Practical Art of Motion Picture Sound, 4th Edition

Chapter 5

The Challenging Battlefield of Production

“I'm sorry, David, but the #$%*!ing director won't give me twominutes to slap a couple of wireless mics on the actors, and there'sno room in the #$%*ing office for my boom man, so I had to stickthe mic on the floor under the desk—so don'tblame me if it sounds like #$%*!”

Lee Howell, commenting on production DAT-14 while working as aproduction sound mixer

Without doubt, the most difficult and arduous recording process in the audio-track development of a film is the on-camera production dialog recording. It's here that any lack of preparation and tactical planning will rear its ugly and expensive head in the coming months of postproduction. Here the ignorance and apathy of other production-unit ...