Hey all,
I just read John Purcell's book Dialogue Editing for Motion Pictures. I thought it was pretty solid. Good stuff.
However, there was one thing he said that I thought was strange, only because I've heard differently elsewhere. He seemed to say to cut out all off-axis except for the primary microphone you choose. Use only "one track of room tone" at a time.
This seems to indicate that you should eliminate boom mikes altogether if the signal to noise for the scene requires it.
However! I've often heard you're supposed to mix them together for a more realistic representation. Also, isn't this how production mixers create their mixes? By mixing boom and lav?
Later in Purcell's book, he does show a boom on top of a lav for various reasons (mostly rmtone issues, though. Ideally, I think he'd do away with the boom).
The issue is really about two things. One is that boom microphones generally have a much better sound, even when they're far away (though such a sound might not be preferred), and two is that we're not rerecording mixers who have very nice reverb-creating equipment. I haven't really managed to create nice-sounding reverb in Pro Tools. Maybe I need to buy a plugin, or some outside...box thing. The reverb that comes from the boom mike is much nicer. It's got nuance to it. I've read that generating genuine-sounding reverb, like that of real rooms, is a complex process.
How do you guys do it? Work with the boom or throw it out? I personally have found various mixes of boom and lavs to be best...so far.
Sawrab