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Having trouble using blankets for audio.
I had to get an emergency location replacement for my next scene shoot, and the new location looks not bad overall for the camera, but the sound has a lot of reverb in it.
With sound blankets, I am only able to get results if the camera is close to the actor, but for the wide master shot takes, there is going to be reverb and I can just tell. I can’t go back to the location to do any tests cause I am only allowed to use it, on the shoot day now.
But does anyone have ideas on how to minimize reverb or reduce it quite substantially while shooting, that I could try to apply?
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18 Replies
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Are you only using the on-camera mic, or do you have them mic’d with hidden lavs, or blooming the sound?
Can you shoot the audio a second time, and dub it in?
Steve
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[ryan elder] “I had to get an emergency location replacement for my next scene shoot, and the new location looks not bad overall for the camera, but the sound has a lot of reverb in it.
With sound blankets, I am only able to get results if the camera is close to the actor, but for the wide master shot takes, there is going to be reverb and I can just tell.”
Recording sound is all about signal-to-noise ratio. And this is controlled largely by mic choice and placement. One can record excellent dialog in an old stone church with a t60 time of 6+ seconds (this is likely way more reverb than you are talking about). But you can’t do that if your mic is out of position.
When you say “…I am only able to get results if the camera is close to the actor, but for the wide master shot takes, there is going to be reverb…” it makes me think your mic has some relationship with the camera (OK, it sounds like a camera mounted mic). The optimum placement for a mic is hardly ever near a camera. It’s almost always near the person being recorded.
Bottom line here is if you’re getting too much “reverb” (and other noise) in your dialog recording, get your mic closer to the mouth of the talent (the signal) you are trying to record. The classical way is to use a human boom operator to boom the mic above, in front of, and pointed at the talent’s mouth. If you can’t do that, consider mounting a lavalier on your talent (learn how to do a proper mount and save yourself a lot of pain in post). Either method (booming or lavaliers), if done well, can substantially reduce the amount of reverb you pick up while recording dialog.
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It would be a real challenge to dub it in and make it look convincing I would think or at least it has been in the past. Maybe a couple of lines are okay, but this is a five minute scene.
We are booming with either a shotgun or hypercardioid.
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Hello Ryan and welcome to the Cow Audio Form.
You’ve heard some good ideas. Hopefully here are some more.
First, a shotgun is NOT the mic to use. It will pickup reflected sound. You need a supercardioid like a Schoeps CMC641 or Sennheiser MKH50.
Yes, lay down blankets and have talent stand on one if possible to catch the first bounce of floor reflections. You can also use C-stands with arms to hang other blankets just out of frame. Get as many as you can and try to form a 180 degree semicircular barrier around the front of the talent.
I don’t know what your lighting setup will be but hanging a 20’ x 20’ silk over the talent will damp sound from the walls and ceiling.
You could try a cardioid lav, but I get that you want to boom the shot.
OK, here goes. In the series “House Of Cards” they do a very neat trick. They don’t use lavs.
The stand ins come in for lighting. When lighting is done, the set is emptied of people. The camera rolls X number of frames with no one on the set.Talent comes on set. The boom ops are also on set and in the shot. They roll, allowing the booms to get plenty close. At no point can the talent walk in front or behind the boomers. In post, they bring up that first footage of the empty set and use it to mask out the boomers. There was a question about tracking shots. The “House Of Cards” post team said they could handle that as well.
Other less technical fixes include, inflating small balloons with helium and letting them rise to the ceiling. With enough balloons, you can cover the ceiling and reduce sound bounce.
One solution will probably not work if the environment is live enough. You may need ALL OF THEM.
How’s that?
Regards,
Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum Leader.Want better production audio?: Ty Ford\’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
Ty Ford Blog: Ty Ford\’s Blog -
Okay thanks, I don’t have a super, but I have a hyper. However, a hyper has a less narrow pick up pattern than a super, so would it do a possibly better job than a super?
As for the house of cards idea, I don’t think that will work for me cause when the actors around, and the camera follows them, I think the camera will hit slightly different marks each time and will be hard to reanimate frame to frame.
I don’t have C stands and blankets, I just planned on using light stands for the lights so far and that’s it. I can see about getting C stands, but the shoot is in two days and if I can’t get them in time, not sure. That also goes for helium and balloons, as that was not in the budget either. But I can try.
If none of this becomes available in the next two days, how good would the hyper do in such an environment?
Also, as for a blanket over top of the actor, some of the shots, are from the ground pointed up, kind of like in citizen Kane, while the actors are talking, so I don’t know if that will work. I don’t think I can restory-board the whole thing in two days, cause the DP is away right now, and not back until the shoot day.
So he won’t have time to get use to all new storyboards. This is going to rough I think but I can try to get the C stands and blankets. Blankets aren’t going to help very much I don’t think though, unless I am wrong.
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And yes I am also the boom operator as well as the director.
When I say that the reverb is worse in the wider shots, what I mean is, is that in the wider shots, the boom mic is further away cause there is more head room in wider shots, compared to close ups.
So you hear more reverb in the master shots by comparison.
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When I say that there is more reverb in the mastershots, what I mean is, is that in the master shots, since there is more head room, I have to boom with the mic further away.
Here is an example of what I mean in this scene here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AApQkNSViGg
Notice how Kirk Douglas’s voice has less reverb in, in the close up shots of him, compared to the master. That’s what I mean about masters being worse when it comes to trying to hide reverb.
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Actually I just had a crazy idea but maybe this could work. I already recorded the actor in a studio since he’s narrating in the scene, and there is b roll cutting back and forth with him during the narration.
I recorded a test run of the narration so I could edit the b-roll sequences together in my spare time while waiting in between shoots.
Perhaps I could put this pre-recording to use in some way, since it was recorded in a room with hardly any reverb in, and recorded real close up to his mouth with a good mic? Maybe I could put this to some sort of use, and maybe it would match up possibly?
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Per my original comment, you want a tight pattern and less reflection.
Anything you do to achieve that will help.
Regards,
Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum LeaderWant better production audio?: Ty Ford\’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
Ty Ford Blog: Ty Ford\’s Blog -
[Ty Ford] “OK, here goes. In the series “House Of Cards” they do a very neat trick. They don’t use lavs.
The stand ins come in for lighting. When lighting is done, the set is emptied of people. The camera rolls X number of frames with no one on the set.Talent comes on set. The boom ops are also on set and in the shot. They roll, allowing the booms to get plenty close. At no point can the talent walk in front or behind the boomers. In post, they bring up that first footage of the empty set and use it to mask out the boomers. “
Doh! Thanks, Ty. We mask out stuff in post all the time but I NEVER thought to do it specifically for removing booms. Brilliant!
Steve
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