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

In the first part of each episode the rap contestants, on lavalier mics, are followed through their city with their friends whose audio is captured by boom mics. Hearing what they're saying can be difficult as they talk over each other and compete with background noise. Re-recording mixer Mark Anderson at Wild Woods often needs to use noise reduction, EQ and filtration to make the conversation audible.

"Sometimes you lose sources in the field, you get ambiance as loud as the dialogue, or people are talking in the street in such close proximity to the boom mic that you lose the talent," Anderson reports. "You try to smooth things as well as you can but may still get hammered by a noisy clip."

The show is done "98 percent in the box," a Pro Tools 5.1.3 with a Pro Control surface. Anderson re-records anything that needs noise reduction back into Pro Tools but he finds that "if you push Waves' Restoration bundle enough to get good results you also get artifacts. So I run through the plug-in and then into Dolby's old Cat.43 film NR unit and that eases off a bit on the artifacts."

The showdown portion of each episode takes place at an outdoor location--an Atlanta intersection, a Detroit junkyard, overlooking New York's Brooklyn Bridge. The rappers are joined by a drummer, DJ and live audience, and are recorded onto TAS-CAM DA-88s so there's split audio for every element. Anderson delivers a full 5.1 discrete mix, then folds it down to stereo keeping the impact of the music strong in the stereo field.

SONY MUSIC: REALITY, TALK SHOWS & MORE

Sony Music Studio's recording arts complex combines audio, video, TV and film production capabilities at its West Side Manhattan location. It has been home to a number of reality, games and talk shows, including Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and Tough Crowd With Colin Quinn, which airs on Comedy Central. In addition, Sony Music Studios (www.sonymusic.com) handles audio post for MTV's Cribs and VHI's Driven.

Senior director of audio post Sue Pelino did complete audio post for the first two seasons of MTV's Making The Band, which mixes music and slice-of-life elements. The first season found P. Diddy auditioning talent nationwide and forming "Da Band." The second season had them come together at a New York City brownstone to work with music producers and record an album. The next season will pick up after the CD's release.

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"In the first season every show was different; the locations were all over the place," Pelino recalls. "This year they were more in the recording studio so there was a lot more control. They gave me a lot of tracks to work with: vocals isolated from music, underscored music minus vocals. On a lot of shows, the DV cameras are the source audio but members of 'Da Band' had individual lavs, so I was starting with decent tracks."

Pelino opened the Avid OMF from MTV in Pro Tools 6.0. Assisted by sound mixer Christopher Koch, she added city ambiance to some location shots, smoothed out the music and dialogue edits and did the final mix on an SSL Avant console. Pelino also mixed a DVD of the second season.