Freesound Forums

You guys in the first world may not be familiar withy this but power generator noise is the bane of all filmmakers, sound recordists in Nigeria. You simply can't move for the sound/noise pollution. This brings me nicely to my problem. I am a film maker with a deep interest in sound. I have just shot an indie low budget feature film in Nigeria. All was cool until I got to the edit. Entire 2 scenes (mine are particularly long unfortunately) were almost laid bare by noise pollution. Some we can live with - don't we call it atmos! The first was polluted by a generator noise. So much that we need to increase the gain just to make out the dialogue...and yes the sound recordist is long gone...he was ok till that scene... I mean we had proper kit..recorded on Eidrol 9 digital recrder AKG 25 mike. Anyhow I digress. The second scene was shot outside town..and that was pollted by very miffed and chirping crickets. The MFKers must have been on heat. Anyhow so I tried to fix it using Audacity. The noise removal feature, did the job, so I thought until I played back the result. It had actors sounding like Martians on speed! I did not bother with the second sc..the one with the chirping crickets. I ofcouse remembered that I belong to finest sound community in the internet. So here I am ..can anyone help? I am no geek, just a film maker who loves the landscape of sound. There are no sound engineers here in the Niger Delta who can rock this boat with me..so can anyone help. I'll happily upload the offending scenes wav format of course.. One is 99mb and the other is 59 mb. All I want in a nutshell is to reduce to a minimum the generator/cricket noise so that the actors can be properly audible. Oh I forgot to add...I am barefaced enough to send this film to Cannes...already sent a working version. Help!

greetings allya

For the love of the devil, use paragraphs.

You will have to post (at least examples of) the tracks which you want cleaned to get some help I believe.

Hello Allya,

I posted a provate message to you.

Cheers
Florian

Sorry, must mind my manners and use paras. See!

I am trying to upload the file with a little difficulty, when I do, I should post the url.

I don't know what the forum policy is, if I cannot upload here, can I use another site say megaupload.com?

Thanks allya

deinbofa

I finally uploaded one of the offending scens the second one is the cricket and night noise. Its a bigger file and I am working on it, will upload it when bandwith becomes avaliable.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=IIOM8XCD

You'll notice that a gen noise was constant to the point of distraction.

I need help guys.

Thank allya

deinbofa

Sorry! here is the second offending file, the one with the beserk crickets!

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=GX3S3G1C

Thanks allya

deinbofa

I listened to your first scene the other day. Unfortunately there will not be much you can do to fix this. The signal to noise ration in the recording is not good. I suspect (but I hope not) that the offending generator is the same one used to run your film shoot. Correct?

It also sounds like even if the generator wasn't there the microphone is placed too far from your talent. From my experience in working on film sound you really need to get the boom as close to the subject as possible. Whether this means from above or below to stay out of the shot, it just needs to be close. You can hear a lot of the room in the recording, this gives away the position of the microphone. I'll send you an example of something I have done to see what the closer position sounds like.

About the only thing you can do now is bring the actors in the scene back and do ADR (automatic dialogue replacement). I don't know why they call it automatic, there isn't much automatic about it. Really just bring the actors back in and one at a time they can rerecord the scene in a controlled environment. This is the best solution, and it is done on all major motion picture films. Almost no dialogue in films nowadays is taken from the on set scene. It is all replaced in post production.

Thanks for that. ADR is really not an option, could and should have done that.

I think the sound recordist made two errors ( I was too buy doing my job- directing - to notice)

He used a lavalier to record the talent! ie the mike was stuck to table, and because it was a long shot he gave me the nod it was cool.

Of course it was not cool. As you know on set you have to trust your key crew, he let me down he did. No worries though. This is a low budget feature and I have simply run out of cash, so must fix this as best as I can.

thanks anyway.

deinbofa

The remedy power supply, thank you.