BOOM
The Boom Man or Boom Person is a very important position.
The boom is a fish-pole-like contraption onto which the microphone is
fastened. In the early days of film making, the boom was, you guessed
it, literally a fish pole! The boom has to be flexible and quite in
operation for obvious reasons.
The Boom Person dangles the mic in perfect position for each
actor in the scene to deliver their lines into. The boom has to be
swung back and forth between actors so that each actor's line receives
optimum recording.
The skill of the Boom Person is necessary to ensure good
sound recording in every situation. The Boom Person works closely with
the Sound Person in placing different types of mics into use. Also with
this position the Sound Persons usually has someone with whom they work
well. Go with a good team.
Be careful of one thing though. Many sound people are comedians. I
don't know why this is so. Perhaps on typical productions, the camera
department dominates everyone's attention and the sound people are left
to their own devices. So they have to entertain themselves!
On one production where we had actors rigged up with radio
mics, because it was difficult to use the boom in certain shots that
the script called for, the sound person left the radio mics on after
the scene was shot and the actors went into their trailers to relax!
Well, you can imagine, there they were: the sound man and the boom man
giggling, with their hands over their earphones so that no one could
hear! Pretty soon the Producer was in on it too. The boom man kept
calling the Producer over when things got interesting. Finally, the
Producer had to stop it. Everybody wanted to listen, the production
came to a halt! Later when the actors heard about it, the shit really
hit the fan! It took everything to get them to calm down and resume. I
can still hear them screaming!