I bought the DVDs of the Golden Girls and I was watching season 3 and so far into the season, I’ve seen at least six different scenes were you could clearly see the boom mikes.
I was wondering, are the DVD versions different somehow? I am usually not one to notice small things like this, and the mikes are pretty high up and just glance into the scene. I was wondering perhaps when the shows were aired the TVs cut that bit off at the top so you didn’t notice or something but it show more screen on the DVD versions so you notice it
It could be. I know that if you see a boom mike in a movie theater, Ebert has commented that it is most likely the projectionist’s fault for not centering the movie properly. They do film more area than you see, so it is possible that it did not air that way, but is showing up on DVD.
Back in the day (and the day certainly includes the era of Golden Girls) CRT pictures would shrink as the tube aged, power levels fluctuated – really for a whole bunch of reasons. Directors compensated by “overscanning” or shooting a wider scene than would be shown and centering the important stuff. It’s perfectly reasonable that the videotapes or DVD versions of the shows have areas around the edges that never would have been seen on broadcast TV. Heck, my TV and your TV probably wouldn’t have shown exactly the same area.
What kunilou said. Also, most new TVs have aspect ratio controls that will allow you to “zoom” and overscan the picture a bit if it’s really distracting. The boom operator has a very difficult job - they have to get the microphone as close as possible, but not within the camera image. Also, they might have had the mic just a little bit too close in one take, but that was the better take otherwise - and if it didn’t show up on the monitor in the control room the director was watching, and only showed up on the underscanned monitor the engineer was watching, it was “good enough”.