Sankens, Trams, and Mickey Twos

Best experience with multiple wireless to date. Good thing, too. I was recording an 8 page scene, shot on film with the director following his actors around a living room with an Aaton XTR Super 16mm camera on his shoulder. The master shot was using all 360 degrees of direction, which means no place to hide microphone cable. The camera was handheld and moving, with no video assist, which means an unpredictable frameline to keep a microphone above. The take was about 8 minutes long, which is far too long for most arms to hold a boom overhead with precision and grace. Fortunately, we just happened to have excellent professional wireless on hand.

I used Sanken COS-11 microphones for the first time. The thin, square, rubber mounts proved to work very well against the evil that is known as cloth noise. We adhered them to the inside of the actors’ shirts with clear and chewy 3M Adhesive Transfer Tape (a.k.a snot). The mike head rests in the open via a cut out in the mount, just behind the fabric without contact, and moves with the shirt so there’s never any friction on the grille. The only time I heard cloth was the inevitable sound of a shirt shifting around while an actor walks briskly, luckily not over any of his lines. Put your ear down near your shoulder and move your shirt with your hand to hear what that sounds like.

Two days earlier we used Trams to wire the talent. I have to say that the voice sounded clearer with the Tram versus the Sanken on that set. However, I suspect different microphones work better with different circumstances. The Sanken on the lead actress yesterday sounded absolutely delicious. Wiring technique is not a hard science because there are too many variables—every voice, microphone placement, and wardrobe is unique. Nina enunciated her words clearly, with pleasant tonal qualities, and she was wearing a cotton T-shirt. We used a backup Sennheiser ME 2, as our fourth lav, for the boy playing her son, tucked just inside his collar to sound more open then on his chest. His voice came through a little less clear. It was sort of like listening to someone talk with their hand over their mouth, only not nearly that extreme. The difference is subtle enough that I doubt an audience would notice, but it’s quite a difference to gear heads. I read that the MKE 2 performs higher than the ME 2, which is the standard issue lav with the G2 wireless kits. I used one once about a year ago, recording customer testimonials for Quickbooks, but I couldn’t tell the difference back then.

Trams rock, Sankens are dope, and Mickey Twos are a’ight, for my fellow ‘up and comer’ sound guys. One thing is for sure, transmission reception is lightyears better with Lectrosonics transmitters and receivers. I’ll write about that later.

The shoot went very well, despite not having many opportunities to boom. I never heard any signal drop-outs, clothing didn’t overlap with any dialogue, and voices sounded more like someone speaking in front of you, rather than someone speaking while your ear is resting on their chest.

Sound Depth of Field

So I was sleepless last night after having been in bed only 3 hours, and decided to try reading on the couch. Good time for the deeper concepts of David Sonnenschein, which I don’t have the patience for normally. I’ve picked up and put down the book so many times, I can’t remember which parts I’ve been over. Terms like "emotional inventory" and "musique concrète" demand a mode of creative thinking that doesn’t jive with my practical side. He’s showing the artistic potential within a mostly technical craft. It crosses the wires in my brain because I know the conditions on the battlefield of production don’t allow for such artistic freedom. It’s like how military warfare could be more like performing ballet. I came to a place where he wrote that people can only subjectively discern one or two sounds at a time, any more would blend together as one sound. “Bullshit,” I thought.

I fetched myself a bowl of leftover spaghetti, and put on the DVD the director lent me as an example of great sound design. I sat with my ears maybe 18 inches from the speakers of my TV, with my face in the spaghetti, and listened to the opening scene of the movie as the light from the picture glowed around me. You can actually hear a lot of distinct sounds without the distraction of the visual sense. I was fascinated that no matter where it was in the movie… no more than 3 sounds were going on at any given moment, and many times just one sound. They actually killed the background sound of cicadas in the desert when a car radio started, and when the radio stopped, the cicadas faded back in. This was the answer I was looking for regarding the sound equivalent of focus, or depth-of-field.

Earlier today, actually, my wife wanted to show me how clean the Wilhelm Scream* is in Pixar’s Lifted. It was very clean, albeit also very wet because the character falls down a hole, but I noticed something else. When the story continues aurally as the credits burn in on screen, we hear each sound separately, like they each take a turn without overlapping. Alarm clock, bird tweets, yawn, bed creak, Wilhelm, and body fall. That is fascinating! Now, certainly this is partly do to the comedy of a cartoon. Mechanical rhythm from what appears to be organic is funny. However, I think I’m on to one of the secrets to the magic of movie sound.

One sound at a time accomplishes two goals. It directs the audience’s attention to an object and it is heard clearly.

A scene between two people talking in a car came later. The sound of the car running was mixed very low. It seemed to be at most one third of the volume of the voices. The dialogue dominates unrealistically, but it works. Sound design served the story. That’s the key I’m striving to achieve.


*The Wilhelm scream was burned into my emotional memory as a stormtrooper falling when I was very young, because I watched and rewatched Star Wars so many times growing up. It's like your memory of a guitar solo in a song. When you hear it out of place, sampled in another song, you notice! I have been aware of the stormtrooper scream in movies just as long as I can remember but I never really could convince my friends that it was true. Well, I was right.