Charlie Chaplin Sound

Sound is part of our movie experience these days. And good sound is important to that experience, although it's not something you usually notice. (Unless it's bad sound.)

And bad sound can be a filmmaker's nightmare. We know how true this is... on our first feature film, when we discovered the importance of a single battery.

The battery in our boom mic was dying. Just replace the battery! Problem fixed. Right?

Wrong. There was a problem we hadn't anticipated. That this very battery wasn't just any old, ordinary, buy-it-at-the-corner-store battery. Nope. It was so specialized that no store in all of New York City had a replacement! (We would have had to order it from the company. Not good, since we were filming on a tight schedule.)

That day was enough to make us wish we were back in the days when films were silent!

And speaking of the silent film era, there's a story about Charlie Chaplin's first visit to a sound stage. This is what he observed:

"Men geared like warriors from Mars sat with earphones while the actors performed with microphones hovering over them like fishing rods. It was all very complicated and depressing. How could anyone be creative with all that junk around them?"

Okay, so maybe it just takes some time to get used to... You really can be creative with all the "fishing rods" and "junk" around. You just have to work a little harder. And, of course, it helps if your batteries are not misbehaving...

And when that happens, it's nice to be able to fall back on a few scenes that can be shot MOS...

P.S. Curious about what happened the day our battery gave out? Well... That's a long story...