[Adrian Jans]

Would I be able to get away with just 5 feet away? One mic on his left and one on his right? My studio is quiet, there won’t be a risk of any outside noise coming in.

Or do I need to start looking towards alternative solutions? If so, what would you recommend? I’m open to all types of approaches.

[Adrian Jans]

I love what a great resource the COW is, and thank you all so much for your responses.

I guess there’s a couple things I should add to this, and a couple questions I’d like to ask.

Yes, he will be using an acoustic guitar. This wont be shot like other music videos because we don’t have any previous quality recordings of the song. My green screen isn’t large and doesn’t provide a wide range of motion, and any effects and backgrounds we produce will be very low budget. The project is really only a collaboration with just two people experimenting to find out what they’re capable of producing on their own.

I don’t want to rent because I basically have no microphones of my own and I would like to have something I can experiment with for this and any future projects. So I guess I should also mention I would like to buy something versatile enough that it could also be used for projects outside of this setting, for example two people having a conversation.

The Blue Bird and Blue Baby Bottle look really cool, I mean really cool. They put a big smile on my face when I pulled up a picture of each of them. However, they look like they need a close proximity. Is this correct? I would prefer to have something I could keep maybe 5-10 feet away from the subject, so that I can keep the microphones out of frame. The same goes for the Audio-Technica 3035, what is the proximity on that microphone?

I guess that also excludes the E6, although the vocals did sound great in that example you gave Ty.

[Adrian Jans]

I wouldn’t use the Beyerdynamic DT770’s for set monitoring, their sound-staging is much more wide and open, and the bass is extreme enough to cause earthquakes. I wouldn’t use them for monitoring anything unless you are a studio drummer. You could also use them to enjoy some heavy thumping techno, but they really aren’t good for much else.

I hear they can become pretty neat with this mod…
https://www.headphile.com/page8.html
but I’ve never had a chance to play with any Darth Beyers myself, so I can’t really say.

[Adrian Jans]

I strongly recommend the Sennheiser HD 25-1’s (NOT the SP version). They clamp on your head very tightly and in my experience block out noise more effectively than the type that emits a frequency to cancel sound. Most importantly though they have amazing separation and very upfront audio, which is great for identifying the smallest on set noises you don’t want and their sources. The cable isn’t detachable in the way you probably want, but it is designed to be removable so you can replace it with a shiny custom cable if you so desire (but unnecessary for what your doing). You can find these cans for $200 or less depending on how hard you look.

I wouldn’t suggest anything made by bose, they are waaay overpriced for their quality. Logitech does make a 2.1 speaker set that really will give you the most bang for your buck for less than $100

[Adrian Jans]

I’ve been using 1.9.2 for a while now, never had a problem.

[Adrian Jans]

Invest in the right lights and lots of educational books.

What kind of videos will you be doing in your studio? Green screen? Talking heads? Will you ever deal with multiple actors (or non-actors)? Will people be in front of backdrops? On designed sets? Will you be working on multi-camera shoots?

These kinds of details might get you some more specific responses.

I’ve got to agree with what everyone else is saying though, if they’re not willing to buy you a real editing station…. how are you going to complete your work?

[Adrian Jans]

Wow, I’m really thrilled with the response I’ve gotten in this thread, and much quicker than I expected too. The COW really is one of the best resources a young person that is motivated to learn could hope for.

Everyone seems to agree first and foremost that its crucial to start with conversation. I always try to do what I can with that, but you guys have really given me some great suggestions for conversation starter/movers.

Mark Suszuko – That suggestion you gave about asking opinion centered questions is truly a Golden piece of advice, some of the most immediately useful I’ve seen on the subject. Big thanks for that one! (And everything else you said)

Bill Davis – You said this topic deserves a book, and I couldn’t agree more. Could you suggest some titles for me to check out? I just don’t know where to begin looking.

A few other things I’d like to throw out there.

Noah, you make a very good point about watching people around alcohol. While it hasn’t been an issue yet (in fact, so far clients have only indulged in a drink as a celebration at the end of filming), it is important that I don’t let clients embarrass themselves, as thats simply unprofessional and would reflect poorly on myself.

The reason I want to keep snacks around, is because often times my clients are flown in from out of town, and can only afford to spare one day for filming. Obviously I’m not going to let them leave until I have product I think they will be happy to show the world (because this isn’t just their reputation, its mine), which means with some people, recording the 12 short scripts we have to get through can be several hours out of a day. And while my bosses give me petty cash to take the client to lunch, I often times find they need something in between to keep them going. However Mark, your idea about toothbrushes and floss is great.

Again, I am so grateful for all this wonderful advice, and I’m sure lots of other people reading this thread will be thrilled too.

[Adrian Jans]

Richard,

Maybe some things I say won’t translate since I am using FCP 7, but I think I can help.

First of all, what is your Sequence preset? I’m gonna guess that because your filming at HDV 30 your under the false assumption that the HV30 can record at 720p. It can’t, if your footage is HD, its recording at 1440×1080. I’m also gonna go ahead and guess you’ve been trying to use progressive settings (720p30, 1080p30). This is probably your main problem, as I am pretty sure the HV30 can only record interlaced footage.
I would suggest you try setting your sequence preset to HDV – 1080i60

Also, what is your device control preset at? This isn’t as important, but I personally use HDV FireWire Basic NDF (non drop frame) when I’m logging footage from my HV30.

Also, never forget to try simply rebooting your computer. There have been countless times where my settings weren’t working, and a reboot fixed the issue.

I had some similar problems to this when trying to log footage with FCP 5, and problems with FCP 5 force downconverting all my footage to 720×480. Ultimately my solution was to upgrade to FCP 7.

[Adrian Jans]

Well, I currently have 4GB of RAM (2x2GB). The computer I am using, macbook pro, 2.93GHz has only 2 RAM slots and can max out at 8GB (4x2GB). If you don’t mind, do you think you could send me a link to the site where you buy RAM?

The reason they are telling me a SSD would be good has something to do with the way they interact with swap files, and that SSD run incomparably faster than a hard disk, and that the hard disk basically acts as a giant bottle neck if your pushing your RAM to its limits.

In reality, the way things are right now, I pretty much only use AE to render alpha channel videos in FLV format, for whatever reason AE is the only program that handles this smoothly, (and they absolutely have to be FLV). I’m rendering simple “guy standing in front of a website” videos with a little button to minimize him. Although there is a high possibility that I will be using AE more and more throughout the job.

I would absolutely love to be able to buy a Desktop mac pro, or hell, even an imac, but the way things are, its gonna be at least a year before I can afford it, or the company feels financially comfortable enough to drop that kinda cash on me.

[Adrian Jans]

Oh yeah, and the only major change between this time around and the first time around is that I used Keylight to do my keying instead of the chroma key software that is stocked with FCP. But I did all that in FCP, exported out of it, and imported that video into AE, would that make that kind of a difference if I rendered the filter already in a different program?

Again, thank you to everyone.