Virtual Insanity

r Today I worked on a virtual set production which utilized a camera mounted to a robot arm on a track.  This presents some interesting challenges from a sound perspective.  The power and control systems for the wall and other panels have cooling fans that make a lot of noise.  Fortunately, most of these things can be stored in a separate room and away from the stage.  The robot arm however was seems to have a cooling fan inside it's pyramid shaped base and the control systems positioned next to it also have cooling fans that generate noise.  These were unfortunately, but understandably, positioned close to our talent and performance area.  On locked off shots we were able to shut the robot down which reduced noise substantially.  On shots that required movement, I had to be careful to minimize how much of that noise I was picking up.  Even the movement of the robots motors can make whirring or creaking noises.  After this experience, my personal take is that these robot arms should be used only for specialty shots, action shots, or shots with no dialog.  You can attempt to use it for shots with dialog, but you need to be confident that your editor has good noise reduction software, and even then you should be prepared and budgeted to do ADR if you need to.  Otherwise I recommend just sticking to a Fisher dolly, gimbal, EZ rig, or handheld.