Anyone who works in production knows that when you are on a shoot, there are many details that need to be taken into account to ensure a professional product. Sometimes, no matter how much you prepare, a gremlin shows up in your video or audio, and you will have to deal with it. Hopefully, by sharing my stories with you, and how I recovered from them, you can learn from my mistakes, and prevent them from happening to you.

The Situation:

On a recent video shoot at a local sound stage, somehow, all of our audio tracks were “infected” with the static-like noise of a local radio station. The noise, which clearly had a DJ’s voice, commercials, etc. rendered all our audio tracks useless.

By the time I realized the audio tracks were contaminated (all 5 hours), I was back in my studio importing the footage. My first reaction was sickening terror, realizing we would probably have to re-shoot the entire program. This meant re-hiring the makeup artist, re-booking the studio, and putting the client through another day-long shoot. Many colorful words were uttered as I stared in horror at my monitor.

My Setup:

Camera: Canon GL2

Mics:

Sennheiser M101 Wireless Lav System (primary - right channel)

Sennheiser ME 66 Shotgun (backup - left channel)

Mixer: Shure FP-33

Cable: 6 Pin to XLR

Beachtek XLR Adapter

How did this happen?

We called the stage the next day, and they confirmed that a local radio station signal did have a tendency to “appear” in audio tracks. Their explanation was that it was usually caused by a faulty wire in the production chain. Translation: “There is no way in hell we are going to comp you studio time to re-shoot your video.”

Why didn’t I hear the distortion on the stage?

I didn’t hear the signal because I monitored the audio via headphones from the mixer, not the camera. The broken link in the chain was between the mixer and the camera, either the 6 pin cable, or the Beachtek unit. Had I monitored from the camera, I would have heard the signal, and we would have been able to correct it on the stage. Lesson learned!

Options:

We were left with two choices:

Re-shoot everything, which required another day full day at the studio, a full day for the makeup artist, as well as a full day for the client. This was a tough pill to swallow, due to the fact that we would have to absorb the extra costs, and the budget was already stretched as far as it could go.
Fix it somehow

The Solution:

In the end I was able to fix the audio tracks. Click the video link below to see a step by step guide on how I did it.