Non-musical performance recording

[cdbourbon]

Folks, I've pored over this site for the past several days and can't thank you enough for all the terrific information. Thing is, however, I'm an indie filmmaker on a guerilla budget with a very basic understanding of field audio recording techniques. My knowledge really doesn't extend much beyond the Nagra I sold a coupla years back, and even that required somebody other than me to work it. I'd appreciate any constructive feedback or guidance you may have.

What I need to do is put together a recording package for the following (I reckon on spending around $800, if doable): 1) Record one-on-one subject interviews in mostly controlled environment interiors; and 2) Record up to three actors performing scripted dramatizations (think radio theater) in a "studio" environment.

The raw recordings will then be transferrred to PC for mixing, fx, etc. to ultimately be compressed and delivered on digital formats like MP3, stream, cd, etc.

The Tascam 424 looks good to me. According to what I've read on the site, multi-channel recording, unless I'm mistaken, is the way this needs to be handled for the most part. What I'm most confused about is which format I should do all this in. Dat? Minidisc? Even analog? What think you?

I figure needing a quality Lav mic for the interviews and another, relatively inexpensive quality mic for the "studio" sessions.

Please let me know what you thing. I'd be grateful.

--msg

 

[37point5]

Msg,

I do audio at CNN, so I get to deal with a lot of live audio. To be honest, I think lavalier mics bite ass. They use them at CNN and I think they suck. If you have a cool location to shoot at, even if it's just a cool room, then use a boom mic instead so that you pick some of the ambient noise and acoustic "signature" of the place. It makes it seem like you're there with the person being interviewed, as opposed to a lavalier, which just sounds like the person is yelling into your ear. So, yeah, get a long condenser boom-style mic, put a windscreen on it if necessary, and point it at the person talking. If you want to record in stereo, then get two

As far as what to record to, I'd recommend buying a really small mixer (the Behringer 602A is perfect for this, if you can find it anywhere), plugging the mics into that, and then running the output of the mixer to a portable DAT machine. Minidisc would be okay (it doesn't have as good of a frequency range as DAT), but just don't use cassette.

Another great tool: Sonic Foundry's Acoustic Mirror. It'll let you take a voice-over and combine it with a room's acoustic signature (i.e., the reverb, eq, and general noise of a certain room). So, basically, you can sit someone in a room, do an interview, record a bit of room ambiance, and then do more interviews later in a more controlled enviroment but make them sound like they were done in that same room. Also good for pick-up shots where you can't secure the original location again.

Good luck. And remember, live audio isn't supposed to sound great, it's supposed to sound live. As long as you can understand everything everyone is saying and it doesn't offend your ears, then you're doing okay.

Ryan

 

[cdbourbon]

Thank you for the thorough, thoughtful advice, Ryan. Much appreciated. Am going to take it and explore further.

Fortunately--obviously--most of the techniques we use on location shoots for movies are simply going to be duplicated for strictly audio stuff. It's the nasty little budgets that are a crippler! Your input should save me some brain damage.

--msg