Audio for reality TV: getting real often means poor quality audio, and quick turnarounds don't make audio pros jobs any easier

Post, Jan, 2004 by Christine Bunish

By virtue of being unscripted, reality television presents mynad challenges in audio post. Its of-the-moment, no-retakes-style means re-recording mixers have to work with source audio from far-flung, exotic locations, gritty streets on hidden cameras. Dedicated to making post audio sound great, they often have to settle for making reality TV sound intelligible.

POST LOGIC GETS EXPERIMENTAL

Described as a sketch comedy show wrapped in a hidden-camera format. The Jamie Kennedy Experiment, which airs on the WB network, has been mixed by Fred Howard since its inception three years ago. "It's completely unscripted, but that's not to say we don't have an agenda: to get laughs," says the post production sound mixer at Post Logic, Hollywood (www.postlogic.com). "They set Jamie up to play an outrageous or absurd character against an unsuspecting mark and hilarity ensues."

Howard says the show's producers have helped carry his own agenda--to get cleaner, better sound--forward. And that's been particularly challenging this season as Kennedy has taken to the road with shows in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Miami.

Production sound mixer Jeff Frickman aims for "good, clean placement" of Sennheiser mics and body packs, which are recorded into a Digidesign Pro Tools Digi 02 rack system working in conjunction with a Yamaha 02R mixer. Set-ups for the sketches are often lensed with DV cameras, which present an additional challenge in fidelity but offer a further dynamic to draw viewers in.

Some bits, such as when Kennedy portrayed an ersatz talk-show host, or when marks can be lured near a stashed mic, yield better production sound. If Kennedy is in proximity to a mark the gain on his own mic can be cranked to better hear the unsuspecting individual. "You compromise fidelity for presence but that can add to the gritty, of-the-moment feel," Howard notes.

Frickman uses "all the available I/Os of the Digi 02 and the expanded I/Os of the 02R so he can get as many as 16 tracks out of the 02R into Pro Tools," says Howard. The tracks go out of the Pro Tools workstation into an Avid Media Composer for editorial via DVD-ROM, dramatically cutting loading time for the offline editors. Final tracks come via OMF to Howard's Avid AudioVision, which is interfaced to an SSL 6000 console. He also receives another eight tracks of the offline editor's mix to use as reference. Segment wrap-arounds are shot on location and then played back for Kennedy's live audience in LA "so we don't have to sweeten the laugh track," he reveals.

"There's not much editorial time for the show so all the editing decisions are made in the mix environment," Howard explains. "We place sound effects and music with an eye toward the final level." During his first pass he sets levels and fixes "digital tics between clips," then during his second pass he steps back to examine the content's continuity and make any additional fixes. The third pass is the layback.

TONIC CLEANS UP ANGRY AUDIO

MTV's Boiling Points is a different breed of reality programming: a hidden-camera game show. Actors in various disguises--a waiter, a pizza counter man--try to push unwary participants to the boiling point. But if the contestant can keep his cool for a designated time, he'll be a winner.

Like The Jamie Kennedy Experiment, this new series runs the risk of its unsuspecting contestants being off mic. "People don't know they're on camera and on mic so they move around, especially when they're angry," reports Bill Cavanaugh, senior audio engineer at New York's Tonic (www.tonic.tv).

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

"Every single show, every shot presents its own problem. The actor might have a camera and mic in his eyeglasses and fight to keep his head steady. There's traffic noise at an outdoor cafe; people are whispering to each other about their bad treatment," he explains.

Episodes are comprised of segments shot on different days at different locations. Each segment has multiple contestants in the same situation who are cross cut within the segment. Contestants are shot at different times of the day but reach their boiling points in tandem with other contestants in the same segment. "The pull-ups of multiple contestants crosscut compound the audio shifts," Cavanaugh says. "It's a challenge to diminish the background noise so the dialogue is intelligible and to match the sound shot-to-shot, so the segment doesn't look like it's slapped together. You might even want to worsen scenes that sound relatively okay to match shots before and after so it flows better."

An episode of the half-hour strip show is shot in a single day and Cavanaugh has just one day to clean up the audio and perform the final mix. He receives OMFs from the Avid editors who "try to do the best they can with levels" before he begins work on his Pro Tools and Euphonix 5 console. "Because of the time crunch I try to solve problems the most efficient and quickest way possible," he explains. "Sometimes that's the console, sometimes it's a Pro Tools plug-in. I do level changes on the console; music has been added in post production and you want to feel and hear the hit but not have it fight with intelligibility. On the other hand, music can bridge some of the noise. Rather than trying to automate in Pro Tools, I grab the Euphonix faders and let my ear guide me."