Ahh the early 1920’s.
It was a glorious time when films were, for the most part, silent and
filmmakers didn’t have to worry about the noise the crew made on set being picked
up my microphones. The term was created before sound was an important part of
the filmmaking process so actors and directors could concentrate on performance
without being distracted. And from the mid to late 20’s to now the same holds
true with one crucial factor to consider: Microphones.
And highly sensitive
ones at that. Picking up the noise of a fan running in the other room, someone’s
cell phone vibrating, crew whispering to each other, people texting, all relatively
quiet actions which most non-audio people understandably do not realize make
tremendous amounts of noise when trying film a scene. The issue arises from
this age-old term “quiet on the set”, which they translate to “be just a little
quieter on set”. When they hear the AD yell that, everyone not filming must
think, “Oh, I can do the same thing I was doing before, only quieter. We can
keep talking, but just talk lower.”
Personally, and I’m
sure I am not the only one who does this, but I prefer the term “silent on set”.
It sounds more official and is not open to interpretation. Most people can
agree that silence is the complete absence of sound. So, if you find yourself
on location and you hear the words "quiet on set" remember, silence is
golden.
Like we say, "you can't polish a turd". To those non-audio members in a film project, this basically means that you can't make a bad recording sound great. Removing accidental noise in an audio recording takes a lot of time and patients, so please respect the "silent on set!" thing.
ReplyDeleteTrue. Taking a cue from the music industry, instead of worrying about EQing and mixing after the recording session, we try to capture the best quality on the front end to minimize the amount of work or turd polishing later. Thanks for the feedback, Oscar.
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