Every British actor who was standing and competent and not doing something else between 2009 and 2016 was in Game of Thrones. (Although I worked with Matt Smith before he was in House of the Dragon. )
If you have seen Ted Lasso you may have noticed these unusual microphones used by the football commentators.
Despite being a microphone nerd, I had never seen anything like them before. So I decided to go into research mode and discovered these microphones are quite fascinating.
They are called “Lip-Ribbon” or “Commentator’s” microphones.
They were specially designed by the BBC in the 1950s for extremely noisy environments. Soccer Football stadiums have peaked at 130 decibels so they needed something that would not get overwhelmed in that circumstance.
They use several very clever techniques to make sure only the voice is picked up and everything else is rejected.
First, they use a bidirectional polar pattern.
That means it will accept sound from two directions, but reject any sound coming in from the sides. And since the diaphragm is only exposed on one side, that helps reject sound coming from the other direction.
Next, the microphone is not very sensitive so you literally have to hold it up to your lips (hence “lip-ribbon”) in order for your voice to have enough sound energy to vibrate the diaphragm.
That top part rests directly on your lip and there is a little pop filter to keep your plosives in check.
There is a built-in high pass filter so it rejects any sound below the frequencies typically used by the human voice.
But my favorite trick… a labyrinthian internal baffle system.
(I found a diagram of this when researching but then I lost the tab and I cannot find it again. So you’ll just have to accept this crude photoshop I did in 30 seconds to help you understand.)
Sound is energy. And that energy is diminished the farther it travels. The inverse square law for sound states that the intensity of sound decreases by approximately 6 dB for each doubling of distance from the sound source. Sound also diminishes when it reflects off a surface.
That is a very sciency way of saying… make sounds go through a tiny maze and only sounds with the most energy will prevail.
So if you have your lip pressed up against the front of the mic, your voice’s energy will make it through the labyrinth of baffles without issue. But every other sound in the stadium will have a much harder time getting through.
These mics may even be vuvuzela-proof.
And even more amazing… this microphone was designed in the 1950s and they have yet to create anything better for incredibly noisy environments.
Isn’t that neat?
I think it is neat.
Oh, and there is a “nostril grille” on top so you can exhale through your nose!
SO NEAT.
…I’ve always wondered what the story was with these things. :)
So much! Terry wrote more of Good Omens in the first draft than me. He wrote all the Tadfield stuff in first draft until they were heading to the airbase, and I took over the kids, with the R.P. Tyler scene, and Terry did the Four Horsemen (who had been mine) from there until the end. The Death of Agnes Nutter was completely Terry, as was the first Aziraphale and Crowley scene in the bookshop… Anathema and Newt getting together were Terry’s until the post-coital bit…
I’m so glad someone has finally asked me. Crowley and Aziraphale, who in this season are both undertakers in Birmingham, and their wives, Dottie and Sadie, go on holiday together to the South of France. The boys get very drunk at a wine tasting, and their wives have to bring them home to the hotel, where Aziraphale (still drunk) puts on the gorilla costume he finds in a closet. Imagine Crowley’s shock, when he sees a gorilla climbing out of the window of the hotel! Now, it just so happens that a master spy who looks exactly like Aziraphale hid the microfilm plans for a missile in Crowley’s bathroom, and has returned to obtain the microfilm, which is hidden in a book of naughty seaside postcards that Dottie found earlier and threw out of the window. When the police turn up looking for the gorilla, they find the master spy but think it’s actually Aziraphale. Fortunately Sadie realises that the pineapple-shaped birthmark has vanished from Aziraphale’s left elbow which means that he’s an imposter and she and Dottie set out to rescue him in his gorilla costume from the circus that he’s been sold to by an unscrupulous animal welfare centre operative. And then there are lots of cats and horses. The end. It’s really good.
Small things that make me sad about America #1: they have no Bramley Apples here. Big knobbly ugly sour cooking apples. They do not exist in this place.
Monica is the head negotiator for the Writer’s Guild, a collective of Hollywood screenwriters who are edging closer and closer to a full on strike if the studios refuse to meet their incredibly reasonable demands. All the writers are asking for is fair treatment and compensation for their labor, but after a meeting with the greedy T-Rex CEO of Cobbler Studios goes south, a strike is called.
Now Monica and her companions are marching the picket lines and making their voices heard, working together to create better working across the film industry.
Unfortunately, this puts a terrible distance between Monica and her girlfriend Holly, who happens to be the physical manifestation of her own screenwriting. With no way to process these feelings, Monica looks for solace in the writing community itself, but will these efforts be enough to battle the cruel, money-hungry CEOs?
This important no sex tale is 4,100 words of collective bargaining as laborers organize to protest a nauseating dinosaur CEO with the power of solidarity and love.
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AUTHORS NOTE: greeting buckaroos. this tingler is given to all FOR FREE in solidarity with writers guild buds who are currently making their voices heard and striking with incredibly reasonable demands.
the wga is asking that any donations go to the ENTERTAINMENT COMMUNITY FUND which is used to directly help those in the entertainment industry in need and who will feel the financial burden of not working during a strike.
as i said this tingler is free HOWEVER if you have the means you can donate the amount a tingler usually costs (three dollars or MORE if you would like) to the charity fund and support. just click the link and when it says ‘gift designation’ select 'film and television’
As soon as people stop asking questions that will be answered in the upcoming second season of Good Omens, I’ll stop saying it.
It’s kind of like replying to kids in a car who want to know if we are there yet. Until you get there the only answer is Not Yet, no matter how tired they get of that answer.
