Sound of Rosemary's Baby (1967)

[Lynne T]

Thanks for this, Jeff! Really amazing to see these mics and their respective boom set-ups. And yes-- we are definitely working under different circumstances these days, especially with a lot of indie cinema -- noisy locations and the advent of mumble acting. I always appreciate when I get to work with actors who have a theatre background-- you can tell immediately as they have incredible vocal control and range.

 

[Tomsound112]

Awesome pics. Thanks for sharing this!

[soundtrane]

On 5/1/2017 at 11:33 PM, Jeff Wexler said:

many of the most talented actors had learned to speak properly so that they could be recorded properly

lost nowadays with 95% of actors... sad. 

[mikewest]

Fascinating!

I operated Fisher studio booms and also Mole booms in the mid to late 60's in the UK

Imagine a long arm Fisher with a Sennheiser MKH 804 (long shotgun) a true feat of skill.

Here in NZ I bought, for a company, a Fisher location boom $1,500  in 1977, what a steal?

mike

Pic attached of the probably only surviving Mole boom in New Zealand.

It was used as a prop in a US tele movie, so I restrung it properly

and set the weight balancing so it was completely usable.

Edited June 20, 2017 by mikewest
Photo added

[cmgoodin]

Another reason for the disappearance of the boom mic is less disciplined directors and actors who didn't want to worry about overlapping dialogue with off camera characters.   When Multi-track recording reared it's head on the Altman films one of the main reasons for wiring everybody and putting each actor on a individual track was so the actors and directors could relieve themselves of the responsibility of keeping each line in the clear so the scenes final timing could be determined in the edit.  This allowed much more improvised dialogue and Altman's favorite trick overlapping dialogue where 2 actors would be having simultaneous overlapping lines.  Trying to cut those types of scenes with single-camera coverage was always a nightmare.  That is another reason for extensive ADR in situations where there were quiet sound stages and well blimped cameras where you would think it was easy to capture good production dialogue.  There was a resurgence of the "Method Acting" Stanislavsky method from the 30's revived in the late 60s and 70's by Actors Studio teachers Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg. This caused a lot of actors to shout or mumble their lines depending on the mood that struck them during the take.

[mikewest]

11 hours ago, cmgoodin said:

Another reason for the disappearance of the boom mic is less disciplined directors and actors who didn't want to worry about overlapping dialogue with off camera characters.   When Multi-track recording reared it's head on the Altman films one of the main reasons for wiring everybody and putting each actor on a individual track was so the actors and directors could relieve themselves of the responsibility of keeping each line in the clear so the scenes final timing could be determined in the edit.  This allowed much more improvised dialogue and Altman's favorite trick overlapping dialogue where 2 actors would be having simultaneous overlapping lines.  Trying to cut those types of scenes with single-camera coverage was always a nightmare.  That is another reason for extensive ADR in situations where there were quiet sound stages and well blimped cameras where you would think it was easy to capture good production dialogue.  There was a resurgence of the "Method Acting" Stanislavsky method from the 30's revived in the late 60s and 70's by Actors Studio teachers Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg. This caused a lot of actors to shout or mumble their lines depending on the mood that struck them during the take.

But even with actors wired and on separate tracks the acoustic separation would still cause an

editing problem when an overlap occurs.

mike

[Philip Perkins]

13 minutes ago, mikewest said:

But even with actors wired and on separate tracks the acoustic separation would still cause an

editing problem when an overlap occurs.

mike

Thank you.  It is always amazing to me how often producers or directors somehow think that a lav mic on one actor cannot hear the other voices in the room, that the sound will somehow be as though they were all in separate iso booths or something.

[cmgoodin]

21 hours ago, mikewest said:

But even with actors wired and on separate tracks the acoustic separation would still cause an

editing problem when an overlap occurs.

mike

Well not entirely.   If off camera people are on wires and being recorded and they pipe up over the top of the on camera actor at least you can use that take's sound  because the off camera persons dialogue can be mixed in from the ISO track at the appropriate level.  You are stuck with the timing of the interruption in the edit but both lines quality are usable.  But if the off camera person was also off mic and not recorded separately  it would destroy the take because the on mic and on camera person's dialogue would be contaminated with off mic overlap and no perfectly-synced on-mic recording to cover it with.

So the solution is ADR of both characters separately.

[Philip Perkins]

I think the solution is to work as they likely did on "Rosemary's Baby", which is to avoid overlaps from off-camera actors during close-ups, no matter how the actors were miced. 

[mikewest]

Off camera actors do not always deliver at performance level or intensity

from my humble experience.

mike

[Philip Perkins]

1 hour ago, mikewest said:

Off camera actors do not always deliver at performance level or intensity

from my humble experience.

mike

Exactly.  If they aren't actually trying to make their on-camera colleague laugh are screw up....

[mikewest]

Exactly, and if they were holding close eyeline by a 35mm camera they were covered in camera noise!

mike

[ormas]

A divorcee falls for an over-the-hill cowboy who is struggling to maintain his romantically independent lifestyle.