Scenes that show the microphone. I took the kids to Cheaper by the Dozen this past week and the first scene was the worst mic scene I've ever witnessed. Who proofs these movies?
That actually might be the theater's fault. http://www.suntimes.com/output/answ-man/sho-sunday-ebert19.html Q. My wife and I just returned from seeing "The Secret Lives of Dentists." During the latter part of the movie, I could see the microphones in the film, usually over the heads of the actors. I didn't know what to make of it, especially because it happened again and again. It was terribly distracting from the experience of watching the movie. What happened here? Bill Meyer, Durham, N.C. A. This is the Question That Refuses Go Away, and I answer it faithfully once a year. Please clip and save: When you see a microphone at the top of the frame in a movie, 99.9 percent of the time it is not the fault of the filmmakers, and the blame should go to the projectionist in your theater, who has framed the movie incorrectly. Complain to the management. Of course they'll tell you "the problem is with the print," or "the movie came like that from the studio," but THEY ARE WRONG.
Then why don't we see it on video and DVD versions of the movie? I guess that has an obvious enough answer. It just surprises me to hear that filmakers aren't more careful to keep boom mics out of shots completely. One example of it not being the theaters fault: there's a shot in Romeo + Juliet where the reflection of a boom mic is visible in a car window. It's hard to notice when your just watching the movie, but on the DVD commentary track Baz Luhrmann stops mid-sentence and says, "Oh my, I just saw a boom mic! I've never noticed that there before."
Please explain Mr.P. I thought we were seeing the entire frame on the big screen? Is this not the case? (I learn so much here )
The 35mm frame is a square. So, there are all sorts of things in the frame that aren't intended to be seen by the eventual audience in most movies. To get the best possible sound, you want to get the mic as close as possible to the actor, so you often end up dipping the boom into the part of the frame that will be covered by the matte when the movie is shown. On video and DVD, the studio puts the matte on (or crops the stuff that's not supposed to be there out of the frame in the case of pan-and-scan titles), but in theaters, the matte is the responsibility of the projectionist. So if the projectionist picks the wrong section of frame to show, the stuff that's not supposed to show up does show up. Some filmmakers do compose their shots to keep the boom mic, etc. out of the entire 35mm frame. James Cameron, I believe, is one them, as was Stanley Kubrick. But most of the time, since the stuff in that part of the frame is never supposed to be seen, filmmakers don't worry about boom mics or the like being in that part of the frame. A side note, some early VHS movies by some cheaper studios simply removed the matte to make the movie fill the television screen (rather than panning-and-scanning), so there are some early VHS titles that have the boom mic visible in practically the entire movie.
That also happens quite a bit. There's a scene in Woody Allen's Hollywood Ending when Woody is talking to the studio execs trying to get them to hire him to direct a movie. On the back wall of the room is an ornate mirror. Visible in the mirror is the boom mic. It's not so obvious on the DVD, but it was very noticable at the theater. Of course, I was probably the only person who noticed it since I was the only person who saw Hollywood Ending in the theater. Jake Kasdan's Zero Effect has a visible shadow of the boom mic in one scene. Kasdan mentions it on the commentary. I would not have noticed it if not for his pointing it out, though. So it does happen from time to time.
OK, well this brings up another incredibly stupid question that they probably answer the very first day of film school: If the 35mm frame is square, then why are movies shown in a rectangle?
I guess I should elaborate on that. Before the advent of television, movies generally were in the 4:3 (or square) aspect ratio. When television came into being and attendance at movie theaters took a big drop, the studios came up with the idea of widescreen movies in order to give people a reason to go to the theater. The easiest way to do that was to simply matte out part of the frame for exhibition (otherwise, you'd have to redesign the film and the cameras, etc).
And before the math majors get on to me, I realize that 4:3 isn't really "square", but it's what we consider to be essentially square in terms of television and movies. But the 35mm frame is slightly wider than it is tall (as are our television sets).
Yes, and to compete with television, movie theatres created 'Cinemascope' (i.e. the wide screen). This was done so that viewers felt like they were watching a much bigger screen. Because TV couldn't reproduce this at the time (small TV screens meant letter-boxing would have made the picture ultra small), movies provided a different (and seemingly superior) view.
Thanks. Since I got my DVD player, I've been fascinated with the director commentary tracks. When I watch movies now, I find myself thinking about how directors may have set up shots and what order the scenes might have been shot in. It's really changed the way I watch movies.
I love commentary tracks, too, for the same reasons. I had thought about a lot of those things before, but having the filmmaker comment on those things can really give a deeper insight.
