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Noisy Directors Monitors


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You'd think companies which are making products for film production would bother to put care into making them silent?? But no, we have noisy cameras, noisy lights, noisy video wireless TX/RX, and noisy monitors. 

Just finished a shoot which had a director's monitor so loud I was initially questioning if the air conditioning was still on. And there was no way to make it quieter either. Just seemed unacceptably loud when you're only a few feet away from the actors in a quiet scene, but I couldn't very well kick the director out of the room (ha!) or tell them to look at the focus puller's monitor instead (and there was no other monitor available that could be used. Sigh. 

And yet, Atomos' manual for the Sumo says:
"It features a heat pipe design with a silent fan to circulate air and remove excess heat from the rear vents ."
https://downloads.atomos.com/sumo/sumo-user-manual.pdf
Lies, absolute lies!

I guess it is bearable when the shoot is only a couple of days long, but oh boy, I'd be driven mad if I had to deal with this for weeks on end for a feature length film. (for longer projects, does anybody try to get involved with pre-production to make sure they don't choose overly loud equipment like this Atomos Sumo monitor, or Teradek Bolt 300 wireless, etc?)

Anyway, I feel better for having got this rant off my chest! 😉 

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On Docs and commercials, when I encounter issues like this I hand my mixer headphones to the AD or director and say, "This is what I hear. Do you want to deal with it here? Now? Or in post?"

 

I haven't done this on a movie set. Then again, I havent done many movies.

 

My favorite gripe is when arriving at a location where the director expects to capture lines to camera, I hear a remote condensor for the office central air system chugging away only feet from us. And, no, we can't turn it off.

 

Production pays DP and Gaffer to go on location scout. Why not the Sound Mixer?

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