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The "Best client/producer/agency quotes" thread


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15 hours ago, Eric Toline said:

Producer to VO guy, "great reading but it sounds like a Wednesday reading. Can you make it sound like a Sunday reading?"

 

 

VO for large financial firm, making their first foray into the Salt Lake City media market.

Ad manager, straight arrow Boston financial type: "That's good, but can you make it sound more Mormon?"

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2 hours ago, al mcguire said:

">great reading but it sounds like a Wednesday reading. Can you make it sound like a Sunday reading?"<

The catholic schoolboy in me would rapidly translate the script into pig latin.

 

The entire script was a two word tag line. "On NBC"

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A couple of my favorites are: "Can you read it faster but make it sound slower?"  The other one is, When the copy was 9 seconds longer than 60 seconds for the spot, the producer said "let's mix it with M & E and where it's long we'll shorten it" Still trying to figure that one out after 40 years.

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On the tech scout for an Indy movie, I point out to the director that we are immediately under the flight path less than a mile north of the runway.  Planes are still only a few hundred feet off the ground.  I time the length of gaps between planes (0:45 - 1:15) and ask how much dialog we have to shoot.  "Not going to be a problem" I'm told.

On the day, the director gets increasingly frustrated the he can't get a clean take of a multi page single shot Steadicam scene, and turns to me, waiting for the plane to go away before asking, "don't you have a microphone to take that out?"

I laughed out loud.

 

---

 

First day of a three day car commercial.  AD comes to me in the morning and says, "I'm not sure why you are here.  We won't use anything you record, so enjoy the crafty". I thoroughly enjoyed the excellent crafty.

 

---

Fun thread btw.

 

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2 hours ago, Wandering Ear said:

On the day, the director gets increasingly frustrated the he can't get a clean take of a multi page single shot Steadicam scene, and turns to me, waiting for the plane to go away before asking, "don't you have a microphone to take that out?"

 

4 hours ago, Eric Toline said:

A couple of my favorites are: "Can you read it faster but make it sound slower?"  The other one is, When the copy was 9 seconds longer than 60 seconds for the spot, the producer said "let's mix it with M & E and where it's long we'll shorten it" Still trying to figure that one out after 40 years.


Sounds like these two need to get together! 

Then they can figure out how to squeeze more dialogue into the same amount of time. 

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Location with a lot of background noise from busy street, generator etc, DOP said:

 

"if you keep the blimp on, but screw off the front of it, it will reject the street noises".

 

the good part was that the producer had to laugh as hard as I did.

 

 

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19 hours ago, Vincent R. said:

Location with a lot of background noise from busy street, generator etc, DOP said:

 

"if you keep the blimp on, but screw off the front of it, it will reject the street noises".

 

the good part was that the producer had to laugh as hard as I did.


Ha! That would be a very funny video to do an A/B test of, just to show how silly the (non) result is. :-P 

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I guess there's no point to asking because if the DP was dumb enough to say something like that, then any other question would not be worth getting into, but where does a DP or anyone for that matter feel the need to give sound tips to the sound person? I mean, can I get away with telling the DP which f-stop will be the best to use in a particular situation?

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On 8 March 2018 at 1:03 PM, Vincent R. said:

... DOP said:

 

"if you keep the blimp on, but screw off the front of it, it will reject the street noises".

 

 

I assumed/assume the DOP was making a joke. Otherwise he's probably come across a blimp equipped with a sound mirror.

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On 3/7/2018 at 6:21 AM, John Blankenship said:

Well-meaning producer:  Is that air conditioner going to be a problem?

My (unfortunately correct) answer:  No issue there -- it's being downed out by the traffic.

 

 

I used that one last week!

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Had the reverse of this on the weekend, the loud racket created by the air conditioner machines mounted on the outsides of the buildings in Fort Lane was doing a decently good job at drowning out the music coming from the night clubs we were in front of! Heh. 

Ah well, at least the awful location made me less worried about the location's lighting (*and* shooting multicamera) which made it impossible to get boom anywhere near the actors without epic massive shadows! So wireless lavs it is. 

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Not me personally, but heard this from a friend today:

 

Quote

She made fun of me for being so "inflexible" when it comes to production. "Why need to do all these shits, just press the record button and let the content comes to you", she said!

 

“it’s all about content, production is piece of cake”.

 

Before you say anything, she is one of those people who are "bright and smart new generation" media marketers, graduated top of her class from Stanford. So (in her mind) her IQ is doubled everyone else's. Thus, when she thinks of something, nobody "is qualified" to change her mind. Unfortunately, that includes "photoshop it in post"



Now why is she thinking "photoshop it in post"? (or is that "soundshop it in post"! :-P ha)

Because:
 

Quote

Friend of mine was looking for someone to clean up her sound recording from her last interview. I asked to look at the sound, maybe I can help if it's not too bad. She said people refused to her help, too much work.

Then I heard it. It appears that this is what she wants done:

- Removing the continuous and atrociously loud refrigerator humming noise because her interviewee was sitting right beside it.

- Removing wind noise because she forgot to put on the wind screen on 1 of the outdoor shot.

- Removing extra chatter because it was in a cafe.

"Is there a photoshop program for sound that you professional people use? I think my microphone is a problem, I need to buy a new one that only records what I need", she said.

Anyone knows where I can buy a magic wand? The one wand that says "fix it in post"


Oh dear... two minutes of thought and experience on location could have saved a world of pain. 

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"Why can't we just put a mic on the camera?"

This was for vocals on a windy, snowy beach, camera wrapped in plastic. Alexa mini with line level inputs only. They originally wanted to shoot 65mm.

It was just like that Sound Mixer Hell video

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G891A using Tapatalk

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  • 2 weeks later...

"If we're shooting slow motion, why are we using so much film?" - UPM on a network series who was replaced shortly after

 

"Oh, sound, I didn't even think about sound. What are you going to do?" - Producer after we rehearsed dialogue between two actors while they were being submerged in a water tank

 

 

 

 

 

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

They asked me to make the projector brighter. I had to hold my tongue and not ask them why they didn't just use the LCD Monitor wall. 

IMG_2046.JPG

 

I checked with the Hotel, and the LCD Monitor wall was included with the room. 

 

Later that day I also used the LAV mic for laptop audio. The CTO of Intel said; "just put the LAV mic on top of the laptop speaker for sound". 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

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