Five Small Noises

They may be small noises, but on a film set, they can cause big problems. Or, medium big problems. Or, at least a few headaches for the film editor.

We've already blogged about the traffic noises that caused sound issues on the set of our feature film Under Jakob's Ladder.

But here's a list are a few other small noises we had to live with:

1. For a few days, we had a small plane that kept circling overhead (Why? We never figured that one out).


2. The honey-wagon truck always seemed to come in the middle of a scene, with its "beep, beep, beep" as it backed up to do its weekly duty. (Yes, we tried -- unsuccessfully -- to get them to come in the morning when we were not filming.)


3. There were also those local kids riding their motorized vehicles in the field behind our prison location. (Fortunately, this only happened on a night when we were doing our test filming.)


4. And then there was the neighbor's lawn mower.


5. Oops! Our own cell phones and/or walkie-talkies went off a few times at inopportune moments.

Oh well, that's all part of filmmaking. You deal with each noise as it comes. Try to eliminate it, if at all possible. Sometimes, you just have to wait a few minutes and the sound will go away. (That's right, the plane did eventually fly to some other destination). Sometimes, you just need to go to lunch a bit early (as we did on occasion).

Sometimes a little creativity on set can go a long way. And there's always the creativity in the editing room!