TV mumbling well OT

[Dave Plowman (News)]

You get a far better start time using a slip mat.

[Dave Liquorice]

took,

But you have to hang onto a slipmat. Bit difficult to be clearing used discs and setting the next ones up whilst hanging onto a slip mat. B-) Standard compliment of turntables in a General Purpose radio studio was at least four, IIRC a drama studio might have eight. And they'd be used...

[News]

Many years ago, I volunteered at a local hospital radio station. We had two 401s, from memory, and a third lower quality TT for emergencies. We always used slip mats for records, and they worked well, although LPs took a fraction longer than 45s to get going. Even today, I listen to the radio with half an ear to the start of tracks, even though I realise they probably have not played real records for years :-)

[Dave Liquorice]

problem

panic

Sad but true. B-(

That word "have" is the problem. If the director was doing their job properly and understoood the production/post production process that statement wouldn't exist.

Not a lot of choice as personals sound so crap.

[Dave Liquorice]

Not saying they didn't and they are quick but once cued you have to hang onto the mat until the cue arrives. Not a problem for a simple play one tune, dj wibble, play next tune, dj wibble, play... show. But a radio drama could have a quick fire sequence of effects three or four different effects in not many more seconds. Each has to be handsfree cued up and ready to go. Or the background atmos coming from crossfading between two discs is going to need the crossfade doing (two hands) whilst your third hand holds the slip mat...

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Yes. Very sad. However, sound isn't a priority with joe public. Just look at the crap sound on every single telly you can buy these days.

Not just director. Plenty of DoPs don't want booms used. Even some talent.

Yup. Remember having a heated discussion with an executive producer about just this. His attitude was if I wanted decent sound I should work in radio. ;-)

[Dave Plowman (News)]

When playing in off disc using a RP2 etc, you have to anticipate the Q. By the time I started in TV, you'd transfer all spot Qs to tape, as the start time was better. And just play in the background atmos direct from disc.

Listening to those old Goon shows where everything was from disk really shows the skills those SMs had.

[Dave Liquorice]

Speaker side of tellies has never been a strong point unless you went looking. I had a Panasonic Prism A1, substantial sealed box units each side of the screen that took up a fair bit of the space in the large 4:3 CRT box. 25 W RMS per channel IIRC. Bit better than a 4" round glued to the side of the flimsy plastic case or a 2 x 5 eliptical.

I think Joe Public do care a bit about sound or there wouldn't be such a big market for sound bars.

'cause they don't know how to light for booms? Or have been dragged up with the camera light so that any modeling doesn't "look right". B-)

Not many, most given a choice between having a radio mic or not would rather not in my experience.

[Dave Liquorice]

simple

three

Aye, about 2 seconds? Rehersals and marking the script at the cue point very important.

And these days it all comes from Spot On, true instant start, instant reset, automatic chaining. But spend a while loading and triming stuff into it. Not sure you can fiddle with levels on the fly as you could with a nicer fader on each deck/machine. How does one follow the screen action of a bear hunting salmon in a river with EC64C "Thrashing in Water" if you can't easyily waggle a fader?

And I've never got on with touch screens, seems that 25% of the time I touch, machine ignores. These days the right hand tremor plays havoc with 'em...

[Capitol]

TV manufacturers used to test the sound quality level in the engineering departments. This was one of the reasons for elliptical loudspeakers being developed. Nowadays, if it makes a noise you ship it!

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Right. I've still got my 360 Short Cut bought for that purpose. It is quicker than editing tape.

You have a grams mixer? More ITV than BBC, though.

I have that problem with my phone. Probably means my fingers are dead...

[polygonum]

Just got reminded of the way so much television sound is ridiculous.

The classic is one actor walking towards camera, another actor several paces behind walking in same direction. First actor speaks in an ordinary voice (or even a mumble), second actor catches everything perfectly.

[Bob Martin]

Perhaps that's why my wife expects me to hear what she says in a normal voice when I'm 2 rooms away.

[Stuart Noble]

I think the problem with drama is that the dialogue is so bad that they try to make up for it with lots of action and loud music. Meaningful stares have taken the place of dialogue.

[Dave Liquorice]

Swings and roundabouts I think. Certainly quicker if you need to adjust something that is at the other end of the make up. Not so sure if you just need to go to another cue point on the next up.

How many outputs does a Short Cut have? A single stereo doesn't enable you to have a couple of atmos tracks running and waggle the "64C" independantly.

I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one who gets a significant touch failure rate. TBH I don't think it's the screen hardware, I'm on Android and have enabled the Advanced "show the touch blob" feature, that pretty invariably shows but the information doesn't get passed to/recognised by the app.

[polygonum]

You might be right at that. Have to say, the actors simply must know at the time of the shoot. Guess they are not in a position to say anything

- or what they say isn't heard. :-)