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Noisy clothing


480sound

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Outwear made of synthetics (almost all outerwear thus), fashionably tight mens shirts with starch on hairy guys, all made worse if the talent is outdoors in the wind, of course…  Squeaky or cloppy shoes, hellish ties, too-tight men's shirt collars on stubbly guys; talent wearing a lot of equipment (cops, soldiers, campers, etc etc), and my recent fave, a group of "cave men" shot wide in a windy field, whose costumes were made of a combo of leather, plastic and fur (with not much concealed).  Long day, that one.

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Funny, but the wardrobe or shoes of others on set have given me more headaches as of late... The clunky heels and hard soled shoes of the Wardrobe, Make-up and other in the vanity squad have been a problem... Further, people are all on the go while shooting, a real problem and not getting better. People simply can not grasp staying still during a shot... It is unbelievable.

  It's a real gamble with wardrobe you need to mic... One of the first things I do is get an early start to checking that out and trying to work a few things out with our wardrobe friends well Before we are ready to place mics...  Jewelry and some accessories can be worked out in advance and sometimes actual wardrobe... sometimes...   Also making sure men are wearing undershirts beforehand can help a great deal.. 

Agreed cotton helps .... Silk sucks... It's a real crapshoot these days...  It can make or break a perfectly normal day and turn it into a noise fest where you are really having to shake up the mounts. All day long...  It's our world.... 

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What I wear changed somewhat when I became a soundie. No more swishy pants. Lead by example is my motto. Luckily I live in a warm climate.

I am also going to second Afewmoreyears comment on, onset crew's wardrobe choice being a serious issue. I can not tell you how many cam ops I have had to a quiet word to about their hard soled dress shoes. I'm sorry it's not a fashion show, I don't rock a mirror ball suit to work. 

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Agreed about the noisy clothes on set. Recently worked with a cam op who was also the steadicam op. He wore rain pants everyday, regardless of rain or not. Very annoying. He would eventually take them off, but only after I, my boom op and even the 1. AD had asked him about it several times.

There was a lengthy thread about clothing here, but I'll add that I have recently discovered loden pants. Hunter's pants are made of this. These pants are very quiet, robust, warm and water resistent, but fairly expensive and usually not pretty.

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I had a Stedicam guy wearing trousers made of rip-stop nylon, designed for desert environments. We were inside. Air conditioned. It was a shot leading an actress through a house set while she was on the phone. Swish swish swish. He was really surprised when I asked him to change. I had to explain he was no more than 2-3ft from the actor, and her lav was pretty close to his trousers. After shot was over, I asked him to listen to the track, and he conceded the noise was bad. But it didn't stop him from having the same outfit on EVERY time he showed up on our set. He was only there for Stedicam too. Crazy.

In terms of actors. If you must put a lav in a tie, which I hate, it is tragic when an actor has neck stubble and a tight collar. Having collar being 1/2 size too big versus 1/2 size too small makes a huge difference.

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I believe probably better form now on of on set crew wearing. The Gore Tex or hard shell clothing is just simply fading out ,by few reason , the PFC pollution being concerned , polartec or primeloft is mostly focus on soft shell weatherproof clothing.

But in Hong Kong filming industry , we got no chance to communicate wardrobe department before shooting or discuss on choosing textile  is just not common practice, probably never happened before............  

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On 1/10/2016 at 4:37 AM, Wandering Ear said:

Gortex coats.  Working through the winter in the northwest, I find more and more difficulty with noisy gortex coats, zipped up all the way above the chin.  It's hard to complain about though, because I'm usually wearing the same coat zipped up all the way.  

There was quite a discussion on this at AMPS, and Simon Hayes also had some interesting things to say about his experiences while shooting a part of Le Mis with the camera crew outer wear and their cooperation... 

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  • 1 month later...

Stiff men's dress shirts, especially with a tie,  are usually terrible.  I get these a lot on corporate shoots. Soft cotton is great , but those stiff new cotton dress shirts are terrible. Best solution I've found is using the Countryman B6 behind a button, but if there's a tie there -that makes it less likely to succeed.   Actually the best solution I've found is the boom mic.

 

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On February 20, 2016 at 10:00 PM, andstrumental said:

Did a shoot with treehouse builders last winter in Oregon...rain/gortex city. The only saving grace was that they all had beanie style hats on. So the lavs ended up just on the edge of the beanie on their forehead. Total pain in the ass, but it worked. 

+1 on Gore Tex and nice work with the beanie placement...

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...
On 4/6/2016 at 10:16 PM, Constantin said:

So to bring this thread back to its origin: if the wardrobe is bad, what do you do to remedy it? Naturally, on corporates and interviews and whatever this won't often be possible, but on scripted shows, what are your procedures?

yeh, ditto,  

I just did a short film,  her outer layer was synthetic pattern overtop,  corset underneath,  worst combination i've ever heard.  Sounded like sandpaper mixed with creaking floors.  Lav was unusable,  I don't see what I could have done to fix it?

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A while ago I shot an anniversary episode of The Sky at Night (a very long running series about astronomy on BBC). One of the guests was the guitarist from Queen (rock group, not monarch), Brian May, who has a Doctorate in Astro Physics.. He was wearing dungarees and nothing else over a naked, hairy chest. I had the Devil's own job finding a quiet hiding place for the lav - the shot was too wide too boom, and I am sorry to say that Mr. May became quite abusive to me, and the producer had to calm him down in the end. I succeeded eventually purely by trial and error, miles of camera tape and cotton, cages and other devices. I am very glad to say that removing the camera tape from his hairy chest after that shoot hurt him far more than it hurt me.

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  There are nefarious forces afoot in the garment industry.  Fabrics can apparently be labelled "cotton" while in fact including other substances.  Namely starch.  I have recently seen shirts whose tags state that they are made from 100% cotton, yet sound like silk and spandex.  We need a new government body that regulates clothing labels, the FDF or something!

  Dan Izen

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5 hours ago, Izen Ears said:

  There are nefarious forces afoot in the garment industry.  Fabrics can apparently be labelled "cotton" while in fact including other substances.  Namely starch.  I have recently seen shirts whose tags state that they are made from 100% cotton, yet sound like silk and spandex.  We need a new government body that regulates clothing labels, the FDF or something!

  Dan Izen

Good luck, Dan.

If "Natural Flavors" can be patented (and is anything but natural), and if Subway can put plastic and cardboard in their food as fillers, we cotton fetishists are SOL...and a doo-dah day.

I am on your side, however.

best

Steve

image.jpegand sorry...lol...Im not done with it yet.

 

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