Hilton Hotel Scene

In the early hours of this morning we recorded the scene at the Hilton Hotel in Lincoln City Centre. The room we used for the shoot wasn’t being used by any of the hotel occupants; however it did contain a walkway from the hotel bar in which occasionally occupants walked through. The problems we face today are as follows:

• The air conditioning unit could not be turned off. This unit was quite loud throughout the room and was very evident on the recordings and there was no way we could have reduced it. To tackle this, we had to use the shotgun microphone as close as possible to the actors and not take perspective into consideration. Had we held it any higher, the background ambience would have been detrimental to the quality of the recording.
• Occasionally hotel guests would walk through the room, usually with loud shoes which echoed around rather loudly! This could not be helped and as we have had the privilege to film so late at night in such a good location, we were very respectful to the guests and staff in the hotel.
• Other problems were noise from the bar in the other room, as well as the occasional noise from the kitchens. Again, these were problematic but after a few takes we managed to get enough audio that most didn’t contain any unwanted noise.

For this shoot, I mainly operated the boom (Andy had a problem with his shoulder), whilst Andy operated the mixer, ensuring it didn’t hit the limiter. We did have a few problems with the limiter due to the difference in levels of both actors but still having to hold the microphone as close as possible. These were quickly rectified and the gain was correctly. At one point we used two cameras at the same time, and so we had to be sure to make a note of the file number for each camera as to make the editing process quicker for everyone.

Overall, this was a successful shoot. We managed to work around the many extras involved and capture good quality audio even with the few issues we had with background noise.