This week I was lucky enough to meet Tony Murtagh and hear about his career. He shared a bunch of knowledge from his 30 year location sound recording career. This post is recap of what I learnt about recording techniques as well as some gear he uses on set.
Sound is the back door to the brain, sound is normally transparent. TV needs sounds visual and audio cues go hand in hand. Clean dialogue is more important than clear vision. The reason being that the sound can give us the most information about whatever you are viewing than anything else. It can determine the weather, setting, place, tone, type of character in the scene and many more informative things the viewer needs to know in order to stage engaged in the media.
Things to think about while working with any sounds:
Sound is like ripples in a pond, it is compressions emitting through a medium. Sound is the vibration of sound molecules. Travels in waves, reflect and bounces off surfaces. The perception of sound for film is especially unique as the idea of creating foley and recording voice overs need to sound natural. Recreating this natural sound for a consumer is an art that needs to be perfected through the use of recording and production techniques.
Recorders:
There is a few ways in which you are able to record sound on location. There are two types of recording systems - double and single. And a double system is all in one like to zoom F8 and a camera where the camera and a recorder sync up. Double system sounds have better recording quality and you don't need to wait for the camera to be ready to take wild lines. The disadvantage is that you have to then after line up the audio and film which is time consuming. This can be helped through the use of time code however. There is more gear involved in this process also.
Single system only involves the mixer being sent out to the camera. There is no recorder involved. The mixer send the sound in stereo to the camera then there is an audio back to to the mixer. You are also able to monitor to the sound going to the camera with confidence monitoring. It is called confidence monitoring as the audio and film is then already synced as they are being recorded to the same piece of media.
There are a bunch of mixers out there that are effective for different recordings. for example, the Zoom F8 is a good recorder but has some flaws regarding design as the levels are way harder to see than on some of the bigger recorders/mixers. It is great however for location sound recording on a budget. It can also be used in live sound as a mini mixer for a band. The mixer Tony recommender was Sound Devices 552 it is apparently more effective in a commercial production. I am yet to use this recorder mixer but I am familiar with the Zoom F8. A mixer sound device Tony mentioned is the 442 on this device you are able to control mic power, HPF (high pass filter), panning, HP monitoring. HPF is handy as most of the time recording dialogue as the human voice doesn't go below 100hz. A more effective and clean recording can be initially captured by rolling off the 100hz and below with the feature. He mentioned that mixing as you go while recording foley and dialogue is a good idea and will help over all to get a more polished outcome in post pro.
When it comes to linking up the camera and the mixer and recorder (if you're using one) there are a few important points to consider. In the back of camera there are XLR inputs there is a three position switch to set to line, mic or 48. When plugging in the mixer you need to make sure that the auto setting is turned off for the gain control. Make sure the manual setting is on. The auto setting is for a camera man who doesn't have a sound recordist. It is important to remember that when using a digital device and analogue mixer the most important thing to remember is that 0 VU = -20 DB. if you have the camera and digital recorder set at different levels then there is a huge risk of your audio becoming distorted.
I found this youtube video that recapped all the points that Tony made about single system recording. I did however find it hard to find a list of dot points on exactly how to check the camera audio settings on the internet!
Syncing rushes is an important part of post production. There is a number of way to get the times to sync the audio and visual. A time coder is a very handy tool that can be locked then to the recorder and then sync the locked in device to the camera. Using a slate to make a peak in the audio recording. The person in post then has to line the peak in the audio up to the take frame by frame until completely aligned.
Microphones
AS microphone I have not had the chance to use yet is a condenser electret. This microphone is used as a level mic. They can can run on a battery or plugged in to a phantom power source. It is important to check the sound all the time to make sure that the battery is not running low. This will create a hissing sound that is rather inaudible but will destroy you recording if it is there. This will also affect the level that is records. Make sure you take the batteries out of the electret condenser as if the battery dies it can potentially destroy the microphone. This video (although the audio is drab) is very informative about this type of microphone and highlights how it works and how it is used in a short video.
Tony reiterated what Seth said about boom mic techniques. Boom is king. You can have full control over this piece of equipment if you know how to use. The boom must be pointed directly at the mouth of the sound source. Boom mic techniques determine the sound source. It can be exhausting as a boom mic operator to hold the boom above your head all day. This can also affect the quality of the sound. If you get tired and need to readjust while the actors are on screen this will create noise from the movement. There are also techniques in which you can move the boom mic between two people talking without making any noise with the boom pole. In some cases there is room to have two boom operators in order to capture the sound clearly and effectively. This would be the case if recording a conversation between two people who are too far away for the boom operator to move between them seamlessly.
This video demonstrates some of the boom techniques that Tony showed the group the other day! It is a good reference point to how it works practically rather than just theoretically.
The use of a boom mic is key as well as a radio mic. One of the issues with lapels is they become muffled and capture no ambience of the environment. If you are able to follow a sound source with the boom mic it is possible to mix the two of the sound sources together. If there is no way to get a clear lapel mic sound and no way to get the boom mic to capture the sound after the scene is shot you must ask the actors to just run their lines these are called ‘wild’ lines.
Radio microphones are used when there are shots that you are unable to capture the sound with a boom pole. There are a few different types of lapel mics. The ones we have access to I learnt are actually quite large compared to ones that would be used on set for a TV show. That is rather amazing to be as they are so small already. There are a few issues with them however. They are sometimes hard to hide in certain costumes. They are also natoriots for getting interference with clothing and moving while on the actor. There are a few ways around this. There is mini fluffies that can be put on the microphones to stop any brushing sounds from costumes. Most location sound recorders use blue tack to hold the microphone off the skin and clothing of an actor. This is affective. However there are many situations where the actor is likely to knock the microphones causing it to have noise. Surgical tape is used to hold the slack of the microphones to the body of the actors. This in most cases prevents the actors from accidentally pulling the microphones out of their positions. This is why radio microphones are not used as main recording devices as there are so many factors that can affect the outcome of the recording. However, they are a necessity and it is important even though they aren't ideal that as an engineer you get good as using them.
This is just an overview of some of the most interesting techniques I learn from Tony that I am keen to try out when doing some location sound. See my post coming up this week from the lecture we had with seth where I will outline the specifics of a lot of the equipment I spoke about in this article.
http://thecinematheque.ca/education/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/LanguageofFilm07.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hi4MKL1mzLU
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