Scott Sheriff
Forum Replies Created
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And then there is this:
https://www.markertek.com/Acoustic-Materials/Portable-Sound-Booths-Acc/CAD-Audio/AS32.xhtml?CAD-AS32Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.comhttps://www.affordabledolly.com
“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” —Red Adair
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[Phillip Roh] “Example: for the end-user, would viewing still images interspersed with motion video be a jarring visual experience compared to a slideshow of images?”
Its done all the time, though not always well. A couple of common tricks are to get images large enough to keyframe some movement (the ken burns effect), or use several of them in a mosaic bringing them on/off at staggered intervals to add some motion.
Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.comhttps://www.affordabledolly.com
“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” —Red Adair
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I built a small VO booth in my studio, about the size of one of those photo booths. Much easier to control the acoustics of the smaller room, and I built it to be freestanding, so it is only touching the floor on thick felt pads. So I have a room, in a room that is isolated from the rest of the building. I built it with dimensional lumber and insulated the walls, ceiling. I used a thick fuzzy nap carpet on the floor which was left open since the booth is on a concrete floor, and that works pretty good. The outside is covered in tongue and groove pine, and it looks like a little sauna.
If you do this, you will have to use Sonex, egg crates, etc, on the interior. You can buy new, clean commercial egg flats that are 12″ square. They work pretty well in the small room. However, if you spray them with fire retardant, it makes them hard, and reduces the effect somewhat. Even so I would not use them untreated since they are pressed paper pulp and burn quite easily. To get back some of the dampening effect I covered the egg crates with a layer of upholstery felt, which not only hide the egg flats, but also reduces contact damage as they are somewhat fragile. If possible, make the walls non-parallel. Doesn’t have to be a lot, and you can do it by shimming the interior wall panels to produce a bit of a slope. For a small project like this, Sonex wouldn’t have cost much more than the egg flats and might have been easier to install, but it is quite a bit thicker and I didn’t want to lose that much interior dimension. I use a mixer to feed my edit computer and monitors so I have a way to send the mic audio to headphones in the booth, as well as an aux send that I use as a talk-back.
Total cost for materials, decent condenser mic and suspension mount, cables, probably around a grand. Is it perfect? No, but it works and is quite serviceable. I’ve been in plenty of TV and radio announce booths and have seen (actually heard) plenty that were not as good, or not much better.
I know people that use their walk-in closet as an impromptu audio booth, so there is that too.Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.comhttps://https://www.affordabledolly.com
“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” —Red Adair
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I would probably go with lav mics. Not a perfect solution, but depending on the pattern, it will make a moderate improvement in most situations.
Get out in the middle of the room, and stay away from the walls. Also look for acoustic reflectors like corners and curved parabolic walls pointed at your set and reposition yourself if you can to avoid the reflection path. Be sure to look up, and check the ceiling too.
Building a sound tent that is just off camera is another idea. Depending on how much time you have, it could be elaborate, or simple. Furniture moving pads are cheap, you can put them on the floor, on c-stands off to the side, behind, etc. Those upholstered office cube partitions that can stand on their own can also be used to do this, but the moving blankets are a lot easier.
In the end there is only so much you can do with these type of big rooms. You could avoid them by shooting background plates of the location, and doing a green screen shot in a location that has better acoustics.Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.comhttps://https://www.affordabledolly.com
“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” —Red Adair
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[Julian Semilian] “I am about to download Mountain Lion but have a project I have been working on on FCP 7.”
Rule #1: If you’re in the middle of a project, don’t update your software or OS, ever.
Rule #2: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. In other words if your system is running well don’t update it unless you have a reason. Just because a new version is out, is not necessarily a reason.
Rule #3: Don’t update your software or apps to a major revision until at least one minor revision has come out.
Rule #4: Don’t update your OS unless you are willing to do a clean install from scratch of both the OS and FCS.
Rule #5: Don’t update your system until you are 110% sure the driver, plugins and other minor items you depend on are compatible, or have been updated.
Rule #6: Don’t update your OS or FCS until you have cloned your existing drive, or are starting on a fresh HD.
Rule #7: Don’t update your system until reliable people have done the so, and reported back that all is well.
Break any of these rules and you are in uncharted waters…Ye be warned!
But, what the heck, you could always take one for the team, go for it and be the beta tester for everyone else.
Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” —Red Adair
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[Craig Seeman] “Read Bob Zelin’s post. It’s about staying in business and if you focus on an area that isn’t viable for you, you won’t. See Walter’ Soyka’s follow up.”
Jeez, I must have somehow missed those. Life is all rainbows and unicorns now.
Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” —Red Adair
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[Craig Seeman] “I get my rate. I cut costs. I offer speed when the client wants that over “quality.”
Denial is trying to sell a product or service that you aren’t able to sell.”[Craig Seeman] “I have lots of different things I do. Diversify.”
[Craig Seeman] “I also do tech consulting where I’m either trouble shooting or otherwise doing tech setup.”
IMO denial is posting under the premise that you are able to work full time doing production, and able ward off the hordes of production noobs.
This thread was not about doing IT work, engineering support, consulting or career changes. It was about the influx of inexperienced noobs hurting the production market and rates, and how cheap gear and the toleration of crap production values that has fostered this trend.
So in other words, the noobs are taking a bite out of your income, and you do not edit or shoot full time to support yourself.
And if all is as well as you claim and the noobs are truly not effecting you, there would be no need to diversify and “do tech consulting where I’m either trouble shooting or otherwise doing tech setup”, aka IT work. You would be too busy shooting and editing.
While I agree it’s smart to do whatever you can to make a buck, and to suggest alternatives in related fields is also good, it is also a bit disingenuous to imply in your posts that you are somehow able to defeat current production market conditions with your efforts, when you are now admitting that you are supplementing your income with non production work. And if you want to spin the tech support as production feel free. I’m not bashing support. I just think it is clear we were talking about earning a living with hands on shooting and editing.Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” —Red Adair
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[Craig Seeman] “[Scott Sheriff] “What corners are you going to cut when the time comes?”
Less expensive cameras for one as I note. Less expensive DSLRs as an example. Canon T4i at $900 really keeps low budget clients who want the shallow depth of field happy.
[Scott Sheriff] ” Ride your ten-speed to gigs?”
Take the subway when it’s just me and the camera (no lights). Some clients really don’t care. As I said, fast food.”
I don’t know if you’re being deliberately evasive, or didn’t understand the question.
The T4i, no lights and the subway is where you’re at now. I’m not talking about now. I’m talking about tomorrow, when that client buys his own cheap cam, and wants you to come in and run it for ten bucks an hour. Or maybe his nephew, or the new kid in the mail room will do it for free. Now what? You have already demonstrated that you are willing to lower your standards to the level of the noobs in order to compete. How far are you willing to go? At what point can you no longer cut anything, and be forced to lower your rate? Will you go buy a C300, or maybe even a RED to keep your rate to beat that kid down the street with a 5D mkIII that will do a day for 50 bucks because he lives with his parents and has no overhead? You have already conditioned your client to accept lower quality, and appears you have boxed yourself in.
My point? It seems you’re in the same boat the rest of us are in, just living in denial. Or are you not doing this full time to support yourself?Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” —Red Adair
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Safe area is still needed, but it doesn’t need to be as much as it had been in the CRT era. That said, there is still quite a bit of variation in flat screens so it would be hard to say how much is enough/too much.
Sorry, not very helpful. Just going to be one of those things you judge based on experience.Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” —Red Adair
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[Craig Seeman] ”
Don’t cut your price, cut your costs and your services.”LOL, pretty easy to just toss that out without backing it up with anything.
What corners are you going to cut when the time comes? Ride your ten-speed to gigs? Stop paying your taxes? Shoot with a used Flip-cam you bought on fleabay? I’m curious?
And how exactly does this jive with all this advice saying quality is what sells?
And at what point when you’ve done all that, show up to gigs like the noobs do with with nothing but a consumer camera but yet still have to compete with a million noobs that have no overhead and no investment, are you going to reduce your rates to compete? Never? Maybe a little? Maybe a lot?
Pretty much same thing goes to those they say if you can’t compete, get another line of work. When your time comes, I wonder if you will take your own advice?Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” —Red Adair