Brad,

The reason for the humming is most likely old ballasts. You can also try replacing the tubes though if you notice that certain tubes are humming more than others.

If the hum is at a constant frequency it should be fairly easy to filter out in post. If your sound guy is absolutely going nuts about it, do a test to see if it can be filtered out. Get room tone for every set-up though, just in case.

I'm not a sound guy, but I believe that some mics are better choices than others for this situation and the way that you mic can be critical. You should be able to find a very directional microphone that will not pick up this sound.

I don't know your exact predicament and why you can't turn off the lights, but I'll just add that when I'm shooting it big rooms with banks of overheads, I tend to turn them off and let the window light do most of the work. It's usually nicer (but not necessarily easier) to augment the window lighting with units outside the widows and then filling in where necessary inside.

Good Luck...

Toby Birney
Director of Photography

I agree with the suggestion of removing it in post. I had to do this once and produced OK results. The sound didn?t end up perfect, but once the buzz was removed, the audio was no longer annoying (although slightly degraded). If you have a sound package that can use DirectX plug-ins, you can run a test with this free plug-in:

http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/audio/vremover.htm

A vocal remover works on the fact that most stereo songs have the vocals mixed equally on both the left and right tracks, while the instruments are not. With a mathematical formula, the remover cancels out the sounds that are identical on both tracks and leaves whatever remains (generally the instruments).

The same technique can be used for buzzing lights (if the noise is regular and constant). By recording room tone and putting it on one track (let?s say the left track) and placing the full dialogue audio on the right track (which also contains the buzz), the buzz will cancel itself out and you?ll be left with the clean audio. Note that this does degrade the sound, so you?ll have to see if you?re willing to live with the quality.

Hope this helps.

Dan Rahmel
Author: "Nuts and Bolts Filmmaking"
http://www.cvisual.com

Another option (depends upon tone of the movie) is to add a few additional lines to your scene commenting on the annoying hum. Have the characters glance up from time to time in irritation. Turn the noise into part of the movie and move on.

This works particularly well if you can partially isolate out the humm but it's still there. Then you could add the hum back in, louder in some places and down in others (so it doesn't obscure dialogue).

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA

quote:

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Originally posted by rjschwarz

Another option (depends upon tone of the movie) is to add a few additional lines to your scene commenting on the annoying hum. Have the characters glance up from time to time in irritation. Turn the noise into part of the movie and move on.

This works particularly well if you can partially isolate out the humm but it's still there. Then you could add the hum back in, louder in some places and down in others (so it doesn't obscure dialogue).

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA

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i personally like that option best. turn lemons into lemonade. it's 2 seconds of film time, and gives your characters a nice touch of humanity.

www.maketradefair.com
www.thehungersite.com
www.oxfam.ca

quote:

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Originally posted by rjschwarz

Another option (depends upon tone of the movie) is to add a few additional lines to your scene commenting on the annoying hum. Have the characters glance up from time to time in irritation. Turn the noise into part of the movie and move on.

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?:D? LOL!

That reminds me of times I wanted to ask a director if he could have the characters add a few lines mentioning how the clouds are rolling in when clouds start to complicate shooting on a sunny-day exterior.

In reality, though, technical issues- whether light or sound related- should be dealt with in a professional manner... I mean that's what we technicians are there for. Adding dialogue to a script to rationalize a technical problem is pretty lame IMHO.

I guess it depends if you're coming at the problem from a writers viewpoint or a director's viewpoint. Either way it's pretty common to change things once shooting actually starts (unless your screenwriter is a diva). Rigidly sticking to anything will cost you time and money so embrace and manage change, especially on a smaller production.

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA

I agree with toby.

You need to control every aspect of the environment you're working in. First on set, as much as possible and if you can't control something on set, then you go to post as we were just talking about.