I thought I was losing my mind watching For All Mankind last week. So many shows use space as a backdrop for gorgeous scoring and clean ADR lines, highlighting the empty vastness of noiseless void as a perfect contrast. So why does it sound like everyone’s voice is being recorded on my USB Dell mic from 1995? Some of their scenes really nail the feeling of being there, watching history unfold, but whenever there’s a back and forth conversation in a room with the head to head cameras, they’re back to using my old Dell mic. It sounds like they recorded it in a real house (not a compliment).
I thought I was going nuts, so I looked it up. Taken with a massive grain of salt, this guy on Reddit supposedly worked on the show and had some interesting points.
”…Booming was tough, too. Like most TV shows these days, we had 2-3 cameras, and usually shot wides and tights simultaneously. Sometimes we could fight for similar headroom, but it wasn’t always worth it.
Joel Kinnaman (Baldwin) is tall guy. He dictated the top of frame. This made it difficult to boom other actors in scenes with him, like Sarah Jones (Tracy Stevens), who may be over a foot shorter than him…”
I try very hard not to be overly critical of recording quality vs creative quality, but sometimes it’s impossible. Has anything stood out lately as unignorably bad to the rest of us?
I thought I was going nuts, so I looked it up. Taken with a massive grain of salt, this guy on Reddit supposedly worked on the show and had some interesting points.
”…Booming was tough, too. Like most TV shows these days, we had 2-3 cameras, and usually shot wides and tights simultaneously. Sometimes we could fight for similar headroom, but it wasn’t always worth it.
Joel Kinnaman (Baldwin) is tall guy. He dictated the top of frame. This made it difficult to boom other actors in scenes with him, like Sarah Jones (Tracy Stevens), who may be over a foot shorter than him…”
I try very hard not to be overly critical of recording quality vs creative quality, but sometimes it’s impossible. Has anything stood out lately as unignorably bad to the rest of us?
