Just What The Doctor Ordered: the CEDAR DNS 2 saves Doctor Who
27 January 2017
In the January 2017 issue of Audio Media International, Deian Humphreys explains why he uses a CEDAR DNS 2 dialogue noise suppressor on set while recording the latest series of the BBC's Doctor Who.
For the past three years, Deian Humphreys has been the production sound mixer for Doctor Who's TV series and Christmas specials. He told Audio Media International that, "In a science fiction programme like Doctor Who, one minute you could have whispering dialogue that would all of a sudden erupt into levels that could blow your ears off". These sudden bursts of sound may be necessary to help give viewers the sensory thrills that they're used to experiencing, writes Adam Savage, but they create a few problems for Humphreys when trying to achieve his main goal: capturing dialogue that is as clean as possible. "There are all sorts of things that prevent us from doing that", Humphreys continued. "Smoke machines, wind machines, snow machines, sets made of wood so when people walk on them they sound awful... there's a generator that I'm always trying to get parked as far as possible from the set. We're also constantly having to battle against atmospheric conditions as well as traffic noise and aeroplanes."
"One thing I did invest in for this series is a CEDAR DNS 2. I was told that we were going to have to do a lot of ADR because of the traffic noise so I thought, 'I'll be the judge of that', and was completely blown away by what it was capable of." The DNS 2 was installed in the run-up to the filming of the Christmas special, noted Savage, presumably (he suggested) to prepare for the inevitable onslaught of those snow machines.
See: Audio Media International digital edition
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