Film Recording Advice?

[doc77]

Hi I’m looking for a little advice on recording for a small documentary film. This is not for a scene that will be filmed, but for a reading of transcripted interviews. I’ll be needing to record 5 actors reading the lines with dialogue between the actors. The director would prefer that they did it all at once as opposed to individually for a more natural flow to the conversation. My tiny vocal booth cannot accommodate this many people so I’m trying to figure out the best way to do this.

Most likely I’ll be doing this on my laptop with a motu ultralite mk3, and renting a digital mixer with onboard pre amps. For starters is there a small to midsized console that you would recommend in terms of quality of the pre-amps?

And also, I’m wondering about the best way to approach this in terms of micing.

I’ll be wanting to isolate the 5 individual vocal tracks in the mix. This will take place around a large boardroom style table in a fairly quiet carpeted room. I have yet to test the room for ventilation noise etc, but I’m certain there will be some room noise to consider (there always is.)

I’m thinking 5 separate mics on table top stands, but I’m wondering which way to go, condenser? Shotgun? . Obviously I want to minimize the room sound and isolate the individual vocals as much as possible. Any recommendations? Brand wise etc? We’re on a bit of a budget, but we’re renting, not purchasing, so we’re willing to pay a little more to get the best results. Anyone with experience doing this that could offer any suggestions or feedback would be would be greatly appreciated! Cheers.
T.

 

[37point5]

Not sure about the console, but you really don't need anything that great considering dialogue isn't very sonically complex.

For this particular use, I'd recommend getting 5 cardioid or hypercardioid dynamic mics. Could be as simple as 5 SM58s, although something with a little more rejection like an EV 767 or Audix OM3/OM5 might be good. Either put them on table stands or have the actors hold them. Just make sure you tell the actors not to get right up on the mic, or else the sound will be too bassy and will have lots of plosives.

Good luck!
Ryan Graham
www.livelihoodmovie.com
www.37point5.com
www.indiepostproduction.com

 

[hairylarry]

lav mics or omnis

doc77,

The standard way to do this in a video studio is with lav mics. Fortunately they are inexpensive.

Interviews are often done with omnis because the speaker can get right up on them without proximity effect aka boomy and bassy.

Thanks,

Hairy Larry

 

[mshilarious]

I would rent SM58s or Beta 58s and call it a day. If you want to go crazy, rent SM7s and RE20s. Make sure the talent understands how to use a mic for VO so you don't have problems with sibilance and plosives.

 

[Cosmic]

I would go with lavaliers.

Table mics, especially 5 of them at once, can easily pick up low-frequency noise (elbows on table, bumps, too much ambience, et. cetera) and with 5 mics going, the lavs will isolate themselves better in the mix because of their sound characteristics and because they are fairly close to the mouth of each speaker.

PS: Don't forget to record "room tone" i.e. all 5 mics open with no one talking, just the ambience. This can really save you if you need to edit anything out, like noise between sentences and such.

Good Luck,
C.

 

[dgatwood]

Any chance you could move the table out into the hall temporarily? That would cut down on a heck of a lot of reflections right there.

Lavs would be fine if you have them and if your room is relatively quiet. I probably would use dynamic lavs unless your room is dead silent, though. That said, I've mostly seen omni lavs used for situations where people have to move around and for interviews because untrained guests tend to move their heads around and aim their voices in radically different directions; you don't want to make a guest re-answer a question because their level dropped too low to be usable, and an omni clipped to the correct side of the chest of the participant with a heavy compressor in a dead-quiet studio achieves that.

The lavs, however, are a significant compromise between the desire for noise rejection and the desire to pick something up at all. In a more controlled VO environment with even semi-trained voice talent, lavs probably aren't nearly as optimal a compromise, so you'd probably be better off with mics that have better noise rejection. The only way I'd use an omni for VO work would be if I were using omni headset mics, in which case they are close enough to the sound source that noise rejection becomes nearly irrelevant (inverse-square law).

If at all possible, shut off the HVAC in whatever room you use. There's nothing worse than trying to post-process out the rush of air from a heating/cooling system that very clearly wasn't designed for recording, which pretty much describes 100% of the HVAC systems I've seen.... I swear when I build a house, I'm going to have a silent HVAC system for the studio---like ten-foot-wide ducts with baffles before the first step-down segment (which must be in a different room)... but I digress....

If you are not splicing between mics with only one or two live at a time, you're likely better off with fewer mics because you'll get less room noise relative to the sound from the current speaker. Unless all five people are in separate isol booths, you're not going to completely isolate the tracks anyway, so I'd probably just throw up a single figure-8 mic with the null towards the HVAC ducts and put two people on one side of the table and three on the other. Use the bass roll-off switch to compensate for the proximity effect.

Definitely use shock mounts. That goes double if you use table stands instead of floor stands. That said... don't do that if you can help it.

I definitely would not go with five table-mounted condensers. Dynamics, maybe, but even then, you should probably get the participants pretty close to the mics if you try to have five live at once, which means rolling off the heck out of the bottom end.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this thread is that everybody who has posted thus far would approach this problem completely differently (and that probably each approach would work reasonably well)....

 

[gecko zzed]

My first thought was to set up a pair of LCD condensers, then have the guests standing around them in a semi-circle. Find some music stands or something to put their scripts on. I'm thinking here about how old radio shows were done.

 

[doc77]

Wow guys, thanks for all of the feedback. My head is spinning.

Okay, so one thing I've learned from this is that there seems to be some consensus that the table top idea is to be avoided. Point taken. That and condensers seem to be out of the equation, unless I want to engage in full on war with room sound in the editing phase. Fun!

If I do decide to go the dynamic route, I'll probably go with regular stands and shock mounts and have the actors stand a reasonable distance from each other. I've been looking into the SM7's, this seems like it may be a reasonable alternative to a condenser, and a little better than a 58 which I have never really been a huge fan of outside of live applications. Has anybody had any experience with the Sm7's. I have been reading good things about them, but one never knows about hype.

Ideally I'll be recording to 5 separate tracks, not mixing to a stereo track, as I don't know how many mics I'll need live at a time, so the idea being that I can ultimately pull the cumulative room sound out of each vocal track in the editing phase if need be.

My concern with the lavs is, well firstly my limited experience with them, I've only used them for vocal re-enforcement in a live setting, though I do worry about actors head movement etc, however I don't think they will be required to move too much, and they should be somewhat familiar with vo work. Also it is only a 20 minute transcript reading, about fairly dry subject matter, so I'll be getting a few trys at it.

If I do go with the lavs, any particular brand or model recommendations? Haven't worked with many of them, mostly very cheap ones, so I'm not too familiar with the better ones.

I'm going to check out the room tomorrow, I'll see how bad the Hvac is, and if it can be shut down etc. Mind you I'm in Canada, and it's bloody freezing here right now, so that may not go over to well for too long a period. We shall see.

Thanks again for all the help, haven't really posted too much on here, but I'm really impressed with the range and detail of the responses. Cheers!