So I work over at Sky towers, and am in a training session today. Rarely does anyone from an interesting area attend these sessions. I did meet a Sports News producer once, who was complaining about the general appearance of his staff, particularly those who walk around in the background on-camera, and he hates bad spellers.
Anyway, I digress. Today I met a sound engineer from Sports. I asked him about how they do the sound, and he explained (which was great, as I always wanted to know).
But then he said something I didn't want to believe - Sky fake the sound. When the ground is too quiet for their liking, they have a specific program they put into action, that adds general crowd noise to games. March51 has been paranoid about this for years, and I kept saying he was imagining it. But today I found out different - half of the sound you hear on televised games is pre-recorded. I can't help but feel a little disgusted by this! He didn't understand why really, so I asked him if there were any plans to add CGI footballers to Charlton games, to make the quality of play look better...
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To solve both these problems they play 'fake' noise. I say 'fake' because they do record the noise to play out in a controlled and consistent fashion.
like we are living in a parallel universe?
Not sure how true the 'fake sound' story is to be honest.
Do they really cover up the noise a crow makes?
Ah well, goes to show that you can't judge a rook by its cover.
Have heard plenty of swearing on Sky Sports in the past. This weekend they even showed a close up of a Liverpool fan screaming "munich" over & over!
Was funny hearing Leeds loud & clearing singing "Your support is fucking shit" on ITV Saturday as well!
Both those games were on ITV though.
LOL!
The 'Fuck off Setanta' broadcast by Setanta in an England game was good too
What's that got to do with me saying I've heard swearing on Sky Sports in the past? (admittedly I did think the united game was on Sky!)
A bizarrely patronising tone you took there friend! Not sure why... anyway, you're a little bit wrong...
There's nothing they can do about swearing occurring on televised games. It's not that they control all of the noise, they simply fill in gaps at particular times. The swearing is regularly audible, and without timelapse, will always be so. They have up to 16 mics at an O.B, so whether you believe it or not the language and chanting it there for little Johhny to hear most regularly. As I am sure Shrew will know, the audio is controlled by a mixing desk, so they simply fade down the area of the ground that's doing the offensive chanting. But they can only react to it. What I'm surprised by is how much effort they go to to fake the atmosphere. Shrew's right, sound mixers and foley artists have been doing this for a century now, but I just didn't like to think they fake the football!
Shrew - This isn't you, is it? - http://www.wimp.com/behindsound/
Haha what? The alternative is, either I made it up in an effort to... gain kudos? Really? On a Charlton forum? Or he's a 36-year-old compulsive liar who tells people he fakes stuff at work when really, he doesn't? Boys, you don't watch nearly enough Columbo.
Now, that is fascinating. How? I won't sleep until I know.
At the darts, there has always been a microphone behind the board. This year on the BDO coverage on the BBC there was some really strange and ugly processing which gave it a sort of cave echo thud, with loads of added reverb. But as they were mostly hitting 5s it didn't really make much of a difference.
Back to football, the sound on the goal by goal highlights is pretty much always faked, it's a generic 'lots of noise folloed by a cheer, usually the same cheer. The crowd noise is constant and the same cheer is played in every time there's a goal.