This is a story about the importance of choosing the right person for the job.
Once upon a time, a team of three people was sent out to capture an event that seemed like an everyday occurrence to some, but like an amazing feat to others. We were sent out to capture students in a music class practicing the violin with their teacher. We arrived early, paranoid as always about not having enough time to set up. We hid lights and reflectors behind the piano and in the corners of the room, and we made a rough plan for who would do what during shooting.
I was to hold the microphone that would capture most of the student’s music when they were playing. The person holding the camera my microphone was attached to would record close-ups of the children and monitor the sound via headphones. The other of us would get all the needed wide shots and close-ups of the teacher, and record the teacher’s voice. This seemed like a fine arrangement except for one thing. The person monitoring the audio from my microphone is nearly deaf and hasn’t got much experience in this sort of thing. He could probably tell us whether there was audio being recorded or not, but I don’t think he could tell us much more than that.
The class proceeded to enter the room and play beautiful music, with our director asking for re-takes sometimes and different angles on the action at other times. Every time I looked at my headphone-wearing partner, I got a sign of thumbs-up!
Later on, in the editing room, I was in charge of capturing all the footage. As I was watching the tapes from the wide-shot camera and making the logs I thought that these kids really are doing something amazing, even though they don’t think so. It’s just their regular everyday music lesson. To me it’s an extraordinary thing to see people doing things they enjoy, and an expressive medium like music is all the more appropriate for this! It was a pleasing experience to watch all the footage and to mark the best takes of different parts of the class, but most of all I enjoyed hearing the music the students were playing. Up until this point, I had been watching and listening to the camera recording the wide shots and the sound of the teacher’s voice via a lavalier mic attached to her shirt.
Then I put in the first tape from the other camera. The tape with the close-ups of the students, and the boom audio which I had been controlling but not monitoring. I started crying when the children started playing. On this tape the signal was way too loud, overmodulated and distorted. The sounds matched the correct young violinists that were in the video, but it was so distorted and loud that it was extremely unpleasant to listen to. Here they had put on a really great performance, and this team of three people who had been set out to capture it, had failed them.
After all the video was captured, I took a sample of the poor, distressed sound into Audition, to see if it could be salvaged. Some things could certainly be done to make it more tolerable, but nothing could be done for the overmodulation. It wasn’t recorded properly – it would have been much better to end up with a recording that was too quiet and then boost it in the editing process. Instead, there’s a recording that went over the limits, and the tops and bottoms of every waveform are missing, and there’s no way to get them back again.
The moral of the story is, of course, always make an effort to learn about people’s strengths and weaknesses, and try to choose the best person for the job. Pay attention to the process of doing something and evaluate its effectiveness and contribution to the quality of the final product instead of bending it to the way that’s easier for you. I know that not too many people are as particular about quality as I am, but this could have been simply and easily avoided by a test tape with the students present, a monitor on which to watch and listen, or just some instruction for the audio person. All of these things were within the reach of our group of three people.
But we didn’t do any of them because it would have been too difficult for us. A monitor is heavy, and another piece of equipment you have to carry around. This person is so passionate about recording – he must be skilled at it. We don’t need to run a test – we just ran one (with only the teacher present). And all these things could have been carried out even without changing who was doing what on this shoot.
I can hear the sound of violins.
