Roof treatment in bad acoustics

[micke]

One room in a location was a quite high, shoe box shaped room, dreadful acoustics. 500 helium balloons, and it turned out really nice! Became the best room on that location. Our sound team were ready for some really bad jokes if it would have backfired;)

The balloons arrived pre-filled and with some coating that makes them last for a week. We saved three clusters so we could move them easily to other rooms as well, did good in the corners. And they were.....cute.

[Chris Woodcock]

Wow how did you swing that with production

Er yes we need 500 helium balloons

Love it

[Freeheel]

Nice work, that room does look like a nightmare - bad dimensions and hard surfaces.

 

Cheers,

Brent Calkin

[micke]

Chris, day 60, the line producers start to show their weakness;) Yes, the room was a nightmare.

[Toy Robot]

That's incredible. Bravo. Way to think outside the box!

[Rick Reineke]

"Way to think outside the box!"

+11

[khrecord]

makes sense.... great thinking

[Mungo]

Great!

Makes also the talent's voices nicer in case of bursting

[mikewest]

Brilliant!

 

Was the name of the production "Blowup" ?

 

mike

[RPSharman]

Did you ever hear the balloons rubbing together or moving as actors walked around the room?

 

Did they ever pop? I expect they couldn't bounce light off the ceiling, which is common in these rooms. Did you discuss the idea with DoP, or did you just do it without "asking"?

 

Imagine the face of the DoP if they were all green or yellow! Haha!

 

It's really a great idea.

[micke]

Robert, they stayed perfectly still, there was no shutting doors or heavy ventilation.No pops, so far;). I was concerned about that. It would have been quite a trick to do it without discussing it with the production, and it was agreed with the DoP that he would not show the roof in those scenes. The light bounce is a thing of coarse, in this case it was a no prob. And they do reflect light, the direction is a bit tricky, though. 

[jitter]

Excellent idea! Sometimes it's all about diffusion.

[Jay Rose]

Sometimes it's all about diffusion

 

There's be diffusion, of course, as high frequencies bounce off the thin balloon skin.

But isn't it also about absorption, as low and mid freqs go through the skin, vibrate the helium, and lose energy?

 

[micke]

Now the shoot is over in that location, it really worked! The booms worked more than well and the clinks and clonks from the dining scenes were OK, didn´t ruin more than normally. I think we made it without any adr. Before the balloons it would have been no good dialogue, and traditional acoustic treatment would not have been possible, since window reflections and the shooting style. And the reverb was way heavier than the unveil or rx3 could have handled, in my opinion. I can upload a soundbite from the boom, if anyone`s interested.

I also believe that the helium made a bigger difference than the shape of the balloons. Soundwaves  travel faster in helium, bounce the roof and travel again faster back. Or looses energy, as Jay said. The roof pretty much killed all the reflections.

The DOP and gaffer liked them, they ended up bouncing light from them. It was nice&soft, they said.

The cost in this case was about 400EUR, with transport of the balloons to location. Propably  half the prize renting a bottle and filling them yourself. It took the sound team  5 min to let them loose and spread them in the roof. There was quite a few scenes in the room and a flown in actor, I think the production saved a bit in this case. My hat go off to the show runner, who took the risk when OK`ìng them;)

Thinking of adding a helium bottle to my acoustics kit. "We also do children`s parties"

[Abe Dolinger]

Awesome, thanks for sharing your ingenuity!

[nourZX]

On 12/10/2014 at 10:40 PM, micke said:

One room in a location was a quite high, shoe box shaped room, dreadful acoustics. 500 helium balloons, and it turned out really nice! Became the best room on that location. Our sound team were ready for some really bad jokes if it would have backfired;)

The balloons arrived pre-filled and with some coating that makes them last for a week. We saved three clusters so we could move them easily to other rooms as well, did good in the corners. And they were.....cute.

Thanks man been scratching my head where i heard this Balloons Trick few years ago!
I was looking so a creative solution so a shot where 80% of the locations are in a school, which is going to sound bad if i don't do something when i just remembered that i once read something about balloons!
thanks for the photo it gave me validation of how it would look like to be prepared to peoples reactions to this !
if you have any tips let me know as I think i'll be using this for 9 weeks of shoot everyday!

[The Immoral Mr Teas]

Helium ... the new lithium?

 

Several of my friends are in the medical profession (several more recently forcibly retired from same) and would be up in arms at an additional drain (on the non-medical use of) this resource!

 

Still, better than asbestos curtains

[Bouke]

On 5/1/2019 at 1:48 AM, The Immoral Mr Teas said:

Helium ... the new lithium?

 

Several of my friends are in the medical profession (several more recently forcibly retired from same) and would be up in arms at an additional drain (on the non-medical use of) this resource!

 

Still, better than asbestos curtains

 

What exactly are you trying to say here?

I find this a bit offensive.

Robin Williams did lithium & helium
Perhaps I'm missing the joke, so do explain!

 

[Daniel McIntosh]

Perhaps Mr Teas was referring to this:

Helium is in short supply, hitting balloons and scientific research

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/12/helium-shortage-is-hitting-balloons-and-scientific-research.html

 

[berniebeaudry]

On 12/10/2014 at 3:44 PM, Toy Robot said:

That's incredible. Bravo. Way to think outside the box!

Thinking outside the box about the inside of the box!

[Chris Woodcock]

On 5/1/2019 at 7:54 PM, Bouke said:

 

What exactly are you trying to say here?

I find this a bit offensive.

Robin Williams did lithium & helium
Perhaps I'm missing the joke, so do explain!

 

WTF are you on about? 

 

On 5/1/2019 at 12:48 AM, The Immoral Mr Teas said:

Helium ... the new lithium?

 

Several of my friends are in the medical profession (several more recently forcibly retired from same) and would be up in arms at an additional drain (on the non-medical use of) this resource!

 

Still, better than asbestos curtains

Funny when I posted on this thread back in 2014 I didn't know how important helium was to the medical industry, after learning it's importance and difficulty in acquiring I have refused to buy balloons for parties ECT 

[Bouke]

4 hours ago, Chris Woodcock said:

WTF are you on about? 

Robin Williams was bi-polar (Manic depressed.)
The medicine for that is Lithium.

A lot of bi-polar people kill themselves, and helium is a poplar way to go, he used that as well.

 

But, now I get the original meaning of the post, so, my apologies, and ignore my remarks please.

 

 

 

[BAB414]

Is this kind of trick still necessary these days with post deverb and similar? I'm about to try to sell this idea to a production. Better than hanging sound blankets?

 

I have an all stone 20 foot high vaulted ceiling. Suuuuper slappy.

 

And I noticed in op's photo, there were no strings on the balloons. I figure they'd be good to have to tie them off somewhere. Also curious what the coating is to get them to last longer, and if a smaller number of larger balloons would have the same effect as a higher number of smaller ones. Thank you!

[Philip Perkins]

I do post on a lot of verite docs, which is to say fixing dialog from locations that are whatever they were and there was no time or opportunity for furniture pads, acoustifoam or balloons.  I use most of the latest AI-driven plugins to try and make scenes shot in that type of location listenable (and passable to Tech-Eval).  None of the results sound as good as not needing the heavy plugin treatment to begin with.  What the OP did back in 2014 would be a much harder sell to production now, since they will have been told what they want to hear about the state of NR these days, but going that way is still substituting "ok sound" for great natural-sounding sound.  The 1st rule of location sound still applies: fixing issues in the original recording is still the best, most hifi, most performance-preserving way to go.

[The Documentary Sound Guy]

To be honest, €500 (Even adjusted for inflation since 2014) sounds way cheaper than fixing it in post.  I would hope you can still make this case to the producers.