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Sound on a cooking show


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Hey all 

 

I got a gig to do the sound for a cooking show - never done one before. Two camera setup.

 

I will radio mic the cook and boom the show but is there anything specific I should be aware of?

 

Any advice would be much appreciated.

 

 

 

....I do want a sizzling sound!   

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The fight over which freezers and fans you can and can't turn off is the biggest hurdle.   Kitchens are horribly noisy and some noisy things have to be left running and some can be turned off.  Good luck with that.

 

It's very hard to boom in a kitchen, especially with 2 cameras.    Hanging things and hood fans and sprinkler heads all contribute to your headache, as well as hot pots, flames, and live lobsters (sometimes) all making moving around  very difficult and possibly quite dangerous. 

I love booming and do it as much as I can, but cooking shows everyone gets a lav and I stand back.

 

Get a white lav - being able to stick it through the button hole of the chefs coat is sometimes the only way to make it sound good.

 

You may get to eat the resulting product - usually an excellent side benefit...  

 

Cheers,

Brent Calkin

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Go with the flow.. Production will use alot of VO. A recipe will be at least two full run throughs. To me these aren't much different than any other shoot. The chef has a recipe and will complete it with some banter in between. There are lota of tights with hands to convey what the chef will be doing. They are fun and you usually get to eat well.. Although its no subway tuna!

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If you are filming in a house or commercial kitchen... Easy laid back type of setup will be key - if you only have the one talent, hang the boom out of shot directly over the center of the work table. A c-stand is your friend here, they WILL be preferring the lav sound for the dialog, and the boom will perfectly provide the open air and PFX of everything on the table. Your chances of running the boom effectively while mixing at the same time (with what third hand?) and also avoiding their inevitable wide-n-tight or reflections from the background... Limited. The producer / crew will appreciate your forethought in hiding behind a counter so they can work with just avoiding each other in frame while one-off moves happen from the chef. If you are filming in a made-for-TV set or warehouse with plenty of space... I would have similar suggestions, but you could just work with the larger space easier.

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I have done atleast 200 days of cooking show stuff don't even worry about the boom it will be way to loud. The lav will pick up plenty of sizzle most of the time. Most important thing to is protect important dialogue from things you can control. Make sure they don't run a blender while trying to talk about something important. 

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What everyone else said. I have shot on cooking shows, cooking competitions, cooking features with non professionals. Always have everyone Lav'd up and iso recorded. Chefs coats are usually very very thick and hiding a mic is problematic. Having a bunch of white lavs is a great help. Good luck with your job.

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On a cooking pilot that I did a couple of years ago I pretty much just used lavs when the chef was talking and demonstrating, and afterwards as the cameras shot B-roll I used the boom to pick up all the sounds of sizzles, bubbling, chopping, blending etc. I was able to get fans and other noise makers shut off for short periods of time in order to collect those sounds.

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Many thanks for the advice all! That's brilliant.

 

White lavs are definitely on the menu!  (apologies, I can't help it)

 

If you are talking specifically about "sizzle" -

One trick I've done is to put Peter Engh's Omnigoose™, just out of camera frame

 

Many thanks for bringing this to my attention Jim. Very handy!

 

I am not sure about the location yet as they are in the process of  changing it.

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I worked on an infamous cooking show some years back and used white Trams, they sounded fine and picked up plenty of the 'sizzle'. This was a custom designed educational venue so exhaust hood and other appliance noise was tolerable. The white Trams pretty much disappeared on the chef's white jackets

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You have to protect against the plosives. Pretty much took away the button hole technique for me(unless it was a chefs coat with an off center button up). Even under clothing I found at least the Sanken windscreen was needed to protect against a hard breath down straight into the mic. This is very prevalent if you have a very dynamic host. One solution, and a reason why this isn't a problem with everyone, is to ask the host to lift his chin a bit, and not straight down. People don't want to see the top of your head anyways. (Not that I've ever said it like that)

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  • 6 years later...

Lavalieres with wind protection. Cardioid lavs could be used for more isolation, but they have more inherent problems than they solve. The only time I used cardioid lavs was when feedback was an issue with an integrated PA (live sound system).

 BTW, this thread was posted back in 2013, but the info is mostly still relevant.

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FWIW, Carl Countryman once told me that the only reason for a cardioid lav is if a live-performance talent is in front of a stack. Otherwise, you're dealing with all sorts of problems (direction, plosives, etc) that are much nicer in an omni.

 

I've also had excellent luck with active reality in very noisy exteriors with the near-invisible mini headset mics. Like the Countryman E6, but there are others. Production has to sign off on the look -- which can be barely noticeable, except in CU -- but do they want good sound?...

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Yes indeed, a headset mic would  sound great in this type of application. My preference as well are the Countryman H6 and E6, though I have never used them outside. The B6 lavaliere is however sensitive to air turbulence, and I assume it is the same capsule, so I would research more prior.

Of course many producers do not like headset mics, regardless that many like the E and H6 are practically invisible in all but extreme close-ups... which are a rare occurrence on most cooking shows.

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Ive mixed post on over 400 episodes of Top Chef, and its spin offs.

The best I could talk production is a white lav poking out of a button hole, but it had to be white, or black to match the chef coat.

Otherwise they want it under the coat, and those things are thick!!

Even a button hole was too much of a bother, cause when they got back to the "house" they ripped their coats off faster than the mic could 

be removed. Many a ripped cable!!

 

Headsets are out of the question.

 

Sizzle, NO I don't want to hear the sizzle, thats what SFX libraries are for!!!!

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I did sound on Yorkshire Television's "Farmhouse Kitchen" I used radio mics on the chef and visiting cook. Beware the flambé dishes. Our guest chef on this occasion was a famous fish restaurant owner and he was cooking scallops. To his scallops he added along with other ingredients a very generous slug of old Scotch whisky which he then ignited. The whole pan then went up in a very spectacular blaze which not only resulted in him being badly scorched, but my Sony lav mic was destroyed in the conflagration. Otherwise, all went well.

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