Microphone booms visable in movies

[Doctor_Goo_Fee]

This is driving me crazy. Especially since I work in the film/TV business and really should have at least a clue as to…

WHY IN THE WORLD do movie studios not use digital effects to erase mistakes from their films?

My friend told me that a boom mic appears hanging down in “The Patriot.” I’ve also heard of this happening in other films, (that I can’t recall just now) though I’ve not seen it myself.

If digital effects can remove the wires in “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” then surely the process can remove a boom mic at the top of a shot. It probably wouldn’t even be particularly difficult or expensive.

I tend to discount any notion that “nobody noticed it.” Apparently, it was quite obvious. And, these big-budget films are SCRUTINIZED by many folks before they ever leave the ol’ sausage factory.

What the heck is UP?

[SmackFu]

OK, 2 possible reasons:

1) If it was in a theater: The boom mikes may be on the physical film frame, but are not supposed to be visible if the film is projected with the correct framing. The projectionist might have screwed up and misaligned the film to be too low or high. There is nothing to fix if it is shown correctly.

2) If it was on VHS/TV: Sometimes this happens when the movie is formatted for a 4:3 screen. Instead of using pan & scan, and showing less of the frame, some directors like to use an open matte, which shows more than was shown on the screen in the movie theater. Of course, it might also show some boom mikes (and often does), but no one is going to pay the money just to remove them from the TV version.

[exchicagoan]

*Originally posted by SmackFu *
**OK, 2 possible reasons:

1) If it was in a theater: The boom mikes may be on the physical film frame, but are not supposed to be visible if the film is projected with the correct framing. The projectionist might have screwed up and misaligned the film to be too low or high. There is nothing to fix if it is shown correctly.

2) If it was on VHS/TV: Sometimes this happens when the movie is formatted for a 4:3 screen. Instead of using pan & scan, and showing less of the frame, some directors like to use an open matte, which shows more than was shown on the screen in the movie theater. Of course, it might also show some boom mikes (and often does), but no one is going to pay the money just to remove them from the TV version. **

Boy am I IMPRESSED. SMACKFU, it sounds like YOU’RE in the “industry”. Very interesting.

[Johnny_L.A]

Damn, SmackFu! You beat me to it!

Oh, well. What SmackFu said.

[BobT]

I saw “Secrets and Lies” at a really run down theater and saw the boom mike nearly the whole movie.

I saw the movie again at a much better theater and there was no such problem.

[Chronos]

Cecil must work in the industry, too. A Classic Column from a week ago answers this.

[Cartooniverse]

It comes down to PURE laziness. With the number of people watching a monitor on set these days, it’s virtually impossible to have an errant mike fly by without SOMEBODY noticing it. Now, whether or not they remark upon the fact is another thing. In the old days, the Camera Operator was the ONLY Human who knew of such flaws until dailies came in. By that time, it was almost always too late do to a re-shoot.

Nowadays, if nobody remarks upon the error at the moment, it means that most of the crew either doesn’t give a damn, or loathes the Director of Photography enough to let them get sunk by their cameraman/camerawoman. It’ basically unprofessional crap, IMHO.

I notice stuff ALL the time that isn’t purely a camera department thing, and make mention of it. Nothing matters before you roll camera. And, vice versa- people stroll by and whisper stuff to me that I’ve missed incessantly. They’re looking out for my ample butt, AND for the good of the show.

Yes, digitally it can be removed. It’s all a matter of costs. Crouching Tiger knew from wayyyyy back in Pre-Production that a part of the cost of making the film was going to be a lot of digital clean-up afterwards. So be it, the film was well worth it. Here and there, on lower budget films, it’s not possible to pay for the image to be digitally cleaned up, and so one lives with the microphone in the top of the shot.

Masking during production opposed to projection is an issue only if you haven’t been careful. If you shoot with a 1:1.85 frameline- NOT a hard matte, but you monitor full frame video, you can see the evils happening JUST beyond the 1:1.85 frameline. Typically unless you’re in a very bad spot, you make sure that all bogeys are gone from the frame edges, be they seen or not.

When I cannot avoid seeing myself in reflections- as is frequently the case on MTV-Cribs that I shoot a lot of, I tell the Producer in advance. They will either nix that shot, or live with it. At least they know that it’s going to be a sort of behind-the-scenes feeling shot. Of course, Cribs is shot on videotape and therefore basically what you see is what you get, unless you have a truly lousy older t.v. set, in which case there’s some masking going on around the edges right in your own home.

Cartooniverse

[Johnny_L.A]

When I cannot avoid seeing myself in reflections-

Reminds me of working on Cut Up. The DP (I was script sup.) had to dolly in on the actor, who was sitting under a large, framed picture. There was a nasty reflection in the glass. We tried cheating it, but to get rid of the reflection you could see the cheat. So we (the director, DP, me – director’s idea, but I don’t remember who actually did it) took out the glass. The set decorator chewed the director a new one, as the picture was professionally and expensively framed.

Totally unrelated to the OP or even this tangent, but I just remembered it: The DP put a fresh magazine on the camera and plugged in the power. We were using an Eclair NPR which is a very quiet machine, and he didn’t notice that the switch was on when he walked away. Okay, so it’s getting near midnight at a cemetary in New Orleans, it’s a short shoot with long days, and everyone is a bit punchy. I and a PA started mugging in front of the camera, which we new, of course, was not running. Until I said, “Hey, wait a minute. What’s that sound?” :eek: Ended up burning half a roll of Fuji at $100/roll. The DP checked the power switch every time after that.

Back to the boom. It never did get in any of the shots. The boom operator was a petite French woman named Agate. She did a great job holding the boom high on her well-toned arms. I found out later she was a grandmother. (She didn’t look it!)

[BingoBurringo]

Two of the most shameless examples of this are two movies I saw on video. ALICE’S RESTAURANT had to have the most boom shots I’ve ever seen in any movie.

For the worst boom shot, it comes right at the beginning of HIGH ANXIETY. You can see the entire microphone, and even part of the friggin stick!

[Johanna]

Laziness? It all comes down to Cheepnis — check out Frank Zappa’s satirical song mocking this sort of thing in the movies.

*Little Miss Muffett on a squat by me
Took a turn around, I said: Can y’all see?
The little strings on the Giant Spider?"
The Zipper From The Black Lagoon?
The vents by the tanks where the bubbles go up?
(And the flaps on the side of the moon) *

[BiblioCat]

*Originally posted by SmackFu *
1) If it was in a theater: The boom mikes may be on the physical film frame, but are not supposed to be visible if the film is projected with the correct framing. The projectionist might have screwed up and misaligned the film to be too low or high. There is nothing to fix if it is shown correctly.

Okay, I’ve heard this explanation before. Maybe I’m just stupid for not getting it, but why is it the projectionist’s fault? If the boom mike is in the picture, it seems to me it would be the cameraman’s fault (no offense Cartooniverse and Johnny LA) for getting it in the frame to begin with. Right? No?

Can anyone explain it?
Talk to me like I’m five.

[MannyL]

*Originally posted by Kinsey *
**

*Originally posted by SmackFu *
1) If it was in a theater: The boom mikes may be on the physical film frame, but are not supposed to be visible if the film is projected with the correct framing. The projectionist might have screwed up and misaligned the film to be too low or high. There is nothing to fix if it is shown correctly.

Okay, I’ve heard this explanation before. Maybe I’m just stupid for not getting it, but why is it the projectionist’s fault? If the boom mike is in the picture, it seems to me it would be the cameraman’s fault (no offense Cartooniverse and Johnny LA) for getting it in the frame to begin with. Right? No?

Can anyone explain it?
Talk to me like I’m five. **

Ok lets say you have a picture that is 5 feet high by 8 feet wide and on the very top one foot is a big cut when the picture was dropped it doesn’t look pretty. If you put this picture in a frame that has a foot and a half of molding on the top it will cover the cut so you don’t have to do anything. Same as in the movie theaters. The film is supposedto be shown at X size on the screen but the projectionst doesn’t setup the cropping correctly and shows more than they are supposed to. If it was positioned correctly for viewing you would never see the extra material

[Doctor_Goo_Fee]

Manny–

I don’t think it is the projectionist’s fault.

of course there is more image on the neg than shows up on the cinema screen (because of projector masks) However, no DP or camera operator (or further up the line-- director or post supervisor or editor) worth his/her salt would EVER (IMHO) allow a boom mic to show up on the neg or print.

Someone earlier mentioned that low budget productions couldn’t afford to digitally touch it up. That may be true. Certainly, though, on a picture like “The Patriot” a little touch up would cost chump change.

I’m with Cartoon and Jomo— it all comes down to laziness and cheapness.

I was hoping there was a better answer…

[Mangetout]

*Originally posted by Doctor Goo Fee *
of course there is more image on the neg than shows up on the cinema screen (because of projector masks) However, no DP or camera operator (or further up the line-- director or post supervisor or editor) worth his/her salt would EVER (IMHO) allow a boom mic to show up on the neg or print.

Cecil doesn’t agree with you (from the column that Chronos cites above):

There’s only one problem: creating wide-screen movies by chopping off the top and bottom of the picture sometimes cuts out important parts of the scene. So movie directors and cinematographers compensate by continuing to shoot most movies in 1.33:1 but composing scenes so that the important stuff will fit in a 1.85:1 or 1.66:1 frame when projected. (Lines scribed on the camera viewfinder aid in this.) This process has gotten so casual that studios sometimes release finished films with boom microphones, cables, etc., visible at the top and bottom of some scenes, confident that the theaters will cut the crap when they project

[Cabbage]

And just to back that up a little more, I once saw Jurassic Park at a theater where the projectionist didn’t have the film framed properly, the boom was almost constantly visible; so it does happen in big budget pictures.

[Sultan_Kinkari]

The movie TRON has a boom shot(famous to TRON fans) and another where someone is actually kneling in one corner of the screen holding a mic or something.

[Olentzero]

I gotta go with the “blame the projectionist” school, in one case at least.

Valkyrie and I went to see “Meet the Parents” when it first hit the big screens last winter. The projectionist had it so off-kilter that the opening credits didn’t show up at the bottom of the screen (I’m assuming that’s where they were since we didn’t see the title or the names of the actors anywhere) and boom mikes were swarming like flies across the top of the screen for the first third of the movie.

I’m sure film crews have what they deem to be acceptable margins of error for these kind of things but it would be nice to maybe widen them a bit so even if the projectionist blows it we wouldn’t be distracted by these kind of things. Probably be cheaper too, instead of having to resort to digital methods to mask them over.

[Zebra]

Having been a projectionist I know there is a lot of ‘play’ in the framing espcially with a ‘flat’ movie (non-cinemascope). You can move the image up and down so that there is either no room above the actors heads or give them so much room above their heads that you get the boom mikes but in either case you will not see frame lines.

You can actully screw up the sound and make it not in synch with the image but you have to really try.
To explain.

Movies used to have no sound and when sound was added the sound head was placed below the projector head. So even though the sound is right on the print the sound is about 17 frames ahead of the image. So the light for the image goes throught the projector at the same time as the sound is being read in the sound head. Various Digital formats have added digital heads above the projector and below the sound head to make it even more complicated. If you get an oversized loop in between the projector head adn the sound head you can have the sound a little off which drives people crazy.

[MovieMogul]

This was discussed a little in a previous thread here–please note my response to CalMeacham…

[jab1]

I clearly remember a similar mistake in The Muppet Movie (1978) that I saw in one theatre but not another: In a musical scene with Kermit and Piggy, Kermit is frolicking in the water on the right side of the screen. Perhaps the film was not projected properly, but one could clearly see Jim Henson in a wet suit as he manipulated Kermit.