed and he needs to set his mixer to cope with it. He had no idea what I meant, so I fiddled about with my mixer and sent him the feed at mic level.
In conversation afterwards (where he failed to thank me in any way) he revealed what he was charging as his daily fee. It was less than 40% of what most recordists would have charged in those days. I think that Sky were overpaying him based on his performance.
The second story involved a Papal visit. We did a number of shows over a few days where the Pope would briefly speak on arrival. Again I turned up nice and early, put a nice shiny microphone on a nice shiny stand and waited. At each location, a few minutes prior to the Pope arriving, a guy from the Vatican press outfit came along and taped his microphone to mine.
I soon got slightly miffed about this, found a broken XLR cable in my bag and took off the end to expose bare wires. When the Vatican guy next taped his microphone to mine, I disconnected my mic from my mixer, connected that bare wire cable to the microphone lead and watched for when he was checking his microphone.
As soon as I could see him listening, I started brushing the bare wires against the terminals of a PP3 battery. My microphone was a dynamic microphone and they work quite well as loudspeakers, so the microphone emitted a crackling sound when I brushed the leads against the battery. The Vatican guy heard loud crackles on his microphone and deduced there must be a fault. I saw him tug on the lead going into his mixer and I tried to match the crackles to his actions. When he paused, I paused. He quickly deduced that his lead was duff.
In a state of panic, he quickly found another lead and rushed to swap it. As he sat down to check all was well, I couldn’t resist one more crackle, which immediately got him fiddling with the mixer connection as he knew that he had just installed a good lead.
It looked as though he had decided to push on one side of the connector to ensure that it was a solid connection. Obviously I put my microphone into the mixer, we did the event and there were no more crackles. When it was over, I had initially forgotten about the jape, but noticed the Vatican guy still fiddling with the connection out of curiosity, so I did a quick replug and gave him another crackle for old times sake. I then dismantled my microphone, untaped his and left him to wonder whether his dodgy connection was miraculously cured at the crucial moment by divine intervention.
Rycote windshields
John Cox
I am sorry to hear that the inventor of the Rycote Windshield has died. John Gozzard may never have known how useful it was.Once while covering lawn tennis at Queens Tennis Club, Jimmy Connors was furious because he had lost a point that he took his anger out by giving the nearest object to him (the Rycote Windshield which was on the Umpires chair) a mighty whack with his racquet. This broke the suspension inside but the 416 microphone survived. We could not use this microphone any more that day. I could not repair the windshield on site, therefore I took it home. Imagine my wife’s surprise when I asked her “could I have some Knicker elastic”? It had the correct tension! — to replace the suspension in the windshield!
In November 1972 we recorded “An Evening with Marlene Dietrich” at the New London Theatre, now The Gillian Lynne Theatre. Marlene brought her own management people including Lighting Designer Joe Davis who worked with our top Lighting man Tommy Thomas,
At the recorded rehearsal on stage we used the latest microphone we had in OBs, this was an AKG D25 which was rather large and suspended in thick wire gimbals. The microphone obscured a lot of Marlene and naturally she didn’t like it. After a long day what were we to do? Fortunately we had AKG C451s with us but how could we hide the cable feed? The solution was obvious, take it home and rewire it through the hollow mic stand. This I did carrying the stand and long cable on the underground and train home and back again next day, the microphone and stand are clearly visible on the You Tube clip. Back inside the scanner I was amazed to see this elderly lady watching the recording made the day before of a slinky girl in a pink dress!
This show was definitely recorded in London and not elsewhere as suggested on You Tub.
Chris Woolf
Oh John knew what he had started, OK.However he was a somewhat “British” inventor – proud of eccentricity, and not always as self-critical as would have been helpful. He retired from the company around 1995 and sold it to what was, in effect, a management buy-out. Vivienne Dyer had been his general manager, and had been the driving force behind the marketing of the products for some time. She really deserves the most credit for the Rycote brand.
I was asked to come and help Vivienne design new equipment for the company, and solve the problem of making the knicker elastic suspensions that were difficult to knot, and didn’t last for any length of time. Working with Vivienne was a real joy, and she was the one who kept pressing for new developments, beyond the original product. So for the last 20 odd years most of the design faults have been down to me!
Vivienne retired a few years back, and I backed out of working for the company last year.
Pat Heigham
I remember that, following a year’s work following McLaren’s F1 team around most of the world, I got an extra job to record some engine noises at Portugal’s Cascais track.I had at one point, left my MKH 60/30 stereo rig standing upside down with its windjammer in the corner of the pit garage. When I went to retrieve it, the mechanics, who knew me well, had endowed it with a couple of ears, and given it a saucer of milk!
I had an awkward location with an 816 – right beneath the Crystal Palace mast. It picked up frame buzz, which I could only minimise by careful orientation. Tricky with a handheld camera waving about!
Dave Mundy
While doing a PSC shoot at the Bath & West Show Mr. & Mrs. ‘Rycote’ introduced themselves to me and commented on the ‘bald’ 416 cover that I had at the time (KA had several!). They asked me to send it back to them for tests to see just how good/bad it was at stopping wind noise!Two more anecdotes, one on Brighton seafront doing SOP in a gale when you couldn’t hear any wind noise but heard the ‘Blessing’ quite clearly and another on the Galway sea-shore, again in a gale, when interviewing an Ireland rugby star, just tucking the 416 below the top of a rock enabled a perfectly clear voice to be heard. I always said that if I was lucky enough to be God’s PSC sound man I would opt for a 416 (plus a fully furry w/s!) and a SQN as essential equipment! BBC OBs came close!
Nick Ware
The sad thing about SQN is that they seem to be stuck in a self-imposed time warp. For a similar cost could buy you something bang up to date from Sound Devices. Nearly two decades ago we all asked for an “SQN that records”, but it never happened. So I sold mine and got an SD552 that could record mp3 or WAV with timecode stamping, plus a 744t four track that has full timecode capability. Now sold them, and have and love the incredibly full-featured Zoom F8 with its optional control surface (under £1000). Eagerly awaiting the Zoom F8n which has several major user-requested improvements and upgrades, including automix. They listened!OK, so I could improve on the 416 and 8060 by going Schoeps, but it made no financial sense to do that at my stage in the game.
So that’ll do for me – I’ll take the F8 and MKH8060 with me to the hereafter!
But not yet, I hope!
Tony Crake
The Big Thing about the 416/816 type of microphones was THEY KEPT WORKING! Clad in the thin windsock with a huge woolly Rycote special over the top…. kept going all the time at St Andrews in the worst the North Sea could throw at it !!Bernard Newnham
It’s all very pretty and well done, but I can’t help thinking that most of it could just have been live sound, using a man with a gun mic and Rycote Softie- saving a large amount of money and time. But then, I was the “cheap TV” person.Quite a bit to be said for that approach.
Dave Plowman
Take one of the common complaints today. Actors being ‘intimate’ in, say, a noisy pub, where the dialogue is recorded in silence and the pub atmos added afterwards.Or whatever.
OB Sound Supervisor
John Cox
The secret to the success of the Sennheiser 815/415, 816/416 microphone series apart from phase shifting was Radio Biasing. A complete frequency modulated transmitter and receiver demodulator, very small, wired together, is built inside the tube. The purpose is to lower the impedance of the capsule,(that is why I had to change the crystal stabilizer at Penshurst Place). Does anybody remember early tape recorders Grundig, Brenell, and others with crystal mics and very short leads? They were high impedance and could pick up stray interferences. Early microphones in the BBC had large disc capsules and heavy magnets fed into a low impedance transformer to try to overcome the problem. It was difficult using these with long cable runs on OBs. Sennheiser held the copyright on R F Biasing, AKG couldn’t get a look in: they lowered their capsules by using jfet transistors, often we used to wait until the capsule had dried out on a damp morning before we used them, they were still crackling from the procedure. A K G did produce ridged capsules to reduce this problem to a small degree, These mics could only be used indoors successfully. Often when working on farms in very dirty conditions we would “accidentally” drop the Sennheiser mics inside Rycote covers into water and they would still work!Pat Heigham
Yes, AKGs were prone to ‘frying’ if they got damp, and my 451’s were frequent visitors to my airing cupboard to be dried out.Mike Jordan
And one can always hang out the windshields to dry!(in some long forgotten corner of a shed in Acton – sob sob)Chris Woolf
High impedance sources are still widely used today – the majority of guitar pickups, for instance – and their advantage is that they produce much higher output voltage. This can be a benefit with circuits that have a poor noise floor. However it is also true that they can convert hum and other interference into equally high levels of “noise”.AKG really just made a poor choice of capsule design – there are thousands of other DC capacitor mics in the world, with the vast majority using FETs as the impedance converter, that don’t suffer as badly from humidity as the older AKG designs. Keeping dirt off the membrane, and preventing the insulator ring hanging on to moisture, goes a long way to making mics less prone to frying.
And the downside of the RF capacitors was that they could demodulate strong external radio signals. That included interference from other MKH mics, so stereo pairs often had problems in the early days with the oscillators beating.
The majority of heavyweight BBC mics used electromagnetic generation – moving coil or ribbon. This technique is inherently low impedance in output and suitable for use with long cables. However the magnets of the time were Alinco at best, and pathetic compared to today’s “rare earth” types. Thus the signal levels were always very low, and needed ideal balanced circuits (not so much screening – that isn’t important in these case) and very low noise preamps to keep the signal clean.
John Cox
At BBC Tel OBs the Beeb had the best Sound Operators anywhere. They were all clever in their own field of work, but some were good at musical balances be it Jazz, “Songs Of Praise”, Big Bands, or The Proms, [including] Barrie, Paul Cunliffe, Tim Davies, Graham Haines, Chris Holcombe, Vic Godrich (who won a Bafta Award for “Bolshoi In The Park”) and John Livingston, Their sound balances were always a pleasure to hear.If BBC Tel OBs was still in existence today I’m sure my erstwhile assistant’s name Andy Payne would join them. I have admired Andy’s work for a long time. When Andy was preparing for a Sound Supervisor’s selection Board a long time ago I asked him, “How does a gun mic work (R F biasing)?” He just smiled and didn’t answer. He obviously didn’t need to know. The Board saw in him extra qualities which made him a brilliant Sound Mixer.
Pat Heigham
A gun mike works with phase interference/cancellation caused by different times that the signal arrives at the diaphragm.I never liked the 416, as it affected the frequency response as the source came off axis. I much preferred the MKH60 which maintained the overall response and could be utilised to balance two unequal artistes vocal delivery, by dexterous favouring.
Personal Mics (and Drama) (again…)
David Denness
“Little Women” on BBC1. Sound is woeful. Sounds like all personal mics buried under clothes with little effort to make them at all realistic…Nick Ware
Also flagged up by Tony Philpot on the IPS forum, but I doubt if it will get much if any response…What I did see though, and worthy of comment, was the 1982 Christmas Two Ronnies, and I was staggered how good and crisp the sound was by modern standards. If I’m not wrong, C451s in booms. And for Ronnie C’s end monologue, a Micron/ECM50. Credits: Hugh Barker (music) and Robin Luxford.
Dave Plowman
Re “…Little Women on BBC1 currently. …Sound is woeful…I was going to make the same comment, but thought why bother. No one seems to care anymore. Don’t they have dubbing mixers with ears any more? The vast majority of it was shot in such a way as to have zero need for personal mics all of the time. But then when did that ever matter?
I’ve heard film sound from 80 years ago that had far better dialogue quality.
Also, if ‘they’ are going to accept dialogue with nothing above about 1kHz content, why not do the same to the music that drowns it out? As happened more than once on this.
The other over this period was the only thing we watched Xmas day (apart from the Queen) – the Judy Dench “Mrs Henderson”. Which we all enjoyed – except at the very end when the continuity announcer came in so very much louder than the film that everyone in the room jumped and commented – and none of [the comments] anything to do with TV or anything technical. Although one did put it down to my ‘massive speakers’, saying it was always OK on his set!
John Nottage
Last night we watched all 3 episodes of “Little Women” and I have to say we had no problem with the dialogue. A couple of times the words were rather muffled and a few times they were nearly drowned out by the music. Otherwise it was quite audible. Two points: we had to have the sound level high so the continuity announcements were very loud; and we were listening through my new Canton DM55 soundbase rather than through the old Panasonic TV. That certainly makes a huge difference to the overall quality.Dave Plowman
There wasn’t much in the way of obvious mumbling. Although I did notice the first bit where Ms Lansbury spoke had rather more ‘top’ than the majority of it on her voice only.And I noticed the credit for the dialogue coach.
I’d love to know what speakers they use these days in the dubbing suite – voiced incredibly ‘bright’? Might explain the ‘dull’ sound we so often get at home.
I do realise there is an age thing – the ability to understand poorly recorded dialogue gets more difficult as you age. But if I found [everything] difficult on TV and radio I’d know it was just down to me.
David Denness
I took the time to look up the credits on IMdb which revealed a large film sound department with several of them operating ADR. They must have recorded any ADR through a sock to match the original sound captured on set.A boom operator is also listed. He can only have been employed for wide shot fx.
There wasn’t the other prevalent problem these days of actors mumbling. Diction appeared good throughout, just poor audio capture technique.
Geoff Fletcher
Nobody seems to care anymore about excellence or quality. Are our generation dinosaurs harking back to a bygone age where standards actually mattered?Terry Meadowcroft
This has become a pet subject to me…My experience tells me that if a personal is well placed and not covered by more or less anything, it can at best sound about a tenth as good (measured in Terry units) and realistic as a well positioned and well chosen mic. in free air.
Everyone should at some time in their lives simultaneously make two recordings of someone talking, on a well placed personal on one track and a well-placed, well chosen mic. in the air on the other, and then to directly compare the recordings on a single speaker, switching between the two. Then, to modify, however you like, one or other of the tracks so that they match when compared. This points out just how different they are.
Close ‘chest cavity’ and ‘throat’ distortions (mic. near the vocal cords), and frequency distortions due to cavities created around a personal mic. (for example the one from someone crouching down and creating a ‘box-like cavity in front of the chest) are impossible to remove convincingly using EQ because they are quite sharp resonances, and they ‘ring’.
It just ain’t natural to listen to someone with your ear pressed close to the chest, or, worse, the neck where the vocal cords reside. Or, even worse still, from under their woolly scarf next to the neck! They just don’t sound good from there.
Because the bottom line, like it or not, is increasingly important production-by-production, speed of production is of the essence so multi-camera setups are necessary to save time. So personal miking is sadly the only way to go, and even when used intelligently in an acoustically well – designed studio, you really cannot produce a natural reproduction of the voice when the mic. is stuck to the body.
‘Air’ – short reverb fx, can be added to personal-miked mixes, or isolated personal miked rushes in post-production, but the complex impression of relative distance of the various voices cannot be recorded with personals and the feeling of space around the actors, (which our hearing system ‘learns’ as a result of years of experience, particularly in early life), is impossible to replace convincingly, artificially in post. Which is a pity as we use it to separate people who are talking, and it greatly aids intelligibility.
All these things bring poor intelligibility. Add to that there has been a gradual reduction of respect for Sound Engineers’ input (including total lack of sound people on the crew in many instances), we frequently have poor sound quality and poor intelligibility. br>
This isn’t going to change.
Graeme Wall
“… Because the bottom line, like it or not, is increasingly important production-by-production, speed of production is of the essence so multi-camera setups are necessary to save time…”In which case, take the obvious step and shoot it as a proper, vision-mixed, multi-camera set up. Then you can use proper boom mounted mikes and get decent sound. Trouble is, that requires the “director” to actually do his home-work and work out what the shots should be before it gets into post.
Pat Heigham
“…Close ‘chest cavity’ and ‘throat’ distortions (mic. near the vocal cords)..”Those of us who worked on “Panorama” with Richard Dimbleby will remember plugging in the ‘Dimbleby filter’ to the mic line to the wall box. This was developed to reduce the chest resonance as Richard was a bulky man! In those days the mic was a BK6B – moving-coil omni mic with a very good bass response (often used stuffed in the bridge of a string bass).
Years later, I worked on a series where David Frost was the presenter (I had known Frost from “TW3” at TVC). For some reason (maybe shot size) I was forced into radio miking him, and tried my usual first choice of a Tram TR50. It sounded ‘metallic’ so switched to my Sony ECM 77, same sound! Finally, tried the Cos 11 – same again! Came to the conclusion that it was an effect of his voice, so carried on with any of those mics. Listened on transmission, and was not aware of the metallic effect whatsoever. Can’t explain it – was it an artefact of my mixer (SQN) or my cans (Sennheiser HD 25)?
One’s monitoring chain has to be trustworthy.
Brian Curtis
I think that you’ve hit the nail on the head about the monitoring chain being trustworthy! However also the ears listening at the end of the chain should be discerning! Perhaps that’s where a major problem lies!As an aside it is also who is monitoring what. A few years ago when I was working for Premier Radio I did lots of OBs all around the country with a Soundcraft Spirit Folio mixer, various vocal mica and a few condenser mica for “live” instruments (and CHOIRS!). I always monitored with good old Sennheiser HD25 headphones BUT gave the presenters cheap but adequate SonyVR150 headphones (£12 a pair) on the grounds that they were good enough for presenters to hear cue programme, themselves and local play out etc but were expendable when dropped, stood on or variously mislaid etc.
Terry Meadowcroft
The BK6B was one I used back in the day at the BBC in Leeds BH, and it resides in my collection. Nice mic., I thought, though ugly. Fine for radio!I used the Tram TR50 from the time it appeared on the scene, and found it to be a really good mic. for the job, very easy to mount, and although it was a deal toppy, this could be used to advantage. I used it with Frost when we did a doco in America about the American Way of life. Ended up using and liking the COS11 and liked it very much, though it was not as easy to mount as the Tram.
After leaving YTV to “go freelance”, the Tram was used daily on a Documentary series (4 series) called “O’Shea’s Big Adventure” for Channel 4 and “Animal Planet” which involved much running about in various wildernesses, from rain forests to deserts and all between, and turned out to be very sturdy, surviving several dunkings, temperatures from 10 below to 50 above and much rough treatment. My mixer was an SQN4 (now part of my sound set-up at home), and we shared the same choice of headphones, which I changed to from the previous Beyer DT48 head crushers, and got all the low bass which the DT 48 didn’t do well, and none of the crushing weight and voice-coil rattles to which they were prone!
Mark O’Shea, the presenter, got used to me calling “bucket!” when I saw him take up the crouch position which created the sound of him being inside a bucket – we had a great relationship and he was very flexible, and soon stopped doing the bucket!
Sadly the ears are part of the monitoring channel, and there’s nothing you can tweak in there :-), though I never met the effect you did, even with David Frost’s voice. (I couldn’t imagine shouting ‘bucket’, or anything else, to him, though – we didn’t find him crew-friendly!)
I also bumped into Richard Dimbleby, though not in person, as he was dead. In my early post-shadowing career at Bush house I left the Czech Continuity desk key for the Greenwich Pips down and broadcast pips over his funeral procession all over Czechoslovakia!
Mike Giles
Having been forewarned, I wound up iPlayer to watch episode 1 and had less difficulty in following dialogue than I had anticipated, but perhaps I was concentrating too hard. I did need a lie down afterwards!I certainly agree that most of the sound was “mellow”, whilst there were inconsistent elements that were clean and clear and had room acoustic around them, but this would not be my first choice as a culprit when raising the flag for better intelligibility in drama ~ that reverse accolade must still surely go to “Jamaica Inn”, which instigated much of the current debate.
Amazing really, that once upon a time, given good performances, excellent boom ops and predictable equipment, it all seemed so easy at the receiving end! You had to work quite hard to mess it up!
We’ve just watched “Snow Bears” on iPlayer and Kate Winslet’s commentary got what is obviously becoming the de rigueur vocal treatment ~ muffled and partially overcome by specially commissioned music, which is obviously the most important element ~ probably more expensive than the commentator and with clearly a much more important message to convey!
John Howell
I spent many a dub with the MD sitting to my left saying “keep it loud” and the Director to the right saying “keep it loud, we paid a lot for this music”.I recall one instance during a dramatic moment with music playing I was told we didn’t need to hear a particular line of dialogue so “keep the music high”. I asked how the viewer would know the line was not needed: “… if he couldn’t hear it, you could see the lips moving!…”
I think it was a dub in the same series when we had edited the music so much that it was essential to add reverb to the ends of some cues and the Australian MD insisted on timing the cues to the very end thus making him a few more Dollars. The tape op. and myself never got a penny!
Terry Meadowcroft
Some goodly time ago now I worked on many dramas done on location on one single mechanical camera, very efficiently indeed by modern standards. There was a simple formula. Tight shots, (where the boom could easily teeter along the top of shot – out of shot of course but only just!) in each direction, followed by wides, where the mic didn’t have to get in, as the tight sound would be used; actors would find this easy, as they were well aware of the formula, and each sequence was quickly in the can, using a small friendly crew who knew each others’ modus operandi and could therefore work quickly and with least stress on the actors, who got to know crew members well and were not phased by them.Incredibly flexible too.
Not a lot of shouting as the crew was small, and a very agreeable way of working, and, by modern standards, cheap as chips.
It worked so well, and there was a pleasant quality to the sound, with correct perspective and atmosphere; no mic rustle problems, no messing about fitting mics to people and personals, which were rarely used, only helped out when the action precluded getting a boom in.
Quick, efficient and good in terms of the bottom line, too – hello you Directors!.
We could as an industry do well, to consider turning the clock back and making drama shooting a pleasant affair again, without ridiculously long hours and large crews, and people hanging in rags and working inefficiently as a result.
Both sound and vision-wise, could we rediscover pleasant sound, no muffles, no unrealistic voice quality, perspective there for less cost – and quickly, and everybody encouraged to be involved and included in the process?
Into the bargain maybe we could achieve a great reduction in the numbers of customers quite rightly moaning about bad sound quality.
Need I repeat, personals are a pain; they cause a loss of realism, a lot of time lost fiddling about, stressed actors, everyone included and less unpleasantness all round.
Worth considering, methinks. But then, I’m just a grumpy retired old git who remember consistently good sound on telly!
Geoff Fletcher
Sounds like shooting a drama on film to me – small crew, one camera, etc., etc.Anglia did most of their filmed dramas like this, with the occasional additional camera(s) for pyro/action sequences. Our OB dramas were shot on a small 3 camera unit, but I preferred working on film shoots. h3>
Terry Meadowcroft
Yes, all very well inside properly constructed and acoustically treated studio, but so often these days outside locations are used, with no acoustic treatment, which dictate much closer boom positioning. In poor locations, which are so often used now – costs again – you need to work fairly close in to the actors, which precludes wide shots being taken simultaneous with the tight ones.I have worked in both studios and, very much, not in studios. When working in studios one can achieve much ‘tighter’ sound at a much greater distance.
Roger Long
Many years ago, 1966, Ken Loach shot “Cathy Come Home” on 16mm and radios for a BBC Wednesday Play. I was working with one of its actors Ray Brooks – I was a boom op on another Wednesday Play, he told me confidently that radio mikes were the way forward and my days were numbered.He was indeed right but it did take another 44 years before my demise. Kenneth Loach has a lot to answer for.
Dave Plowman
I keep hearing this simultaneous wide shot argument. In most intimate scenes where dialogue is all important, it is the close ups that are most used. The wide only once in a while. And in that, the performance isn’t as important. By all means use more than one camera to cover the close ups or different sizes of those – we can cope with that.Also – how often does such a scene go through with no re-takes?
John Howell
I recall a drama series many moons ago (1985?) where the skills of Lighting, Cameras and Sound were grasped by the production to great effect. Anyone remember “Howard’s Way”? with Jan Harvey, Stephen Yardley, and Glyn Owen. The brief seemed to be ‘Bright, Bold, and Loud’, I called it ‘Chromium Plated’ at the time. The lighting was high-key and the sound wasn’t loud but compressed a little more than we were used to with some extra HF, but above all accurate microphone work. There was never any doubt who was talking and where they were in the set.I suspect that the Producer Gerry Glaister had the idea for this approach, he was a great supporter of us in sound as I found out on “Secret Army.”
Yes, Chromium rather than our usual Nickel Plate!
Dave Plowman
Of course we were once told TV needed rather more ‘bright’ sound due to the poor quality of the receivers, compared to the average radio. And nothing has changed since then – except that fewer listen to the radio as such.Could be the current generation are so used to the dreadful sound quality of digital phones that anything sounds better. Assuming they ever use their phone as a phone, of course.
Chris Woolf
The tutors [at Wood Norton ETD] were, inevitably, a little partisan at times, taught what they thought were the “right” things, and sometimes missed out subjects that “weren’t invented here”. That is no different from any training organisation, and I mention it only because you can trace various gaps and biases in UK technical approaches to this source.You know many of these because I’ve bored people to tears over the years with some of them – things like critical distance, and the derogatory comparison of VUs versus PPMs are just a couple. And I can’t remember how long it took to convert people away from an implicit belief in 600ohm impedance.
Roger Long
Percy Guy was a little partisan ,but his lectures on tape machines and their line up foibles stood me well in the field for first line maintenance.Critical Distance is just common sense, the first time you stood Nagra over shoulder, MKH 405 on a short pole and a pair of AKG K50 cans on you pretty soon understood near field and diffuse field.
As for VU v PPM, again the Nagra peak reading modulometer was so obviously superior to a volume unit reader.
When the first Sony video recorders came out with feeble VU meters, modulation went to pot, especially with operators with a ‘Studio Tan’ venturing out for the first time…
As for 600 ohms loading, all BBC control kit had Telecom pre-history , it was an obvious anachronism All in all BBC ETD did us proud, later courses were eye openers: on my film stereo course we had the Decca boys down to WN. That was fascinating, and way off Beeb doctrine.
An introduction to PSC was another mind change ,virtually a Sony Hospitality Junket where they tried to persuade us that their lumbering kit was better than an ARRI. SR and a Nagra VI! We did get a free Sony Swiss Army penknife though, and the OB boys thought the kit was great compared to their grey furniture vans.
It was in the States that I always appreciated Wood Norton rigour. They were straight into video, and had all been on the same limited film school courses, all had the same gear. We were still on film, they thought this quite archaic or even exotic, but they marvelled at flexibility and no cables.
Dave Plowman
Basically, personal mics are very convenient for the production department which really doesn’t care about sound quality, as such. Just to make things simple for them. And perhaps fine if shooting doco style with available light.But that is not the style under discussion. Nor am I totally against their use – just when you end up with difficult to understand dialogue because of them.
Chris Woolf
We can really blame the BBC technical training of staff to a small extent, the general lack of training to production to a much greater one, and the demise of all technical operational control to a massive amount. > The BBC used to train about audio perspective, but were largely silent on “intelligibility”. That’s a subject that is covered by lots of warning systems etc, but only rarely gets mentioned in entertainment, and signally fails in churches and other PA venues. And we never train any of the current mejia people in the subject at all.The presumption is that volume can substitute for almost any poor intelligibility – make it louder and it will be OK. That fails to grasp the problem completely. The need for adequate frequency response, for the sort of relationship between reverberant and direct sound that our brains anticipate, the level of competing background sound, and its directionality – none of these get mentioned in the excuses used by production staff to defend abysmal sound quality. They argue that it is just some twitter individuals trying to have a go at them, and that they can understand every word. Of course they can, when they know the script, can lip-read the actors from 3ft away on the screen and listen on a laptop with all the bass missing below 300Hz.
We will not get sensible answers from anyone until some people in control of programme-making actually discover the entirely technical explanation and vocabulary of “intelligibility”, and can start applying it.
My wife has no knowledge of audio, but sifts out older style programmes, which use a boom from newer style ones with personals, with unerring accuracy. She listens happily to the former, and switches on the subtitles to the latter because she’s fed up with missing half the plot. Her hearing is not deficient in any way, and has nothing to do with the problem. Winding up the level does no good whatsoever. Interestingly, adding in a better sound system with respectable bass, rarely improves things greatly either, but frequently shows up the appalling LF rumbles, wind noise and clothes rustle that the production team clearly failed to hear during post.
Dave Plowman
Excellent article,Pity the BBC don’t seem to say this when it comes up on Feedback, etc. They always seem to find someone with lame excuses. And who says lessons have been learned. Until the next occurrence.
I’ve got a Behringer Composer I can put in circuit. It’s basically a pretty sophisticated EQ device which doesn’t cost a fortune. And can store all settings in numerous memories. You often can improve clarity – at the expense of increase clothing rustle and or background noise. This was shown on later episodes of “Happy Valley” were they did something similar – which does rather say that it is the original placement of the mics which is unsatisfactory, if clothing rustle is a problem. And, of course the clothes themselves.
Many years ago on a police series, we had gauze fitted to the lapels of the uniform over jackets, to allow a personal to be pretty well unobstructed. And cravats specially made in a similar material for female uniforms. But that cost money, and needed cooperation between departments. Not easy on a one off or short series.
It might also surprise many on here just how variable personal mics of the same make and model can sound after some time in service.
Roger Long
We can’t blame esteemed Wood Norton ETD. They did a very good grounding in broadcast requirements, operations and engineering. But when I went to TFS Ealing, we were taught the importance of intelligibility in film sound on our induction course. Clarity and diction were emphasised, because of the nature of film location as opposed to Studio. Dialog was to be clean and intelligible, a pre mixed track for the Dubbing Mixer.We were not harvesters of sound for post production, we were the first stage of a finished product. We were lectured by recordists ,dubbing mixers and film editors, all had the same theme, clarity and always keep a good diary (In case you cock up).
I’ve just watched “All about Eve” on BBC2 , an eloquent, sophisticated witty dialog-driven film from 1950. All dialog was absolutely delivered even with back to camera, clarity was acute and music to the minimum. Recorded on a RCA ribbon boom, possibly fig 8 configured, and put through at least 5 or 6 generations of mag or even optical, it sounded really excellent.
Where the hell did it all go so wrong?
Chris Woolf
Wood Norton was an excellent training ground, and I both owe a great deal to it, and also admire most of what it did.
However the tutors were, inevitably, a little partisan at times, taught what they thought were the “right” things, and sometimes missed out subjects that “weren’t invented here”. That is no different from any training organisation, and I mention it only because you can trace various gaps and biases in UK technical approaches to this source.
You know many of these because I’ve bored people to tears over the years with some of them – things like critical distance, and the derogatory comparison of VUs versus PPMs are just a couple. And I can’t remember how long it took to convert people away from an implicit belief in 600ohm impedance.
I would give anything to see the same depth and quality of teaching being restarted in the industry, though the pattern of technology makes much of that impossible now. But we should still be just as observant and note the gaps and deviance of teaching in any such organisation, and nudge it up to date where it needs it. There is all the difference in the world between being respectably critical of elements within an organisation, and just being derogatory about it.
Pat Heigham
I hate to disillusion you, but unless you know for certain, about the RCA boom mic, an awful lot of 1950s films made use of post-sync ‘looping’ (Re-recorded in studio conditions).I chatted to a sound editor of advanced years to ascertain whether this was done in the days of optical sound recording, before magnetic, and yes, indeed it was. I can expand on the technique, further, if anyone needs a more detailed explanation.
Roger Long
I’m a horrible cynic, I was disillusioned easily by meeting some of my heroes whilst working with them…I know a lot about looping, I’ve seen some dreadful examples in my time. This 20th Century Fox Production is sync, I’m sure of it. They couldn’t get Post Sync frame accurate until Rock’n’Roll dubbing came in the late 1960s and the acoustic matches were always wrong (Even Orson Welles could not master it absolutely). Bette Davis was going through a messy divorce at the time, that’s why her voice is throaty from shouting at her soon-to-be-ex-husband, this suited the part perfectly in my humble opinion and the Director Joseph L Mankiewicz loved and used it.
Looping started in the late 1930s when sel/syn dubbing appeared, it enabled Laurel and Hardy to revoice their films for foreign release rather than shoot phonetic translations. I’m pretty sure about the RCA Ribbon as well, this was standard Hollywood till they made a cardioid version (with an acoustic labyrinth system). I’m always amazed how well 8s sounded on the huge sound stages and wide sync shots of the 1930s and 1940s. So amazed that when the MKH 30 arrived in the 1980s I realised this was a magical microphone, especially for music.
…
My first taste of post production tinkering was at Bush House in 1965, I was working as a tape editor and operator and I found a basement editing suite that took BBC travel and Nature films and edited them for the then prim US market. They specialised in blooping out nipples on pubescent African tribeswomen, ingenious and time consuming work…
Graeme Wall
I seem to remember there was an old feature film (B&W) where the plot revolved around the post-sync dubbing?Roger Long
“Singin’ in the Rain”. A brilliant film.Pat Heigham
“Singin’ In The Rain” is my favourite film, If there was ever a programme along the lines of “Desert Island Discs” but for Films, that would be my ‘saved’ title.What I find amusing, but sad, is that the sound problems depicted are still with us!
I often wonder if the perceived antipathy between Camera and Sound departments (in the film industry) is due to sound shutting them into a soundproof cabinet!).
(P.S. it always makes me emotional at the end when he sings to the girl!)
Terry Meadowcroft
[“Singin’ In The Rain” ] Lovely film!Thankfully Sound and Cameras always got on very well in the YTV Film Dept.!
We always managed to accept and get on with each other as people, not as what we did.
Nick Ware
Okay, so … now it’s favourite films.High on my list is “Theatre of Blood”, starring Vincent Price and a host of others you’d all know, and probably worked with. And above all, it’s a time capsule of London in 1973, and the Feature film industry as it was at that time.
No friction between cameras and sound anywhere I’ve ever been!
John Howell
Mine’s got to be “The African Queen”. From Robert Morley’s grumbling stomach at the start to the prospect of raising a head of steam by chucking two or three wet logs into a boiler, I loved it. Mind you I was projectionist for the school Film Society so I saw it six times in one week.Roger Long
“Barry Lyndon” is one of my favourites (All Kubricks’ films in fact). It’s the first movie with really good radio mics (Microns) and some fantastic set piece 18th Cent Battles.“Hail Caesar” is my current fave Coen movie ,but again I love them all, excellent sound and design again on all.
Always love “Lost Horizons” from 1936. Our film hut in BBC Whiteladies Rd was called Shangrila for very good reason…
Graeme Wall
Has to be “The Titfield Thunderbolt”, first film I saw in a cinema.
Alasdair Lawrance
I remember being highly impressed with “2001 – A Space Odyssey”. It’s very out of date and not rated nowadays, but I saw the restored and IMAXed version in Brum. (2016?), and was mightily impressed all over again. Especially the music – can you hear the “Blue Danube” and not think of the film now? Or “Also Sprach Zarathustra”?Lots of foreign films – “Closely Observed Trains”, and almost anything by Bergman (Ingmar, not Ingrid)
Roger Long
My first Cinema experience was ABC Minors on a Saturday morning in Cheltenham Promenade. 2000 9 year olds screaming the Odeon down and running amok in the isles and throwing missiles from the balcony.Twenty years later this put me in good stead for recording a Bay City Roller concert in Finsbury Park Astoria, except that one had even more wet seats. The hysterical noise was truly awful and that was just the band..
I was in the Smithsonian IMax in Washington watching a Nasa Cape Canaveral Launch which was a bit vertiginous, a student behind me was sick down my back, this added to the sensuround effect in ways unknown to the director.
I went to the Gloucester Odeon for two Beatles gigs, again little could be heard from the stage, but the performance was terrific.
When working in Florida on “Zoo 2000” (a whole year of zoos round the world!, never wanted to visit another one) we saw a night time Shuttle Launch very close to the Cape, we had a BBC Pool party, and practically everybody in the Holiday Inn attended, we filled waste paper baskets with ice and wine and floated them in the pool and had silly diving competitions etc. The take off was awe inspiring to say the very least.
Life on the road had its moments.
Mike Jordan
I don’t profess to being a "real" sound man but do various PA jobs not too badly thanks to old style BBC Wood Norton training which let even mere engineers do a bit of audio work!However I have been very upset by recent “EastEnders” episodes (December 2017) (OK, so I am sad and watch it, remembering how the set really is from having done a few OB shows at Elstree) where production require lots of whispering, either so no other members of the cast in an adjacent room are supposed to overhear (even though shot at different times) or requiring delicate and often sad situations.
The problem is that even with a half decent TV etc, it becomes unintelligible, requiring constant fiddling with levels or rewinding and trying again rather than have the more shouty cast members deafening one. I know it is the scheme of things nowadays but it really ruins the show.
There must be a better way?
Off now to mend lots of mini-XLR adaptor leads for inputs to the Sennheiser packs which are jacks- UGH ( discourages actors from loosening the jacks when swapping packs and hence bending the internal contacts).
I have been watching “EastEnders” over Christmas and, although I know it is done for effect, there was so much whispering that at times it required winding up the sound levels to actually know what was being said.
Atmosphere is not everything when one can’t actually hear what is going on! The fire trucks were very busy with the rain effects though!
Trooping the Colour
John Cox
What magnificent coverage of the Trooping [the Colour Saturday, 9th Jun 2018] in vision and sound! In the 1950s we struggled to get clean voice effects (shouted orders): we used a two foot reflecting parabola dish and omni microphones, six foot long Electrovoice 643 shotgun mics, three foot long Labor gun mics, Sennheiser battery operated 815 mics later, 816 phantom power. I expect nowadays Radio Mics. Does anyone know? The distinction between effects and commentary was very clear, congratulations to everyone involved.In the 1950s the BBC OBs were very welcomed at Horse Guards parade ground. We always used both offices of the Major General, alternating commentators, Richard Dimbleby, Wynford Vaughan Thomas and Michael Seth Smith, between Radio and TV each year. Later we were pushed out to other parts of the ground. The offices are now used exclusively for the Royals. I was standing next to Richard Dimbleby in the office on the Admiralty side of the building when Big Ben struck eleven o’clock (probably1956) when the Queen had not appeared, the clock at the top of the Major General’s office was stopped and only struck when the Queen arrived fifteen minutes later. After the parade when the Queen heard of this she was very annoyed and made sure in the following years that everything was kept to strict timing.
I try to watch the RAF fly past each year. I flew in the first fly past to celebrate the King’s Birthday in 1950 Thursday June 8th. Four Lincoln Bombers from RAF Hemswell near Gainsborough and nine Lincolns from RAF Binbrook near Hull. We formed up over the east (one aircraft peeled off) and flew in a straight line along the strand above Trafalgar Square where the blue of the two fountains was exceptionally clear and then on to Buckingham Palace. I sat in the wireless operators metal bucket seat cushioned by my parachute, not daring to touch the receiver 1155 or transmitter 1154 but I think communication was carried out by VHF on the fairly new 1143 sets. I stood up to look at the scene below from the Strand to the Palace: after, we the flew down to Brighton, turned left on to Dover, turned left again, over the Wash and back to RAF Hemswell after a most exciting trip.
How much gravel was used in covering the ground? Also, I didn’t see any soldiers fainting as in previous years, My sympathies’ are with the soldiers left to clear up the excreta from the well behaved horses after the show.
David Denness
An old (younger) friend of mine who worked on the Trooping tells me Andy Payne was the Sound Supervisor utilising a collection of 416 and 816 mics on Horse Guards and around the arena together with radios on various military personnel. No RF on band.I agree the sound coverage was excellent.
Roger Long
Andy did splendid Royal Wedding music as well….Pat Heigham
As I knew Graham Haines from TVC, before he went to OBs, I was impressed with a Trooping of the Colour some years ago. I wanted to know how he dealt with the band turning around, marching the other way. So I phoned him.He was good to reply to me, think it was a mirror image of 816s and a quick reaction on the faders!
Sound Balance Home Selection
Mike Jordan
The BBC forum has this post from one JohnW:-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The BBC is testing a new technology that allows hearing impaired viewers to change the levels of the audio on a programme.
The technology is available via the BBC’s Taster website where drama ‘Casualty’ is available for viewers to set their own levels in the audio mix. Viewers can use a slider (button) in addition to the volume control which can be moved to reduce any background noise – including music – thus making the dialogue crisper.
ccording to Lauren Ward, project lead on the A&E Audio Project Team, work on the special episode of “Casualty” began in post production, during the audio mix, when each sound, or group of sounds, was given an importance level (stored in metadata) by the dubbing mixer or producer.
The slider – or Narrative Balancer as the BBC is calling it – is then added to the online media player. “At one end of the slider all the objects are the same level as the original broadcast mix. At the other end is a simplified mix with louder speech and only the most important sounds to the narrative. The viewer is then able to adjust between these two mixes to find the balance of dialogue and other sounds that they prefer,” Ward told the BBC Taster website.
Behind the scenes, the player is looking at where the viewer sets the slider and for every group of sounds, either turns their volume up or down based on its importance.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mike Giles
What a load of unadulterated rubbish ~ “Casualty”, that is!But the same applies to this project as presented here ~ I found odd words difficult to catch, but rewinding to use the alternative mix didn’t make the diction any clearer, not that there was much that didn’t register first time.
Far better to have done a re-mix on one of the problem sections of “Jamaica Inn” or “Happy Valley”, where the problem has already been identified. I doubt that missing the odd word in this episode would have much effect on one’s understanding of the plot anyway, but then I’m a biased middle-class grump.
It all still comes down to proper production values allowing the sound guys to have decent material to work with ~ same as computers ~ garbage in, garbage out, with our without music and FX!
We’ve just been watching an old “Lewis” and every word was crystal clear, but there was no lack of atmosphere ~ nobody was trying anything clever, just getting on with tried and tested techniques, I would think.
Pat Heigham
I really do agree with Mike Giles:I belong to The Association of Motion Picture Sound (AMPS), the members being highly experienced practitioners in recording and post producing the audio – many of whom not only work in feature cinema films but also the high-end TV drama productions. We are also worried that our comments are being ignored at the shooting stage.
It has been said, many times, when unintelligible dialogue is brought to the notice of the director, it is passed, because – he/she has headphones and the script in front!
Maybe “Lewis” was filmed before the idea of multiple cameras, which then buggered the use of conventional booms (1 camera wide, 1 or more on CUs), thus forcing the use of personal mics, which on a costume/period drama gives rise to problems with the costumes/and muffling.
Old cinema films – crystal clear dialogue, may well have been recorded as is on set, but also probably been post synced. That is a process that is very expensive for a TV series, and dependant on the artistes being available when needed – difficult when they are on to their next project.
A re-recording mixer I knew about, was going for take after take on an ADR session. Eventually the director asked him why. He replied: “If I can’t understand him, then neither will the f*****g audience!” Perhaps that should be the approach for today’s production mixers?
