Audio Recording Technique for Reality Shows

[John Blankenship]

I've worked on reality where the C-300 worked fine, BUT... they need to have a good bit of additional rigging to fit the bill, and the shooter needs to be comfortable with the setup.

[David Silberberg]

+1 what Phil said.

Also it seems that there is a terrible inequity between what is provided for camera and what is provided for sound on your project.

Ask for the things you need; You just might get it. (Don't ask and you surely won't.)

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[Jim Feeley]

If it were me and there really wasn't money for both C300 and wireless hops, I'd advocate for using a less-expensive camera...say a Sony EX3 with a wireless hop. As Rob suggests, a PDW-F800 or something would be better but around here those price out around the same as a C300.

 

Yes, the EX3 is far from perfect and last-years image...but it's still OK and has worked out well for me in gigs similar to (my understanding of) what you're doing. And the money saved could perhaps get you the wireless hops. But that's me talking in my producer voice...I could see all sorts of things going bad if sound comes off as dictating camera choice.

 

Depending on your relationship with producer, camera folk, and others...could you have a heart-to-heart about how to get rid of the cable without destroying the budget?

[Marc Wielage]

C-300's are a very bad choice for this project. XDCAM PDWF800's are a much better choice for running around handheld. DSLR style cameras are idiotic toys suitable for corporate work, Sitdown interviews and controlled environments.

 

I agree 100% with Rob. The Sony 800's are a much wiser choice, and those I have run into many times on doco/reality projects. The EX3 ain't bad, either.

[jrd456]

Get some kind of back-up recording----if something goes wrong with cam. sound, no matter what they told you,they will not be "cool" about it-----it will be sounds fault !

 

                                                              J.D.

[JonG]

lol, not even gonna chime in. I see you fellas have this covered!

[chris_bollard]

I see no point in doing it if you don't have the right get for the job. As has been said either get the prod co. to provide it or book sound recordists who are happy to provide their own. That said the units need to be coordinated - ie, standard radio mics and mixers/recorders because no matter what some time all the contestants and hosts will meet together and you will need the flexibility to assign talent to recordists without pissing off producers and camera with "oh, camera C can't shoot contestant X because audio E has them mic'd".

At some stage the cam ops will button off during crucial dialogue and without double system recorders those words will be lost forever.

I can appreciate that you and your co-audio sup have done sound stuff before but these Multi camera reality shows are a beast unto themselves and without solid experience of this genre it will be super tough.

[JDirckze]

pissing off producers and camera with "oh, camera C can't shoot contestant X because audio E has them mic'd".

[coughs] sounds familiar ;-) [/coughs]

[studiomprd]

chris: " I see no point in doing it if you don't have the right get for the job. "

if the client is paying me...

[chris_bollard]

Oops - autocorrect - should be "right gear for the job"....

I own my own gear so financially it's not really worth it to do the job as an operator using someone else's gear....

If you don't own gear then I guess it has to be considered.

[Symbioth]

I did 3 seasons of Master Chef. It's quite similar to the topic. From season to season we improved our main concept of recording... At first we actually did this thing with 9 mixers attached to cams, but we weren't wired. We transmitted the L and R mixes from each mixer wirelessly. That was very helpfull. You can be close to the cameraman but do not interfere with him. BUT despite that, we used fully stationary rack mounted recievers with splitters, boosters and antennas. We used MADI to transfer each signal to Digico SD9 and then to MacBook via RME MADIFace, and recorded every single track to Boom Recorder. So I can't even say which of the method was the back-up actualy)) Mainly we used stationary system and big console because of big amount of talents in the frame (up to 35) and simple IFB won't help the script guys to understand the drama in each and every talent, so we did a lot of sub-mixes for each of them and then sent them to IFBs or monitors in their cabin.

But....Years of practice got us to this....Zaxcom 900....only Zax, guys. Screw thoose dropouts and infinite running. We still use all the stationary gear, but we changed mixers with only four 788t and use them just as back-up now. Of course Zax fails a lot, I can tell that. Also SD cards should be as new as possible, but it really works better than any other method we tried.

 

PS: Burn down the ME66!)) My nephew's kid's Karaoke kit sounds better))

Good luck!

[maniemjr]

Thanks so much for all the replies.

 

We've just wrapped up the shoot and fair to say that we survived without any major setbacks. I just want everyone to understand that as much as we wanted to do all the set up and use all the equipment you mentioned, sadly we simply just can't afford. It's a different scenario here. It will all start from the budget which the audio department doesn't really paid so well. To say that we should not get the job if the production cannot afford to get us the equipment, or pay us enough so we could get the equipment that we want is not as easy as it may sound. It may also mean you let the food slip off your table. The producer can simply look for the other to do it, and it could be worst, and you'll be sorry.

 

We just have to be creative and work within what is given. I'll be sharing the show here once it is aired already. Once again, thanks to all who shared their knowledge, skills and sarcasm, haha. Cheers!