After reading Grazie’s recent “plank” posts, I was reminded of an early experience of mine that could only be referred to as a near “cluster-plank.” But I learned a lot about client psychology in the process – as well as the dangers of digging my own grave by trying to cover up a “plank” moment.
On my third job ever as a sound recordist in 1986, I was called in the middle of the night for an early morning TV commercial job filming a celebrity exiting a private plane at a local airport. So after an emergency call to a rental house, I picked up a Nagra and shotgun mic before dawn and headed to the airport.
My initial “plank” was not checking the gear in my rush to make the call time and when I arrived at the location, found that there was no shotgun mic inside the case. Talent was already leaving the makeup trailer. I panicked because I knew my director would not tolerate a mistake of this magnitude, but remembered that I had an SM58 in my trunk from a band gig a few nights back. So I gaffer-taped the 58 inside of the huge blimp and prayed I could get the mic close enough to get some usable audio.
As soon as we began shooting, the airport runways opened and planes were taking off and landing. I could barely hear what the talent was saying over the background noise and was already planning for a new career. When we wrapped, I approached the talent and asked if he could give me a few wild takes off set for “safety.” He was in a rush but agreed to give me ONE.
I was also serving as off-line editor for the project, so I intercepted the film transfer at the production company and synced up the single wild audio take to ALL of the filmed scenes. An act of a desperate man, but the talent was so consistent it was fairly easy. At the screening session I was given a lot of praise for achieving such clean audio in a noisy location.
But then the clients began picking apart the individual takes. Not from a shooting standpoint, but an AUDIO standpoint. “I like the way he says ‘your’ in take 4 better.” “We have to use the product line from 7.” So I spent several hours repeatedly editing the same audio take back together against the master shot – sweating profusely the whole time in anticipation of someone noticing that nothing was really changing. Finally the clients decided, “Perfect!” and left happy.
The director grabbed me by the arm after they left and said, “OK, what all did you **** up?” He saw through the whole thing. When I fessed up to the whole story, he said I was the luckiest guy he had ever seen. But I kept my job.
On my third job ever as a sound recordist in 1986, I was called in the middle of the night for an early morning TV commercial job filming a celebrity exiting a private plane at a local airport. So after an emergency call to a rental house, I picked up a Nagra and shotgun mic before dawn and headed to the airport.
My initial “plank” was not checking the gear in my rush to make the call time and when I arrived at the location, found that there was no shotgun mic inside the case. Talent was already leaving the makeup trailer. I panicked because I knew my director would not tolerate a mistake of this magnitude, but remembered that I had an SM58 in my trunk from a band gig a few nights back. So I gaffer-taped the 58 inside of the huge blimp and prayed I could get the mic close enough to get some usable audio.
As soon as we began shooting, the airport runways opened and planes were taking off and landing. I could barely hear what the talent was saying over the background noise and was already planning for a new career. When we wrapped, I approached the talent and asked if he could give me a few wild takes off set for “safety.” He was in a rush but agreed to give me ONE.
I was also serving as off-line editor for the project, so I intercepted the film transfer at the production company and synced up the single wild audio take to ALL of the filmed scenes. An act of a desperate man, but the talent was so consistent it was fairly easy. At the screening session I was given a lot of praise for achieving such clean audio in a noisy location.
But then the clients began picking apart the individual takes. Not from a shooting standpoint, but an AUDIO standpoint. “I like the way he says ‘your’ in take 4 better.” “We have to use the product line from 7.” So I spent several hours repeatedly editing the same audio take back together against the master shot – sweating profusely the whole time in anticipation of someone noticing that nothing was really changing. Finally the clients decided, “Perfect!” and left happy.
The director grabbed me by the arm after they left and said, “OK, what all did you **** up?” He saw through the whole thing. When I fessed up to the whole story, he said I was the luckiest guy he had ever seen. But I kept my job.