randythom

Thanks to you all for the great suggestions! I have some options to consider that hadn't occurred to me before. Randy

Thanks. It's for a virtual reality project. I will need close and distant recordings of each of the 12 actors, and they will be spread out over an area of about 100 X 100 feet, so having a boom on each actor will be a little impractical.

Hi, All! I’m looking for some advice regarding an out-of-doors voice recording session I will be doing in six weeks or so. I want to cover it in every possible way. There will be no cameras, so we don’t have to worry about hiding microphones. There will be at least one Soundfield mic, at least a couple of mics on booms, and I’ll want to put lavs, or some kind of mic, on each actor, about a dozen in all. My question is this: When you don't have to be concerned with hiding a body mic, what are some of the best options for mounting a mic on a person so that he/she can be fully mobile, clothing noise will be minimized, and a good sounding close-mic'd sound can be had? I'm thinking about some kind of apparatus on the person's head, maybe similar to the one in the attached photo. Does anyone on the forum have experience with similar mounts? Thanks so much, Randy Thom

Many sound mixers have won Oscars despite pretty significant hearing deficits. Being able to hear above 12k is somewhere very close to the bottom of the list of things Directors and Producers should be concerned about when they hire a mixer. There's very little drama above 8k anyway, except for dogs and bats. ; ) Randy

The "Ride of the Valkyries" sequence in Apocalypse Now, where the Wagner piece is played through speakers on the Huey helicopters as they strafe the Vietnamese village, is John Milius (the screenwriter) and Francis Coppola riffing on this idea. Just before the music is switched on you hear the Robert Duvall character (Colonel Kilgore) saying "PsyWarOp... Make It LOUD" and " It scares the hell out of the slopes." Slopes is a racist term for asians. Randy

Obviously, whether you should dare to say anything critical about a movie to the people in charge of the movie depends on many things, especially on your relationship with the bigshot in question. If it seems to you that they truly want your opinion, and they're not just fishing for compliments, then it may be appropriate to offer a carefully worded, and at least partially frank, response. First, it's always more useful to offer criticism about something that there is still time to fix rather than something for which the "ship has sailed." A post production colleague of mine has often gotten himself in trouble for saying things to the director during the final mix like "Why did you cast HER?" Second, you should try, as part of the package, to compliment the film maker on something you honestly like about the movie. "Carrie (the actress) is doing an amazing and wonderful job with this role, but I thought I should say that I come from Mississippi myself, and her southern accent seemed a little inconsistent on the first couple of takes." Of course, discretion is important too. People are less likely to be defensive about criticism if it's only for their ears and not presented in front of others. I agree that sometimes the best strategy is to say only good things. The problem with using that strategy all the time, though, is that if the bigshot gets the impression that you are too timid to make a critical comment, or that you don't have enough self esteem to make a critical comment, then you'll be missing the opportunity to prove you have opinions worth hearing. People who rise in the industry are usually people who express their opinions, but if they're wise they do it very carefully. Randy

It's a good question. And it's true that historically sound for media as a profession has often, though obviously not always, been something people have settled for after having tried and failed at things "higher up." And yes, people have gone from sound to "higher" things. There are a few sound guys who are now successful directors. There are many former sound people who went on to long careers in picture editing. You know as well as I do that there aren't any formulas for long term success at anything. Talent, persistence, and luck... not necessarily in that order... is about the best we can do to describe what it takes. If you can find a way to do impressive things and be a nice guy while you're doing them then you'll have an excellent chance. On the other hand, regardless of what the "higher ups" think of it, and how crappily they treat us, sound can be a wonderful profession. Randy

Hi, Jay! This was to be your first gig, and your question is typical of a "about to do my first gig" kind of a guy. The question is equipment-centric. "What kind of mic should I use?" David properly switches the subject to some degree away from the gear itself to the more important question of WHAT THE GEAR SHOULD BE AIMED AT. Figuring out what to record should always precede and shape the decision of what equipment to use. I'm often asked "What mic should I use to record a car?" At least ten questions should come before the "what kind of mic" question. In our gear crazed world, the assumption is too often that the main thing that matters is what tool to use. In reality, figuring out WHAT TO RECORD at the football game is 100 times more important to the artistic success of the enterprise than figuring out what equipment to use. Randy

Hi, Glenn! I wouldn't try to forbid anyone to use eq in production. I would encourage caution with it though. And yes, if you're in a situation where you think overlapping is likely, and you're mixing mics onto one track, and there is a drastic eq discrepancy between two of the mics, then some eq is probably called for. But with ProTools and similar workstations we can be pretty precise in cutting and eq'ing tiny moments in time exactly the way we want in post. Very often these days we're eq'ing one syllable differently from the syllables on either side of it. Every mixer I know who has been doing it for more than ten years agrees that the more experience we have, the less eq and other processing we do. Novices tend to be obsessed with processing, and very often over-process, which is why I recommend that they eq and process a little less than they may be tempted to. As you say, "Based on what hear and what you learn from your combined experiences, develop your own sense for when to EQ and when not to EQ, how much to add or take away, at what frequencies, etc." When one develops that sense then one isn't a novice anymore. Until it's developed, be cautious. Randy

How much processing you do on the set depends to some degree on what kind of project you are working on. If there is going to be little time or money to do anything with it in post, then obviously you should do what you can to make it sound as good as possible as you record it. On the other hand, in the world of feature films where I spend most of my time there is (or should be) time in post to try various kinds of eq and processing, with full freedom to UNDO, so it's best if only minimal processing is done on the set for that kind of project. It's easy to fall into the trap of using processing tools too much. It happens in production and in post production. We've all done it occasionally and regretted it, or been criticized deservedly for it later. So... to flip the "wuss" argument on its head, sometimes the "wuss" is the foolish young gunslinger who uses his gun too often; the "real man" is Gary Cooper in High Noon who uses it only when absolutely necessary. Randy

I agree with Phillip on these points. Randy

The term "gain" in audio engineering refers to how much a signal is amplified or attenuated in a particular part of a signal path. So, there is positive gain and negative gain. Positive gain happens in an amplifier or preamplifier. A mic produces a relatively tiny voltage. The main job of the preamp is to boost that voltage. Most high quality professional mic preamps have a control (the "gain trim") that allows you to adjust how much amplification happens in the preamp. If your preamp is set to maximum gain (maximum amplification) and it receives a signal from a high output condenser mic three feet from a screaming person, the preamp will produce a signal with a voltage too "loud" for it's own internal circuits to handle, and the signal will be "clipped," which means that the peaks of the waveform will be "sheared off" (clipped) into "square waves"... in other words: distortion. So, as Jeff indicates, the main tool you have to avoid preamp distortion, which is by far the most common place for distortion to happen when recording with mics, is the preamp gain trim knob, not the knob or fader which comes after the preamp in the signal path. Randy In response[ftp][/ft

Hi, Phil! I started this topic because I thought it would be useful information for a few of the less experienced people who monitor the forum.... and because I aspire to someday be a "hero" level poster on Jeff's group, so I have to keep submitting things! : ) Randy

As elementary a concept as this is, Jeff, I do encounter working production mixers who don't understand it. Obviously there are lots of people in post who don't understand it either. And there are some relative newbies who monitor this forum who aren't aware of it. I bring it up here because even with these new pieces of software in our post toolbox, distortion, as you say, is one of the nastiest problems we have to deal with. Anybody, no matter how experienced, can and will be surprised by an actor suddenly screaming, but in post it isn't as uncommon as you might think for us to receive ten takes of a line, all equally distorted. The thing that tells us the production mixer may not understand optimizing gain is that each take will be recorded at a lower level than the one before it, but all of them are equally distorted. The mixer is attempting to fix the problem, but doesn't know how. You're right, of course, that a knob labeled "gain trim" is probably exactly that. It's the one to grab when you hear what sounds like distortion, not the main fader. Randy

Sorry if this topic has already been addressed, but I thought it might be a good idea to talk about distortion. There are a few production sound guys and gals out there who don't know enough about avoiding clipping when using microphones. One of the most common false assumptions is that the mic itself is the first thing in the circuit to clip... wrong. The mic preamp in the mixer or recorder is almost always where the distortion happens. And if your knob or fader is downstream from that preamp then turning it down is going to do nothing to fix the distortion. All you'll be doing is lowering the level of the signal and the distortion in equal amounts. To avoid distortion in this kind of situation you either need to attenuate the signal before it gets to the preamp (by using a lower output mic, moving the mic farther away, or inserting an inline pad between the mic and preamp) or lower the internal gain of the preamp itself, which some (but not all) mixer "gain knobs" let you do. Which of the popular location mixers allow you to adjust internal mic preamp gain? (as opposed to simply attenuating the output of the preamp, or padding the input) By the way, "distortion amelioration" software is beginning to arrive in the marketplace these days. It's far from perfect, but it can sometimes take a very badly clipped piece of dialog and improve it enough to make it usable. It isn't just a low pass filter. The software apparently uses pretty sophisticated algorithms that allow you to reconstruct the distorted regions to some degree. As I say, it's far from a panacea, but is a useful last resort. This is one such piece of software: http://www.cedar-audio.com/products/cambridge/camdeclip.html Randy