Hiding a mic and TX in a phone

[Trey LaCroix]

I'm prepping for a movie and one of the characters spends a lot of time talking on the phone. Before I talk to props does anyone have any tips on hiding a mic and transmitter in one and placing the mic? The film takes place in the early 90's so it would be one of those bulky cordless phones. There should be some space for hiding.

[TVPostSound]

30 minutes ago, Trey LaCroix said:

I'm prepping for a movie and one of the characters spends a lot of time talking on the phone. Before I talk to props does anyone have any tips on hiding a mic and transmitter in one and placing the mic? The film takes place in the early 90's so it would be one of those bulky cordless phones. There should be some space for hiding.

If its a Motorola "Brick" you should be able to gut it and drop in a TX. 

Not sure about the cordless house phone.

 

Funny I owned both in 1992!!

 

 

[JonG]

Having either of these would have been the exception to the rule back then. All our house phones were cabled (one in the kitchen, one in our parents room), and it was fairly ritzy to have more than one phone in a house. We still had a rotary phone in the kitchen up until about 2002!

 

Either way there shouldn’t be any reason why taking the guts out of either of these pones and replacing them with a lav and tv should be challenging. They’re designed to unscrew for repairs. 

[TVPostSound]

The ATT wireless shown was a go to here in LA, every store I had one as early as 1986!!!

 

[Jeff Wexler]

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I have only one question: why? I see no reason to go to the effort of pulling a telephone apart and placing a transmitter and a mic in the handset  ---   maybe for some specialty project, a surveillance video or hidden camera sort of thing or something, if it is a regular scripted narrative that happens to have an actor on a phone, why not just mic the scene as you always would? I have, of course, had to deal with scenes in movies where we need to make the actual phone set practical (so that two actors can converse, sometimes in two different locations, but that doesn't seem to be what is being discussed). One simple reason why a mic placed in the telephone handset is a bad idea:  will there be any other actors who speak in the scene with the main actor making a phone call? You know that a lav mic placed in the phone, however it is done, will have a very specific "color" and tone to the voice  ---  what happens when that same actor finishes his or her phone call, puts the phone down and starts talking to the other actor? In this case, you will mic the scene as you always do, possibly booming both actors  --  the difference in tonality will be very apparent and an audience won't know why they feel the scene does not feel authentic.