Why "you have to be a little masochistic" to do sound for HD

In terms of sound recording and mixing for film and HD video production, Emmy-nominated audio engineer Stu Deutsch has done it all. From operating a boom microphone for Pee Wee’s Playhouse on CBS in 1986 to mixing sound for Spike Lee’s documentary When The Levees Broke: A Requiem In Four Acts in 2006 to his most recent project, serving as recording supervisor for Nickelodeon’s latest hit show, The Naked Brothers Band, his goal is always the same: to acquire the best audio elements, often under the most difficult circumstances.
He’s the guy that places all of the mics on set, clips mics to actors and makes sure the boom is picking up everything it’s supposed to. On Naked Brothers Band, Deutsch is challenged with individually micing up to nine actors simultaneously and making sure everyone gets heard. That’s often difficult when the actors are adolescent kids who “won’t sit still in order to put them on, and they play basketball in between setups where the sensitive equipment may get trashed.”



Deutsch says, “You have to be a little masochistic to be a soundman and put up with little or no respect in a visually-dominated medium. But we persevere.”



Q: Do you find most of the projects you work on are acquired and/or completed in stereo or surround audio? Why?
A: I don’t record in surround sound. I record in stereo for crowd ambience tracks with either a pair of Sennheiser MKH-40’s or 50’s or a Neumann RMS 191 stereo mic. A large part of Naked Brothers is recorded in stereo because I have two mics working on set for more than two actors. Sometimes I have nine kids running around at the same time. I also record on a Fostex DV 824 8 track recorder with a Fostex PD 606 6 track recorder as a backup.

Q: A TV show like Naked Brothers Band has a lot of actors on set. How do you mic them?
A: I use boom mics most of the time for several reasons. Primarily, the actors are delivering their lines at high levels and lavalier mics are too close to sound very good. Lavs are pretty cheap pieces of equipment in comparison to a good boom mic, which costs thousands of dollars. Lavs also don’t work in conjunction with the environment; you don’t hear the voice in the room.

Secondly, it’s hard to hide the radio transmitters on kids because they’re so small and they run all over the set between takes. The transmitters are dragging on the floor five minutes after you’ve put them on. I tend to mic both on-camera and off-camera dialogue for overlapping reasons.

The sound crew working on the first season [Deutsch has worked on the second and third seasons] put wireless mics on the kids for every setup and I understand that there were problems with clothing noise and the wireless transmitters being in the shot some of the time.

Q: When acquiring audio in the field, what’s the best way set up mic placement? Does on-camera recording work well enough for some?
A: In the field I generally put radio mics on the actors for background noise reasons. On-camera mics are a travesty of nature and should be outlawed. Microphone placement is the guarded secret of great sound recording. An inert mic stuck on top of a camera has no soul.

The show is shot on two hand-held Sony [F950R] HD cameras shooting a medium shot and close-ups at the same time. Trying to record the proper perspective for both cameras can be problematic at times.

Q: What’s the biggest misconception about audio-for-HD production?
A: I do mostly feature films with 30 years of experience as a boom operator and sound mixer. I treat HD production just as I’d treat anything else, except for the stereo audio that I’m sending to both cameras in addition to my DVD-RAM discs.