round-table overlapping dialogues with uncertain camera movement

[jimmycat]

First of all, I apologise if this topic has been brought up and I believe it has, but I just couldn’t find useful info. If you could simply share some useful links, I’d be very grateful.  

 

I was wondering how fellow production mixers deal with round-table-party-like scenes that the camera adopts handheld-doc style to randomly capture characters who improvise their conversation in each take. 

Some issues boggle me:

1. Would you request the off-camera and out-of-focus characters to pantomime? I find it very difficult to pull this off if the cameraman doesn’t lock his camera movement. It risks that the off-cam miming actors suddenly pop up in the frame with clear lip movement. Also, in terms of performance, the actors and director can feel uneasy and unnatural if the actors are asked to speak out only when they’re on camera. 
2. But, if all the characters(say, ten sitting around a table) are speaking out loudly, the on-camera conversation can be overwhelmed. Although the on-camera dialogues will still be distinguishable on the lavs, it can be disastrous when it goes to the dialogue editing with all the overlapped and improvised off-cam dialogues being too clear. Would you ask the off-cam and out-of-focus characters to lower the volume but keep the energy and only speak with normal volume when the cam is on them? It sounds not practical. Then what instruction would you suggest? 
3. Would you wire all the characters in this situation? Ideally, every talent will be wired, but there’s a long take following one of the main characters having conversation with every one on the main table and going to another table greeting ten other characters. Surely, I can ask for miming at the 2nd table before the followed character approaches. But, again, the cameraman can’t confirm what he’s gonna capture at the 2nd table in each take, which means another 10 lavs are required if I wire them all, making it 20 lavs in total. It’s insane for a “scripted” work, isn’t it?
4. In terms of boom mic options, is a MS setup for the main boom op helpful? How would you deploy your 2nd boom op to cover a 10-people-overlapped chatting at a round table to make the post production’s life easier? 
5. Finally, in the most optimistic scenario, the camera confirms the movement of each shot. In that case, we can take the standard approach to ask for those out of shot to be silent. However, it brings another question about the wild recording. Assuming it's a 9-minute scene, with the main character(A) speaking to each of the other 9 characters(B to J) at the table for 1 minute each. When the main conversation led by A is going on, we need to have a background layer of other characters talking to each other fervently. My question is: in this wild track, the conversation led by A is always supposed to be silent. When recording this wild, would you ask the whole scene to act for at least 9 minutes again and silence the main conversation in turn(silence A&B for a minute, A&C for another min, etc.). (I hope I got my point across.)? It takes time and can be frown upon on set. I was wondering if there's a more efficient way doing a wild recording like this.
    

All in all, any experience or advice? Thanks.

[humbuk]

It can certainly be done in several ways. But I would first of all agree with the director how he wants to do it. He warned him of the editing problems if he let people talk over each other. My experience is that usually the way is somewhere in between and in places where it is absolutely clear, to keep the actors silent outside of the shot and if there is a danger that they will even slightly get into the shot, or for reasons of continuity, let them speak. Important to warn the director about possible editing problems when they talk over themselves - quite often they don't realize it.

[Philip Perkins]

For the audio aspects, Dugan is your friend--nothing beats it in this kind of situation.  For the content: as was said, you give your warnings to the director (while dispelling any fantasies about the fact that the talent is individually lav-miced and on on their own channel making much of a diff when they are sitting close together, esp. in a lively discussion) and hope for the best.  Often these sorts of scenes are "led" by one or two people who know the agenda, the time frame and keep order in terms of responses (you see this on TV all the time).  A truly free-form discussion with a lot of folks can quickly become uncuttable.

[The Documentary Sound Guy]

As Humbuk says, confirm with the director first that they know what they are asking of their editors in this situation.  Often, they have imagined a very "improvised" scenario in their head, and probably all of the actors won't be talking simultaneously.  But it is often important to the director that anyone could say anything at any time.  It will be "led" by the main character, as Philip says.

Assuming the director doesn't go for mimed off-camera lines, here's how I would approach it:

Find out what direction the director is giving camera.  What action is the camera(s) supposed to be tracking?  Your boom op should follow the same instructions.  Likely, this means, your main boom op follows the main character who is leading the discussion, and your second boom should capture whoever the lead is talking to.  A good boom op should be able to anticipate much of who is talking by following the flow of the conversations.  Only non-sequitor interruptions are impossible to anticipate, and probably camera will miss these as well.

Yes, push for lavs for everyone, with all the additional cost and labour this requires.  This is the only way to capture unanticipated lines.  If productions pushes back, bring it back to the director, and make sure they know and are ok with what they will lose if all characters aren't wired.  Maybe it is ok!

An alternative approach is to assign a boom op to each camera, and have them follow the camera movements.  This may work out very similarly to the first approach, because the only practical way for camera to cover this scenario is to assign a "main" character and a "swing" camera for everything else.  Yes, the camera people will be operating on instinct a bit, but they will be following the same ball that the boom ops are following.  Usually, it all works out.

Other things to keep in mind:  If the camera sees a room of people talking, the editor will want to hear a room of people talking, which means overlaps and off-camera voices may be less important than you think, since they will be covering the sound edit with a bed of background noise that will hide a lot of the overlaps.  You want to avoid overlaps that compete with the main audio in terms of level, but you don't need totally clean tracks.  If the off-camera voices are 6-10dB below the main voice, that's probably enough to work with, and you can usually get this degree of isolation using the pickup pattern of the boom mic.  Obviously, run this scenario by post first to make sure they really do intend to cover the BG with ambient voices.  Post would probably also appreciate a room mic that delivers them this background track (this is a possible use for a Mid-Side setup, though omnis will probably create more "even" noise without favouring parts of the room).

Also, ask if it's possible to start & stop a bit.  Chances are, camera will miss a lot of the *truly* spontaneous interruptions, and the director may want to back-up the action to allow cameras to reset when something interesting happens.  This is an opportunity for you as well:  If the director thinks it's important enough to re-do a particular moment, let the actors know they need to be quiet as the scene re-starts.  This gives you a brief chance to capture the "interruptions" cleanly.

Last, you can't count on this, but there's a good chance actors will only end up talking when they know they are on camera.  It's quite unlikely they will carry on completely unrelated conversations that aren't connected to the main action.  Even in a large group setting, it's still the norm that one person talks and everyone else listens.  It does sound like your scenario involves two or more separate, running conversations which muddies the waters a bit, but there's still the question of what is cuing camera to move from table to table.  Actors don't want to deliver their best material when they know the camera isn't on them, so what is likely to happen is they will be less active away from the main action anyway.  The last time I did a scenario like this, the camera literally just walked around the room and actors talked to camera in sequence.

 

[BAB414]

I've done a few scenes with Noah Baumbach like this. He is very meticulous and intentionally wants the scene to feel "real" this way so we wire every single person who speaks and he combs through later in post to highlight the lines he wants to stand out using the lav isos.

[jimmycat]

@BAB414 It’s somehow reassuring to know that Noah Baumbach takes this approach and still makes sound acceptable. Thanks for sharing. Would you mind to specify some of the scenes done this way so that I could watch them as reference?

[BAB414]

There are a few in Marriage Story. The one that sticks out is the room full of actors right before rehearsal for their play. Wally Shawn is talking about some sexual escapades, one of many conversations happening at the same time. This kind of chaos is sort of the point of the scene if I remember right.

 

Another sequence is toward the end where the whole cast is out at a restauarant after a show. For that one I remember we had something like 17 (or more?) lavs and two mixers.

[Axel Mishael]

11 minutes ago, BAB414 said:

There are a few in Marriage Story. The one that sticks out is the room full of actors right before rehearsal for their play. Wally Shawn is talking about some sexual escapades, one of many conversations happening at the same time. This kind of chaos is sort of the point of the scene if I remember right.

 

Another sequence is toward the end where the whole cast is out at a restauarant after a show. For that one I remember we had something like 17 (or more?) lavs and two mixers.

And for monitoring did he asked depending on the shot which mics to hear? or sticks with the mix?

[jimmycat]

2 hours ago, BAB414 said:

There are a few in Marriage Story. The one that sticks out is the room full of actors right before rehearsal for their play. Wally Shawn is talking about some sexual escapades, one of many conversations happening at the same time. This kind of chaos is sort of the point of the scene if I remember right.

 

I remember that scene! I just re-watched it on Netflix. Is it only after Adam Driver enters the room to talk to Wally Shawn that all the actors are talking at the same time or throughout the whole scene all the conversations, including the off-camera ones, are happening together? I'd be very surprised if it's the later.

 

3 hours ago, BAB414 said:

Another sequence is toward the end where the whole cast is out at a restauarant after a show. For that one I remember we had something like 17 (or more?) lavs and two mixers.

 

Do you mean the scene that ends with Adam Driver singing on the stage? 

 

It's so good to have actual scenes to discuss. Thanks.

[jimmycat]

@Philip Perkins @humbuk @The Documentary Sound Guy Thank you all for the suggestions. 

I just had a crew meeting today. Things have become much less tricky. The director and the DoP said they’d roughly break and block the shots and guaranteed that the camera will stick to the same characters within a shot. Although the overlapping and improvisation are still inevitable, some minor characters’ lines will be simplified to just general chatting. As you all have mentioned, the conversation will be led by the protagonist, which the main boom will follow. And the 2nd boom will cover whoever the lead is talking to, whether on or off camera, for the inevitable overlapping response. All the actors with clear lip movement in the shot and the ones they’re having meaningful conversation to will speak and all the rest will be miming. The actors with meaningful lines will be wired.

 

We’ll be given some time for the wild recording for those background chatting of the minor roles. But it leads to a concern I mentioned in my original post, which is #5 - If I only do one general walla for the main table with all the characters except for the lead character, the walla will contain the voice of people talking in the shot. But if I separate the characters into groups for separate wild recordings, it’s very time consuming. Any suggestions about this concern?

 

On 12/28/2023 at 2:56 AM, The Documentary Sound Guy said:

Chances are, camera will miss a lot of the *truly* spontaneous interruptions, and the director may want to back-up the action to allow cameras to reset when something interesting happens.  This is an opportunity for you as well:  If the director thinks it's important enough to re-do a particular moment, let the actors know they need to be quiet as the scene re-starts.  This gives you a brief chance to capture the "interruptions" cleanly.

 

@The Documentary Sound GuyThat's a solid advice. Thank you very much. I'll keep that in mind. 

[Philip Perkins]

Great.  I hope you have a really on-it, intuitive, attentive boom-op for the non-lead voices who can anticipate and feather-on and feather-off. 

If so this will sound great.

 

[The Documentary Sound Guy]

1 hour ago, jimmycat said:

But it leads to a concern I mentioned in my original post, which is #5 - If I only do one general walla for the main table with all the characters except for the lead character, the walla will contain the voice of people talking in the shot.

I think this mostly comes down to mic placement and doing your walla with the whole cast talking, not just one table.  Since you are already asking for a wild recording as a separate take, it sounds like you just need to ask for the whole cast.  Put your ambience mic(s) distant from the cast or facing away from the crowd so no voices become prominent.  Your recording the room, not the conversation.  If the lead character is very distinctive, ask for walla without them, but chances are their voice will disappear into the mass of other voices.  You'll know when you hear it and can direct accordingly.  Also, you aren't really asking for a wild track of the scene, you are asking for a whole bunch of simultaneous conversations, so make sure the cast knows what you are asking for.  If that doesn't work, just note it and let them find a suitable library track.

[jimmycat]

18 hours ago, The Documentary Sound Guy said:

it sounds like you just need to ask for the whole cast.  Put your ambience mic(s) distant from the cast or facing away from the crowd so no voices become prominent.  Your recording the room, not the conversation.

 

I'm sorry that maybe walla is a misleading term.

Although the mimed actors won't have important lines, the director wants the audience to vaguely hear what they're chatting about. It's a scene with only two tables, each with around ten people. In that situation, one is supposed to be able to vaguely hear who is talking what, if listening attentively. Also, the vibe at each table is very different, one energetic, the other suspicious. And the lead character moves from one table to the other. So I suppose at least one wild recording for each table is required. 

Besides, the location is a yard, adjacent to a road on one side and field on an other. If the mic(s) set too far away from the voices, I'm worried the insects and traffic can be too loud. 

 

But I got your

[The Documentary Sound Guy]

Yes, it sounds like you need to do at least two different ambiences then.  "Vaguely hear" sounds to me like the director hasn't actually thought through what they want to capture or how they want to achieve that feeling.  If it's just emotional tone they are looking for, I would still aim for recording the space (but I take your point about facing the mic away from them).

As for how to do it efficiently ... maybe plan three different aspects:  table A, table B, and both together.  Tell the actors your plan when you have the floor so they know what you want from them, then capture all three in a single recording, cuing each table verbally during the take for when to speak and when not to.  Make a plan with the boom op to move to create the appropriate focus and distance.  Shouldn't take more than three minutes as long as you are prepared and know how to step in to direct.  If it's not a small enough set that it would be appropriate to take command yourself, talk through the plan with an AD, and get them to run the action.  You'll need radio contact with the AD so you can ask for changes on the fly.  The key is to treat it as a single take; don't start & stop with separate rolls; do it all together while you have the crew's attention.  You can create separate takes in the recorder, but don't announce each step as a separate thing.

[jimmycat]

@The Documentary Sound Guy thanks for the advice.  Very helpful.

Happy New Year!