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Recording the sounds of cycling


Petros Kolyvas

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I'm doing a gig at the end of the month where we're doing some corporate work for Specialized. Part of it is taking their mountain bikes and road bikes out on the trail and roads. I'm still working out the logistics with production, but am wondering how planting lavs on a mountain bike coming downhill would stand against the vibrations of the bike....

I'd think lavs on the rider will work better than lavs on the bike.

I'm guessing Specialized will want some fairly aggressive downhill riding. If you have lavs and recorders mounted on the bike, I can see a couple potential problems besides vibrations:

-Unwanted noise. You might pick up more chain slap, parts/shock squeak, tire noise, and branch whipping than you want.

-Visibility. Perhaps you'll have a few POV cameras on the bike to show off the cool new shock, brakes, or whatever. Or maybe you'll have a few cameras following or tracking the downhill. I'd think the best places on the bike to place a lav, esp a lav with wind protection, would end up being visible in the POV or other camera shots.

-Crashing. That might not be so good for your recorders. Unless you can stick the recorders in a saddle bag (wrapped in dense foam). But would a saddle bag give the look that you/Specialized wants?

If you put the mics on the rider, you'd get better distance from noisy bike parts, but still grab some good bike, tire, & ride ambience.

I'd first try sticking lavs down the rider's shorts with the head just peaking out the leg opening. I've done that and with good modern cycling shorts haven't even needed tape...modern shorts grippers hold mics fairly stable and doesn't have the sweat/exposure/muscle-movement issues of tape. Depending on what you're after, you could try the right leg (to get a little bit of shifting noise), left leg, or both.

Then a lav at the bottom-back of the rider's jersey. Less body/tummy movement than at the bottom-front of the jersey.

If you want some breathing noise, either a standard chest placement (depending on how the rider's dressed), or hidden in the rider's helmet (see earlier in this thread).

All this depends on how many recorders you want to stick on the person. I'm assuming you're thinking of small Zoom/Tascam/Zax-style recorders. Depending on wardrobe, you could hide the recorder in the rider's back jersey pocket(s), or in the race-radio pocket if the rider is wearing pro-style bib shorts (or if wardrobe wants to do some sewing). I'd wrap the recorder(s) in dense foam...like from a yoga or sleeping-bag mat in case of a crash. That'll protect your recorders, and more importantly, will protect the rider.

Added advantages of micing rider:

-Switching to a different bike is no big deal.

-Bike looks clean so camera can get what they want when they want.

Well that's what I think. But note that I have more experience mic'ing road bikes and going for the sound and words of the rider. YMMV. Would love to know what you end up doing.

Sounds like a fun gig. Let me know if you need an extra rider... :-)

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for certain situations i think placing a lav on a bike is going to be fine. i've experimented with it and had good results. if its a geared biked you're going to have some advantages and disadvantages. the good, mic cables blends in with derailure cables. the bad, chain slap and derailer bouncing noise. so for a road bike, i think its fine and would work out pretty good. you can get a good sound of tire to road, rear cassette and gear change sounds. but for off road on mountain bike, its going to be more problematic. the bike going over bumps is going to cause a lot of jiggle of chain and rear derailer. but then again, that sound of tires to dirt is just one of those sounds that a bike rider loves to hear.

what i did for my sound situation was i rigged up a tram tr50 on my rear seat stay(vertical rear tube going from wheel to seat) near the drop out(where the rear wheel bolts on). but i have a single speed bike so there's no chain slap or derailer to worry about. and part of what i was filming/recording sound of was the rear hub. i taped a piece of dense foam(from pick and pluck from a pelican case) around the seat stay(shock mount) and then applied the tram windscreen and taped two over covers around it and then taped the mic cable about 1/4 from the head to the dense foam. i ran the mic cable up the seat stay and i taped the xlr power supply to my seatpost and then ran and xlr from that to a zoom h4n in a fanny pack. i also had a gopro mounted to seat stay to film the rear wheel/hub. I'm working on a video for a company called industry 9 that makes high end mountain bike wheels, so that was my reason for focusing on the rear hub/wheel.

not sure when i'll be done with the video, i still have a lot to film. but they also have road wheels so i'll be filming and recording sounds of that too. I'll let you know if i figure out any other good scenarios.

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" so that was my reason for focusing on the rear hub/wheel. "

High end sound effects recording is typically distinct from production sound recording; ultimately, the use(s) of the video will drive what sound is coupled with it, and very often that is not the actual sound recorded when the images were captured, or even the actual sounds of what is being shown. Just as with narrative movies, much of the time the sound on such projects needs to be manipulated, even created in post to enhance the story being told by the images.

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I did a little test yesterday with my BMX bike. I created a mono mix of the two mics I used. First, I strapped my zeppelin (CS-3e) to a small backpack and had it pointed at the back tire, along with a Sony ECM wired Lav tapped onto the frame next to rear hub. These both were routed through my SD mixpre-D inside one of the pockets than sent out to two Lectro SM TXs. I had my bag not too far away to record my experiment. Of course the rig wasn't pretty but it worked.

McQueen, those are some great ideas, if I ever have the chance to record some Down Hill riding, your way seems like a good idea. Whenever I do down hill riding all I hear is the chain slapping, tires skidding, and the wind flying by me.

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Hey Pete and Micheal.

Getting jealous over here. I would probably work for gear if I were to do shoots for either of those 2 companies !! LOL. Industry nine hubs have a nice distinct sound, I can see why they would want nice recordings of there products.

Lots of good ideas talked about here. I think also, don't discount standing next to the trail with some well placed mics as it flies by. You'll get some great results.

Maybe I should call up Chris King or Crank Brothers and see if they need some sound recorded. LOL.

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Pete,

Funny this came up, guess I now know why you called. Professional bikers aren't going to feel comfortable with a pack and cables all over the place when doing their stunts and performances for safety sake, which includes both the biker and your equipment. Specially when you need to record this to visual, the situation becomes more hostile. Reason why there's always some post work done on enhancing the bike.

If for any reason that there's absolutely no downtime to record this at a later point, then you must strap a small recorder into their tiny backpack. At least have a pair of lavs coming off their arm sleeves or knee-high shorts. 2 more additional channels I would strategically place them one each over the seat stay/derailer and the fork/fork rake. Again, all depends on how it's being shot and cut. I'm sure there's downtime somewhere in the schedule, and when you get the chance go do some WILD (your best friend)! In addition to recording multiple talents, is production at least considering an extra pair of hands for you if needed?

I like Senator's post. Do your best.

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Pete,

Funny this came up, guess I now know why you called. Professional bikers aren't going to feel comfortable with a pack and cables all over the place when doing their stunts and performances for safety sake, which includes both the biker and your equipment. Specially when you need to record this to visual, the situation becomes more hostile. Reason why there's always some post work done on enhancing the bike.

If for any reason that there's absolutely no downtime to record this at a later point, then you must strap a small recorder into their tiny backpack. At least have a pair of lavs coming off their arm sleeves or knee-high shorts. 2 more additional channels I would strategically place them one each over the seat stay/derailer and the fork/fork rake. Again, all depends on how it's being shot and cut. I'm sure there's downtime somewhere in the schedule, and when you get the chance go do some WILD (your best friend)! In addition to recording multiple talents, is production at least considering an extra pair of hands for you if needed?

I like Senator's post. Do your best.

Thanks guys for all the suggestions so far! Alan, found out some of the rides will have multiple riders going down the trail so I think I'll strap two members with H4n's and have a lav underneath the visor and a lav underneath the seat like Michael was recommending. Might experiment with the other set up on the other rider, still trying to figure it out. And I'll be capturing a lot of the downhill work with a boom. There will be time to do some wild sounds so they should get plenty to choose from.

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Professional bikers aren't going to feel comfortable with a pack and cables all over the place when doing their stunts and performances for safety sake, which includes both the biker and your equipment.

Alan, great comments and suggestions. But in my experience, professional cyclists are fine with stuff attached to them, especially the small amounts of stuff we're talking about here. Happens all the time. Low-level amateurs are the ones that get nervous. (Note that long ago raced bikes full time; I was the slow guy on the fast team).

Anyway, lots of options for Pete. Going to be a fun gig, as long as it's not too rushed...

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I think also, don't discount standing next to the trail with some well placed mics as it flies by. You'll get some great results.

Thought about this too Simon but we're going to have to hike to the spots where they'll be biking so I'm trying to keep the rig simple and light. Like the idea of having two H4n rigs with 2x lavs each and my boom. Plus I should have some time to also get wild sounds of the bike as well.

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From another thread (under Equipment):

" <$200...The H2n features Zoom's best microphones yet and is the only portable recorder with five mic capsules onboard. This design enables the H2n to offer four unique recording modes: Mid-Side (MS) stereo, 90° X/Y stereo, 2-channel and 4-channel surround sound. " and all in 24/96 HD digital recording "

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  • 3 weeks later...

Simon,

Great video and yup surely that rider is taking his pack "onboard", complete with a little RF dropout pre launch.

Slightly OT, once spent a week heli-skiing with a world class freestyle downhill pro. He had no problem operating a mini DAT recorder with attached LAV. I couldn't go up due to space in the heli. Batteries were the biggest problem at low temps but we managed three tapes daily. I had the pleasure of logging the audio in the lodge, breathtaking suicide freefalls.

Makes me interested in how to get audio from sky divers....on the way down!?

A real mountian top experience....

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Hey guys/gals,

Finally have a post game report from the Specialized gig. Overall, fun gig. Challenging, but worth it at the end. First few days started off nicely with interview work and some FX recording with a director and DP from NYC. Had a chance to meet and talk with Mike Sinyard who is the president of Specialized and Robert Egger who is their creative director. These guys are extremely humble and awesome to talk to. Mike’s in his 70’s but looks like he’s in his early 60’s. When we fly’s home from overseas, he swears the best cure for jet lag is to ride home from the airport (SFO) to his home in Morgan Hill. That’s about a 75 mile bike ride and takes between 6-7 hours. The guy is just incredible. And Robert can build just about anything. We had the pleasure to go to his home in the Santa Cruz Mountains for some interview/B-roll work. People of Robert’s stature would normally buy every piece of furnishing in his home, but Robert purchases the tools and machines needed to build every furnishing in this home. Just incredible. And he has 2 motocross tracks on his property of which the guys from the band Slayer came over to use with their families one time (Robert showed us their entry in his guest book.) Back to the report…

Had some gear issues on the 2nd day with the SRa’s channel 2 pilot tone. Luckily, most of the work from that point on was either boom only or lav mix so was able to bypass the channel (was using SRa as a camera hop.) The interesting and part came during the last few days of the gig. For this series of web commercials, there were 2 agencies running the ship. There were about 7-8 people from both agencies every day on set. Nothing out of the norm I know, but when it came to the action shots days, they out numbered our skeleton crew. Their was some heli-shots which made it difficult for the heli-crew to get the shots because the agency folks were everywhere. Only needed to be maybe half of that crew there to “supervise” and make sure they’re getting what they want.

The frustrating thing for me was trying to get what they wanted. After having many conversations with the “director” prior to the shoot about what he wanted to capture, I thought we had a pretty firm grasp on how to approach the action days (hence my inquiry about micing up the bikes.) Come shoot day, the agency folks wanted to have the riders mic’d up so you could hear their conversations as they’re riding. After multiple attempts (implementing the 3 strike rule) of trying to explain that this would yield poor results (considering every shot was either a follow shot in a moving vehicle or a heli shot) I did as they asked. I then approached the director and again voiced my concerns. I had come up with the plan to break off from the crew after lunch, take a rider with me and properly mic up the bike to get the “hyper-real” sounds the director was looking for. Being a post guy, I thought I had a pretty good idea of how to achieve what both parties wanted but again was shot down. After that point, I recorded what I could and called it a day. The director came up to me at the end and apologized to me for not getting what I was looking for, after which I corrected him saying this was HIS commercial, not mine. I did the best I could, given the circumstances.

Lastly, the mountain bike days. We hiked up some great single track trails and got some great sounds and shots. Again, we were on very narrow trails with poison oak on either side of us and all 8 agency folks decided to come along. Very difficult to get into position to get the appropriate sounds and shots without being neck high in poison oak. Oh did I mention one trail was 1.5 miles of single track trail that climbed 1,000 feet in elevation? Did the agency folks want to help carry any gear other than their water bottle? My wife, who was PA’ing on the gig (not her first rodeo and no slouch as a PA either), was moving a lot of gear up the mountain and did the agency folk ask to help out when they hiked right past the two of us, seeing she was having a tough time? No. I still had a great time but definitely earned my keep on this gig.

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not their job...her job!

While that may technically be true, only a totally self absorbed ego maniac prick would not at least offer to lend a hand, when they see a fellow human being having trouble.

Other then that, sounds like it would have been a fun shoot. Please post the links when the final versions of these web commercials come out. Would love to see them.

BTW get any Specialized swag ? Souvenir Stumpjumpers ? lol.

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  • 8 years later...
On 1/5/2011 at 12:11 PM, Jeff Wexler said:

That Danny MacAskill cycling is amazing! He is so completely in tune with all aspects of the bike and the terrain. We are watching an edited video and I'm sure he wiped out several times that we don't see, no less amazing that these things can be done even once.

 

 

-  Jeff Wexler

 

 

 

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