Recording dialogue in the rain.

[Richard Crowley]

I always suspect that big-budget productions use ADR. There is no magic wand.

I have seen historic reports of using big slabs of “hogs-hair” to protect things from the SOUND of rain falling. For example placed on top of a metal roof almost completely silences the sound of the falling drops, etc. And used also for “wind-screen” (“rain-screen”?) to protect microphones. Of course it doesn’t protect from the HUMIDITY so RF condenser mics would be used.

Hogs hair is still used for air filter material and available in rolls. Even from Amazon.

Here is an interesting reference: https://jwsoundgroup.net/index.php?/topic/6064-hogs-hair/

[John Grothier]

Thank you very much, Richard!

I’ve purchased a Rode NTG-2 due to a low budget (hopefully will be able to upgrade soon to the NTG-3;RF) and the next step will be figuring out a way to keep it dry in future rain scenes. Perhaps a 1-2″ sheet of hog hair around the zepplin, creating an open, almost “cone-like”, wrapping to protect the mic.

Many thanks again!

[Allen Cavedo]

The pros use shotgun windscreen rain covers like:
https://mymic.rycote.com/products/accessories-parts/duck-raincover/

and this:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/556123-REG/Remote_Audio_RMAN_REM_RMAN_Rainman_Boom_Mic.html

Also see this:
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/remote-possibilities-acoustic-music-location-recording/509170-recording-film-rain.html

The pro post guys can do amazingly good ADR these days. There are software tools that do lip movement to audio dialog matching by stretching and shortening audio syllable by syllable. Also if there is a guide track recorded in production VocALign can adjust an ADR performance to perfectly match the production track even if the guide track is noisy from rain.

[John Grothier]

Thank you so much Allen!

I’ve been researching a bit more, and I saw this very interesting interview with Simon Hayes, the production sound mixer on “Les Misérables”. Roughly at minute 13:30 he talks about the actual recording and how it took place. There were 2 boom operators, one to record the vocals and another who positioned the boom pole (with a roof cover) directly above the mic-ed boom pole.
I’ll leave the link below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbGpxsFDM74

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