Filming in court

[codyman]

A documentary I've been on has been given permission to film a court case by the judge.  Having never filmed an actual court before, in terms of sound, how does that typically work?  Is there some sort of press box connection + use a shotgun mic?  Curious to know as this is unfamiliar territory for me...

[cameronlenart]

I've been filming in court recently. Used a cub on the defendants lecturn, and a cub in front of the judge. There was no way to get a feed from the court room system for me.

[Audio Daddyo]

My experience is that the court officers will dictate where and who you can mic. Some I've worked with are friendly and helpful and some are pain in the butt. Try to make friends with them if possible.

[edward chick]

I've shot in court rooms several times for Dateline type of shows.. some courts have a press feed or a patch system some do not. 

I find that the Omni Goose mic from Peter Engh is very useful at the Prosecutor stand and One for the Defendant's . Sometimes the judge and defending attorneys and prosecutor staff will let you mic them or the member that will do the most talking. Always ask, never hurts. 

[chris_bollard]

I did a Doco series in coroners courts around the country. It was a pretty complicated setup as there was generally a lot of participants. I hard wired cardioid mics (AKG451eb) and Sanken CS1 to cover most of the action - with a radio mic also on the council assisting. When the court is in session there is absolutely no chance to adjust the radio mic - and session duration is set by the mood of the judge - better to spend the hours to rig the court than risk losing something because of dead battery, loose/dropped mic head etc.

The court audio system is sealed - as it is a legal record of events.

Also had to cover video evidence

Tested CUBS but liked the results from cardioids - and no risk of the CUB being buried under paperwork that builds up on the council bench.

[studiomprd]

it is difficult to say, as ''it depends'' applies here;  prep as much as possible, as far in advance as possible...

problem solving is what we get paid for.

[Philip Perkins]

The court audio recording system is often a specialized encrypted low fi affair called "For The Record" that requires buying their software to convert to anything you could use.  It is very artifacty.  +1 for getting in early and rigging everything in sight.

 

philp

[seth]

I've done a bit of court room work for 48hours mystery, weeks actually, in a small closet…ugh if not for my humorous camera companion. 

+1 what Edward says. Hard wired goose neck + auto mixer. mics everywhere they might speak. At the podium, projector? To  jurors? can you lav em for opening closing if they are walking around? who is reading the verdict?

 

Also start making friends very early, "speak judge" (lwp). They have all the say and it's a total decision on their part and depends if they like you more than anything else(IMHO). Bring a big helping of respect and walk lightly. The staff are fairly protective of there rooms and rightfully so. 

[Wandering Ear]

In my experience, it takes a lot of planted mics to cover all of the areas where people will be speaking.  Fortunately, you should be able to figure out exactly where those places are, and they are usually in the same places.  I've used schoeps 641 on low profile desktop stands with good results.

[Jack Norflus]

After several trials and a lot of fine tuning here is what I like.

I will put a cub on the defense table and on on the prosecutor table - i tried the omni goose but found that i liked the range of the cub better - though you do risk having papers place on the mic. Given that i did have an lawyer place a stack of law books right in front of an omni goose and I got no usable audio. And once the trial starts in most courts you can not go and make any adjustments.

The judge will more often than not have a mic on the bench - I will attach a lav to the mic it self, and the same for the witness stand. If there is a podium you will need to mic it as well. I also like to put one or two mics on the front edge of the jury box (to get the lawyers as they talk to the jurors).Then depending on the lay out of the room you may need another plant mic or two, or even three. I will then run all the mics into a auto mixer.But you will still need line of site close unused mics.

The other thing to keep in mind is depending on the trial you you may have to provide a pool feed to other media outlets - so you may need some DA's 

The acoustics of the court room could be you worst enemy - older court rooms can be hollow and sound like crap.

Make friends with the court personnel - especially the court officers they can be a big help. I once supplied the court stenographer a comtek feed since my audio was better than what she was able to hear (old court room with a lot of echo) and it earned us parking right in front of the court house for the duration of the trial and some pretty cool sheriff office t-shirts and ball caps. And above all respect the Judge - it is his house and he sets the rules - I heard of a situation where the Judge threw out a crew mid trial.

While it's not hard to get usable sound it does take work.

[codyman]

Thanks everyone for your suggestions.  I have a crew meeting with the producers tomorrow to figure everything out and I'm going to try to find out more about the court room and suggest some of the things stated above.  Hopefully I'll be able to gauge how cooperative / open the court (and judge) is as I'm sure that will be a big factor in what can be mic'ed up.

[chris_bollard]

My setup had 10 microphones - or took three hours to setup (give or take). The trial ran over 5 days - only our case in the court room - so i was able to leave all the mics cabled and only break out the 788 for scenes before and after the court sessions.

Don't forget timecode sync and slate

[Jack Norflus]

 took three hours to setup (give or take). 

Oh yeh, time. You will need several hours to rig the sound. All cables need to be tidy and taped down. Production cant expect you to run in and roll.

Though for a quick doc we had to run into a court room for a sentencing i threw two cubs on a wireless (one on the defence table and one on the prosecutor table) and a wireless lav attached to the judges goose neck mic that is already attached to his bench.

And it worked out fine for the 15 second of it they ended up using.

[codyman]

So the two days of filming went great.  Case started on a Monday and I didn't have time to rent some cubs BUT I figured out a workflow that work for the situation at hand.  I have a VR FIeld loaded with 6 VRT's and then 6 SMQA transmitters so I ended up beaming over all of these guys:

 

1 MM-1 preamp with shotgun mic near judge facing towards the prosecution/defense tables

2 Judge's mic that was already there, taped a Tram to it (sounded great since it was always near him / didn't move)

3 Witness stand mic (taped tram to witness stand mic that was already there)

4 Tram facing towards prosecution on table

5 Tram facing towards defense on table

6 Tram on mobile podium that was used 75%+ of the time for whichever side was questioning witnesses or making statements

 

All in all, everything sounded pretty darn good and like someone mentioned above, this is probably going to be about 2 minutes of the 2 hour documentary (despite us filming for two full days) so there are plenty of sound bites they'll be using but 99% is going to hit the editing room floor.

 

I also should say that this was my Sound Device 633's first bit outing and it worked like a champ!

 

Edit: I should also mention that despite going in kind of hesitant as to how cooperative everyone would be and how much time I would get to wire everything up, I really, really lucked out in that everyone in the courtroom was extremely accommodating.  I told the judge everything that I wanted to wire up and he simply said "If that works for you, it works for me" and I hard pretty much carte blanche to put a microphone anywhere in the court room.