Equipment Choices for Foley Work

  • Thread starter Thread starter Chip Hitchens
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Chip Hitchens

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I'm doing some foley work for a very small budget short film, and I was wondering if anyone had any advice for the proper mic choice and mic placement for recording a few things. I have to get the sound of:

An automatic garage door opening and closing
A car going into a garage
Car doors closing in a garage

and I have the following mics available:
1 Cheap Large Diaphragm Condenser
1 Cheap Small Diaphragm Condenser
2 SM57s

I'm not sure that this really needs to be in stereo, since it's all background noise and will appear to be basically in the center of the shot anyway, so I was just going to set up in the garage with my CAD small diaphragm condeser and move it around until it sounded ok, but I thought I'd run it by some more experienced people first. Thanks very much.
 
Chip Hitchens said:
I was just going to set up in the garage with my CAD small diaphragm condeser and move it around until it sounded ok, but I thought I'd run it by some more experienced people first. Thanks very much.
Click to expand...

Sounds good to me. Just take some different variations so that you have some choices. Record everything in seperate parts (door, car, car doors) so you can blend them together properly to match the action on screen. Also record some of the room noise in the garage so you can use that to fill in any blank spots during edits.
 
If that's the mics you got, that's what you got. Experiment with the two condensors. If it's for film, you have to assume that you'll need mono compatibility (in case it's shown on TV) so phase will be an important issue. If you have the pier spaced check your placement by panning to mono to see if it gets wierd. X-Y placements might be a safer technique. Good info on stereo techniques here.
http://www.dpamicrophones.com/eng_pub/
 
Thanks guys. I wound up micing it with the small condenser in mono, and it came out way better than I thought.

The garage door wasn't sounding "big" enough, and I was worried about some crickets in the background, so I wound up close micing the motor thing as well as the track to get the squeaks and groans, gating out the crickets, and putting the two recordings together in post. Threw on a little reverb, and it sounded great. (Well, as great as a garage door can sound)
 
HAHAHA, LMAO!!! What a great project to exercise your brain and creativity...

I've never gated crickets before, but that is awesome!
 
so you put the poor singing crickets into captivity?!?! that's cruel!:D
 
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