Your worst location audio ever

Posted: Fri Apr 04, 2003 8:55 am

Just to share a story...Lasy week I was scoring a set of hospital TVCs and matching radio spots. The client is in a smaller town up north, and wants to use the same VOC talent in the TVCs for the radio. They will record their radio lines at the video house and send them to me in some digital format.

First, the radio audio arrives. It has been recorded on a multipattern AKG, mistakenly left in figure-8 pattern, so the voices sound like they are in a tin can. Hilarious request #1 from the client: "Can you fix that?"

They rerecord the radio voices. Not good, but at least the mic was set to cardiod, so not bad. But the agency people are listening WAY too hard now. They claim the can still hear the tin can-iness, and opt to record the voices a THIRD TIME, this time at a studio in Detriot that has some mega-dollar mics. I get the DAT from Motown and it is stunningly lovely. Mix the spots, send them off, the client SWEARS it still sounds like they are in a tin can. And the music is too loud, and the mix is kinda distorted and it just generally sucks.

Now, all this time, they've been auditioning MP3s... playing them in iTunes on a Mac... and it occurs to me to ask the agency producer to check his virtual EQ settings. He does. They are whacked beyond belief. When he sets them flat, suddenly the spot sounds fine.

Two days later, the TV lip-synch audio arrives. The video producer has recorded the main talent in both spots using a cheap wireless lav, like a freakin' ENG unit would use. He has hidden the mic UNDER THEIR CLOTHES... and in one spot, the guy is supposed to be out chopping wood, and is wearing a DOWN VEST. He has essentially mic'ed the guy with a diaphragm the size of a pencil point hidden under a bed quilt. Does it sound bad? Yeah, it does... REAL bad. Between the clothes rustling and the total lack of high end, it sounds like holy hell. Hilarious request #2 from client: "Can you reduce the noise and brighten them up a little?"

But there's more. The video guy sees the error of his ways, and swears that on the remaining shoots, he'll have a real sound guy, with a boom and everything. And he does. Said sound guy shows up with a fairly low output mic and a cheap field preamp of some kind with a built-in limiter. Can't get the level he wants out of the mic, I guess... so he turns on the limiter, and cranks the pre all the way out. The DAT I get the next day is amazing... the meters look like I'm playing a dance record, except the level is too low... they come right up to -12, hover there, with NO dynamics... AND... it's distorted! Because the pre is breaking up and the limiter is helping! Hilarious client request #3: "Well, is there any way to take the distortion out? It sounds kinda harsh."

So, anybody else got any location audio horror stories?

Posted: Fri Apr 04, 2003 4:02 pm

I just got a cassette from a co- worker. It's a tutorial on religious chanting with a female presenter with what sounds like a fairly pleasant voice. The level is very low (almost in the cassette tape hiss noise floor) and also very "distant" sounding, with lots of natural room reverb (which is probably a church, from the sound of it) You can guess how pronounced the reverb must be, if you can barely hear the intended direct sound above the noise floor.

After citing an example of chanting, the choir demonstrates- probably miked with overhead hanging condensors which is typical. Loud and Clear! Then back to the presenter with the barely audible voice. My guess is the recordist neglected to turn on the presenter's mic, and she was mearly being picked up by the hanging choir mics. This goes on back and forth for about a half an hour.

I better get two free tickets to Heaven for fixing this one. (I may want to bring a friend) I'm certainly not going to pass "Go" and I won't collect $200.

Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2003 1:58 pm

Hey Jim,
I got 2 this week...
#1 CEO recorded for corp video in a very large marble surfaced room... client complains of echoes... out come the noisegates (ouch)...
#2 Public Radio field recording on small sony dat with stereo mic... levels are -4 and squashed bigtime... client says "it hurts to listen to this" (no sh*t!, it's about killin' me)... then the stereo mic is wavin' all around in this interview and going phase crazy (will make you vomit if wearing headphones!), it collapses okay in mono though the client has to be dragged screaming to allow me to do this 'cause "all our programs are in stereo.. that's how we do them"...

and it's only wednesday.

Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2003 7:52 pm

You guy's can take a licken!

OK, here's one. We have been lucky up to this point. The gig was a live to tape show involving an audience of about 75, 2 hosts, and 3 guests. A week prior we organized everything with the facility house engineer regarding setup, lights, sound, and cue's. Smile

Show time...The sound tech adjusted the mics on the fly in the open. Then, he could not determine who's mic was who's. So the level would distort like crazy while he was trying to find the right one. It made such a lousy open that, in post, I had to resort to a totally different begining.

Then, while the show was running skits and guests were speaking their parts, the mic was passed between them. This I didn't mind, except, the tech grabbed the wrong control every time Rolling Eyes

. The sound would clip at the receiver, then at the board, and into our recorders. It sounded awful Surprised

. I am posting this project now, and it is a lot of work to cleanup. I could not spare another person for this production, but next time I will insist we have our own audio person.

Sometimes, in a large organization, it is difficult to get someone interested in the task at hand, maybe because there is so much of the same old thing at times. Maybe this is the best opportunity to teach someone about gain riding, and alignment. My hands were full at the time, and it's not perfect. We have no choice but to use it. :d:

--Rick

Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2003 12:03 pm

Rick, your story reminds me of a remote I did some years ago where the client changed meeting rooms on us the night before and didn't notify us. We loaded in a 4 a.m. and started setting up this elaborate (24 mic'd speakers) pharmaceutical roundtable/sales meeting. At 7:30 a.m. the Hotel manager comes back on shift and informs us of the change to a ballroom on the other side of the hotel. The sight lines were completley different and the client had changed the setup/layout in a way that denied us sight lines on the 24 speakers. It was tight but we figured it out by 9a.m. and we got a decent recording. After that I raised my remote rate by 25%.

Posted: Mon Apr 28, 2003 2:06 am

If you ever want to go to audio post hell, go do it in mexico for a cheap production house that saved money every step of the way, and in the end when they couldn't sell the final product 'cause it was so cheap, they hire us to make it look/sound good.
Ok granted, I should have said no after hearing this explanation but I was 2 greedy and couldn't resist the extra $.

Week one
Find and qualify all the audio material...
As expected, about half the shows are recorded to dat and the other half straight to video (3/4, hissy compressed, distorted, etc...)
So make them match!!! Very Happy

Hugo de la Cerda
Re-recording mixer

Posted: Mon Apr 28, 2003 7:22 pm

I think these conditions can exist just about anywhere. In the past, there seemed to be a bit more time in preparation. Today, acquisition is immediate, the recent war coverage is a good example. There are long periods of quiet in the National News coverage, trickling down to the affiliates, and independent reporting associations.

What happens is things can get a little rusty, lot's of mistakes made in haste. Audio connections, lighting, continuity, testing are after thoughts while people try to get boned up at their assigned positions.
:d:

When we take this stuff into post, and try to make good with it, our own reputations may have to take the heat.
:d:

We have to do the best we can, with what we got. Sometimes some real creativity can make a (so so) production into something special, even if you have to resort to some very interesting tricks.
:s:

--Rick

Posted: Mon Apr 28, 2003 7:29 pm

It's nice to know I'm not banging my skull against a wall alone...
Right now I'm mixing a 1hr doc about an off-broadway production that recently ran it's final show. The final performance was a 4 camera shoot... using the camera mics (yippeeeee!) and 1 boom over the stage. However, somebody decided not to sync any of the cameras or the dat (for the boom) on location. All media is running wild at different time codes. The AVID editor has done his best to manually spot the audio, but obviously it's still out of sync.
Good times, huh?
Now the client informs me they'd like to go 5.1 for the theatre scenes... using the audio from all 5 location sources simultaneously.
I protest... to no avail... after all I'm only the lowly freelance mixer, right?
So I spend today trying to manually sync up and spot the audio from all 5 sources for a "Test Mix"... about as much fun as a root canal. At the end of the day, I play the "test mix" for the client.

"Something sounds weird... like phasey or something (ya think?). Could you fix that by tomorrow morning before the exec comes to screen?"

After deciding against lighting myself on fire in protest, I explain the problems (again) w/ the the location audio.

"Well just try to get it to sound good for tomorrow."

2 hours later, there's a message on my cell phone about a picture change... a big picture change. The AVID editor accidentally gave me an older version of the piece... the wrong picture, the wrong media, and the wrong OMF.

Time for a few beers...

Posted: Mon Apr 28, 2003 8:17 pm

My sympathies. LOL, no wonder nothing synced up. I remember what John Woram said, "Don't use 2 mics when one will do a better job," all ISO aside. One cam, at least, should have had house audio. I hope the new stuff is better. That sounds like a real tough project...and, after all the fine tuning, someone say's, "make me some vhs dub's in SLP, please." :d:

--Rick

Posted: Mon Apr 28, 2003 10:15 pm

the worst thing that can happen is when an idiot is the one who makes all the final critical decisions, which is most of the time I guess... :s:

Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2003 2:57 pm

[quote]Originally posted by Mario-C.:
[b] the worst thing that can happen is when an idiot is the one who makes all the final critical decisions, which is most of the time I guess... Smile

I have been very lucky up till recently, the forces that are pulling at the production needs are coming from people who have had little or no experience with production of any kind.

They think it is magic, that all the layering, processing, editing and polish, happens in real time. Surprised

I have been trying very hard to have one of these individuals sit in on an entire project, especially one with a loose script and lot's of room for creativity. That way, it can be seen, what goes into a production. This person would have to help me make decisions on everything from the title to the credits.

Want to bog someone down? Give them a loose script, while everyone backs up, on the phone, and at the door. I don't think, after that experience, that services would be granted away so easily. There is only so much time in a day, eh? :d:

--Rick

Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2003 9:53 pm

Large scale live broadcast/webcast awards show from a theatre at a college. Because of renovations to the theatre, the show gets bumped up a month earlier, with only a couple months notice. Because of this, the show now takes place during classes instead of after the semester ends, which means most of the crew (it's a student run show, the largest student run tv broadcast in the country) is running between the theatre/truck and classes instead of living at the theatre all day.

Again because of classes and the reschedule, what would normally be a good two days of full rehearsals turns into a day and a half with not one complete run-through.

Main snake needs to be run from the orchestra pit up onto the edge of the stage, up the back side of the proscenium wall, along a set of stairs, out the side of the building, and then along the side of the building (tied up at a good 8-10' off the ground) to the truck on the street in front of the theatre. It gets run, and when the truck shows up, it's about 20' short. No problem, we've got a good 100' of excess...but wait, it's in the pit, and we'd have to get out ladders and pull all the excess along the entire cable run, while keeping all the video runs in place! (Thankfully, we managed to find a spare shorter mult buried in one of the cable trunks that the rental house threw in for good measure!)

A few hours before the show is the first time I'm told that I need to do a webcast feed, as well as run a new press box in the dressing room that was serving as the press room. The press feed went fine, at one point we had to pull the web feed offline because it was thrown together so fast that we had a massive level mismatch somewhere along the line.

At some point, the wireless mics got mislabeled, and the mics end up on all the wrong people. Spent way more time during the live show than anybody ever should have to just figuring out which mic was on which of the four hosts, especially since the hosts were double mic'd and the doubles didn't necessarily match as labeled, either.

But in the end, it came together, and while it wasn't great, it wasn't horrible, and it was a great way to learn what to keep an eye out for the next year (which went fairly flawlessly, albeit there were tons of curveballs on the reinforcement side of things courtesy of the rental house...)

--A

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