Q: Is that a boom mic in your pocket or are you just happy to "Disturbia" me?
A: Not to disturb you, but please note that the disturbing suburban disturbance film Disturbia receives distribution to suburban (also urban) districts today, Friday the 13th (how disturbing!). Is it worth your six to eleven dollars? The answer may unsettletain you.
Disturbia: Every killer lives next door to someone, give or take.
A couple weeks ago, I mentioned an advance amateur review of Disturbia, in which the reviewer largely just seemed disturbia'd by what he referred to as an abundance of boom microphones:
"I have never seen such an incredible proliferation of visible boom microphones in any other movie. Seriously, there was a microphone visible somewhere at the top of the screen for almost the entire length of the film. At some points in the movie, more than one microphone could be seen at a time. I understand that things slip through the editing process but this was just ridiculous." [original review available in the vicinity of here]In response to that post, beloved commenter Dashiell suggested "the boom mike problem is the fault of the projectionist, not the filmmakers," which I assumed was true. It is a little-known fact that, when you see a movie in the theater, you're usually not getting the complete contents of the reel itself; the projectionist cuts off a bit of the top and a bit of the bottom to fit it properly on the screen1. Exactly how much is cut off depends on the film and the projectionist. I seem to remember reading somewhere that directors don't necessarily worry about boom mics slipping into the top of the frame, since it's assumed they'll be cropped.
But now I'm wondering if DJ Caruso, the director of Disturbia, might have taken that assumption a bit too far. The film hasn't even been released, and yet I've already noticed quite a small but not insignificant number of people (maybe one to two percent of my traffic over the past week) finding T.A.M.S.Y. by Googling things like "distubia microphone showing" or "disturbia boom mic".
Sarah Roemer: I'd boom HER mic!
Surprisingly, the critics don't hate it.
1 This is why the Eyes Wide Shut
DVD is not available in a letterbox edition; Stanley Kubrick shot it in full-frame. If the film looked "widescreen" when it first came out, it's only because the projectionist cropped it at the top and bottom to provide a larger, wider picture.
2 comments:
yeah, i'm a projectionist, and there was a letter sent out to us from the production company stating that the boom mike was in a number of shots. it said to raise the framing higher than usual. no one i work with has ever heard of anything like this, so if a projectionist forgot to raise the film a little, it's really not his fault. the production company screwed up big time.
oh, and by the way, if eyes wide shut was only available in fullscreen, the projectionist couldn't have cropped the top and bottom. that's not how it works. nearly half of movies are released in a format near to fullscreen, and there's no way or reason to make it widescreen.
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