Get Real!
Page 2 of 3
Distortion is another location audio problem. Novak literally redraws the waveform of the problem area in Pro Tools. But other problems can arise in the video cut. “They might assemble the same piece of dialog across three shots edited together,” he says. “The dialog might be fine but the backgrounds are dissimilar. I’ll bring a little bit of reverb in to give it some sense of a common room sound. It’s not perfect, but reality TV is forgiving of that sort of fix.”
Missing dialog is not an uncommon problem in reality TV. “On Paradise Hotel, they didn’t give the competitors lavalier microphones until a day or two into production,” notes Novak. “They relied on hidden mics until then, until the hostess presented them with their beaded necklaces that held microphones.” (The necklaces were fitted with Countryman M150 capsules by location audio mixer Kevin Nicholson.) Novak continues, “We were in the middle of a massive deadline and pulling out our hair trying to figure out why we couldn’t find the dialog anywhere. No one told us that there were no lav microphones. Then I asked the director, ‘Whose crazy idea was that, anyway?’ And he said, ‘Mine.’”
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
 |
| Larson Studio's Bruce Buehlman. |
Jaime Ledner says the ultimate last resort on a bad piece of dialog is to request that the producers add a “lower-third” super to the screen containing the dialog. “They hate that, but sometimes there’s nothing else you can do,” he says. “It’s not like you can bring the talent back in for ADR.”
Conner Moore recalls a scene in Joe Millionaire in which a participant is informed that her grandmother had died. “It tried everything to bring the level up, everything in the WAVES bundle,” he says. “And even then they still had to subtitle it.”
Sound effects in post was a touchy topic early in the reality phenomenon, but it’s common knowledge that reality televisions shows get a certain amount of sweetening. As long as it’s used to enhance what’s already there, the consensus is that it’s not misleading the viewer.
“It’s not much other than ambient sounds,” says Ledner. “If it’s outdoors, I might add in the sound of birds, just to reinforce the sense of location. It also provides an opportunity to bring in a sound element that you can do in stereo and enhance what is otherwise strictly mono material.” But there’s not enough demand to warrant creating dedicated libraries for shows, as is often the case on scripted episodics, where certain familiar sounds are part of their sonic backdrop. Most sounds come straight from commercial libraries.
 |
| Post Logic's Fred Howard |
Prev 1 2 3 Next
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
