What the Heck was That.....!

[Paul Adsett]

I was watching a reel of my Derann feature length print of High Society tonight, and in one scene I saw a strange black blob moving aroud at the top of the frame. A dust blob, I thought. But then I noticed that the blob was moving back and fore between Frank Sinatra and Celeste Holm as they were speaking. A closer look revealed that the blob was a studio Mic, twitching around to pick up the best sound of the conversation! I checked the remaining 3 reels of the feature and saw the mic again in some other scenes, sometimes just its shadow. I had to rack the frame line down to the top of the screen to see it, but it is very surprising that the original VistaVision negative was printed with this studio mistake clearly visible. Never seen this before on any film prints that I have in my collection.

[Steve Klare]

Hi Paul,

I've heard of this before: basically the filmmakers anticipated that when the film was shown theatrically, the aperture installed in the projector would prevent the mic.'s image from appearing.

(-sounds like an enjoyable print!)

[Douglas Meltzer]

There are some full frame Super 8mm prints out there where the boom mic dips into the shot. A couple of Universal 8 digests have this, including The Nude Bomb.

[Rob Young]

This all sounds familiar...!

Films meant to be shown masked - 8mm Forum

I would have loved to get my hands on the Beaulieu with gate for 16:9

Instead, I've used black felt masking around the screen which does a decent job of absorbing any image that spills onto it; so I can zoom say "Gremlins" up to 16:9, with the top and bottom of the image "hidden" by the black felt masking. Not perfect, but works for the odd title that causes mischief.

[Brian Fretwell]

I have seen a projection both window with black tape masking on the glass. It was a multi-purpose hall not a full-time cinema, actually the one used in the film of "A Clockwork Orange"!

[Paul Adsett]

The horizontal VistaVision 35mm sprockets are also visible along the bottom of the Title sequence of the Derann print of High Society. I rather like that, its a reminder of the Technology used in the film.
It also occur's to me that operating a boom mic probably requires a lot of skill to get it right. You obviously want to get the mic as close as possible to the actors in the shot without it being seen in the camera frame, and this often has to be accomplished while the actors are in motion.

[Osi Osgood]

Some of the optical features have this "optical fault", for instance, at the end of Greystroke, the Legend of Tarzan, the last shot is a lovely matte painting, and you can clearly see the easel it sits upon!

[Brian Fretwell]

Lots of old TV shows (made on video and film) have boom mikes in shot owhen viewed on modern TVs overscan on CRT sets and old telecine machines would have cut them out before.

[Joerg Polzfusz]

There’s also sometimes a problem with Super35-movies: They usually never mend to be screened at 1.33:1, but some Super8-copies are nevertheless made from the unmasked negatives and hence are accidentally showing the whole image when projected.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_35