Bill Davis
Forum Replies Created
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Flavio,
Glad to help.
However, what you’re asking is more complex than you think.
The truth is, equipment choices are nearly always “conditional” – That’s hard to understand when your beginning in the business so let me give you an example.
Let’s say I’ve got a scene where I want to record a single person sitting in a chair talking to someone off-camera. That sounds amazingly simple, right? So you might assume that there would be a single “perfect” solution to the equipment you need. But let’s look closer.
Where is the woman in the chair supposed to be? Is she in a restaurant? If so you’d expect to hear a host of other sounds including nearby conversations, the sounds of silverware and china in use, typical restaurant sounds. If you want the woman’s dialog PLUS environment a boom mic approach might be better than, for example, using a lav mic on her. The boom mic will pick up table and environmental sounds PLUS the dialog. Or perhaps the woman is at her desk in an office and there are no significant environmental sounds except the air conditioner ducts overhead. Then, you might select that lav – since it will isolate her voice from the environment. And what about the room itself. If the room is hard surfaced and “live” sounding, you might get better results with a less sensitive mic than with a more “live” sounding boom or lav. Or if the room is full of heavy carpet and overstuffed furniture perhaps you’d want a mic with MORE high end sensitivity? You see the issues here? And that’s JUST the audio part of the situation. There are the same, or more issues to decide for lighting, scene blocking, and a hundred other variables having to do with how and where the story is going, the mood you wish to set, the nature of the characters emotional state, and even what they are wearing.
My advice always runs the same way. Hold off on buying expensive gear until you land clients and can match your first purchases to the kind of work you’re ACTUALLY getting paid to perform. Rent gear job by job before that point.
It’s way too easy to buy equipment for what you THINK you’ll be doing – only to find out that the market wants something different. The least effective plan is, for example, buying 2 lav mics, and discovering that for the first year, you’re renting a boom mic for every gig and watching your lavs sit in a drawyer. OR VICE VERSA.
Buy what your customers need. Nothing else.
Hope that helps.
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Look, with a LIVE PREVIEW system (which the 5d most assuredly has) you can SEE the ratios you’re getting in REAL TIME. IN context to EVERY OTHER LIGHT AND FILL – side to side – corner to corner – full frame. PLUS the monitor gives you color temp info and lots of other data that a METER never will.
All it requires is that you TRAIN yourself to look for them on the monitor and stop using the crutch of a light meter that was designed for a totally different task.
Light meters were invented because people DIDN”T have any better way to judge exposure. and they give you NO info about color temp or light interaction. A properly calibrated monitor will do ALL of that and more.
If you want to constrain yourself to a light meter – have fun. And if you want to do location scouting without your camera – it’s a GREAT tool.
All I’m saying is that any truly EXPERIENCED video DP can likely light CIRCLES round most folks armed with the fanciest meters on the market with nothing more than their eyes. Precisely because ALL the info you need is right there in front of you if you learn how to look for it.
My 2 cents worth anyway.
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I’m gonna confess here that I’ve almost TOTALLY changed my green screen approach in the past few months based on new gear.
I’m using a SINGLE Cool lights 4 lamp fixture with the mirrored wings in place mounted on my rail system approximately 8 feet over the stage floor set about six feet in front of my greenscreen and that’s ALL the GS lighting I do. One fixture – directly behind the talent – that’s it. Period.
My GS itself is one of the newer foam/fabric screens on a Avenger frame. (I bought it 12×12 and typically leave off the bottom stand section so that I set it as 12′ wide x 8′ high and can bring the unused material on the floor forward to provide a temporary green screen cove.
I key the talent with another Coollights 4 tube soft fluorescent and use a Coollights 2 light fixture for the back/rim light. For fill I use ether a bounce card or set a small Arri 150 at distance.
3 lights using color balanced fluorescents (plus reflector or kicker)- so virtually no studio heat or power hassles and I’m getting nearly PERFECT keys.
I think part of the reason is because I’m shooting with a Canon 5dMkii and there’s SO much resolution and sensitivity in play that my keys are working out AMAZINGLY well. So well, that I’m no longer using Ultimatte or Primatte or After Effects, I’m just keying them directly in Final Cut Pro without any issues.
After years and years of fighting to make GS work simple, I think the newer gear is finally catching up to the challenge.
Soft light – lots of pixels – stock software.
Life is BETTER these days.
FWIW.
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Flavio,
The primary reason that so many people use Sony 7506’s in video is NOT that they are particularly musical OR accurate. In fact, they’re really not “accurate” at all.
In fact, one can argue that they are considered EXCELLENT for film and video making BECAUSE of the way they are “inaccurate!”
First, they have a pronounced “presence” peak right around the range of human speech. This is quite useful for helping you HEAR performance problems in dialog during field recording. A more “accurate” pair of headphones might not highlight an annoyingly splashy “S” sound or a poorly voiced fricative – and you wouldn’t know your take is bad until you hear things back in the studio. This is NOT good! They are also highly EFFICIENT – which makes them outstanding for use with cameras that have modest headphone power amps. Finally, because they are SO popular worldwide, you can get replacement parts (like ear pads) simply and easily or simply replace them and not have to RETRAIN your brain and ears to a new monitoring standard if you’re shooting somewhere you might not be able to replace your GRADO’s with equivalent gear.
Things become “standards” for reasons. Sometimes NOT the reason’s you’d think!
YMMV.
Good luck in your search.
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The OP indicated they’ll be recording to the stereo XLRs of a Panasonic Video Camera.
That tells me that they don’t need theatrically pristine sound – just solid professional performance.
You can COMMONLY find Fp-33s on Ebay at around $500.
You hardly EVER see Sound Devices stuff on Ebay (outside the MixPre which is the lowest end they sell). By the way, I think the primary reason for this is that SD is a VERY much younger company than Shure and there is very little of it’s merchandise in the used channel – where Shure – having been a player for decades has a VERY strong presence.
The OP also indicated that he’s not in the sound business particularly – but wishing to add some sound gear to his general practice. That makes me think that a solid workhorse like the Shure stuff might be a better fit than the higher quality, but more than twice as expensive Sound Devices gear.
After all, add field covers and reasonable accessories to each and we’re talking 1000 to 1200 for the two Shures he needs, but 3k gets him only 5 (admittedly cleaner) channels on the SD 502 – and a pair of 302’s will be significantly more expensive to get his 6 channels covered. it’s a pretty significant dollar difference.
It’s great to go for the best gear – but sometimes spending twice as much for that top 10% of performance extracts a real premium that’s only justified if you have the clientele IN PLACE to support it. I think this is one of those cases.
And spending in accordance with the level of your work – with an eye to the eventual depreciated value of said gear is a pretty smart thing, IMO.
YMMV.
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Absolutely.
Take three mics into the FP-33 and set their gain to taste. Then output ALL of them to a single channel Right or Left – use that to FEED one channel of your camera XLR balanced audio input.
Then do the exact same thing with the second FP-33 – outputting that mixer in MONO to the OTHER channel on your camera.
Bingo – up to six tracks of audio mixed onto two tracks of your camera master – ready to go to post.
You won’t be able to RE-mix things – but if you pay attention to your settings and use the mixer’s limiters properly, there’s no reason you can’t get a clear recording of all six mics with this setup.
Good, solid, professional choice.
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Eric is precisely correct.
Balanced wiring requires 3 separate conductors so that you can implement a wiring plot to pass a ground PLUS two legs having inverted phase with respect to each other down the cable. So there’s no technical reason you couldn’t use any small 3 conductor connector in a balanced scheme. But since these small plugs and sockets are typically among the most FRAGILE size and style connector, they are hardly EVER used for balanced wiring. More typically these are used for unbalanced stereo audio.
In all my years around audio, I’ve NEVER seen a balanced audio system that uses mini-pin wiring.
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Steve,
The truth is that sound recording is actually a very complex undertaking.
It starts with asking “what am I recording” and it continues to jump through hoops and try to avoid pitfalls up to the second huge question which is “What kind of recording do I need and where and how will I use it?”
Let’s make it simple and say you’re recording a singing trio. You could set up a single mic in the middle of all three and get a recording of the group sound. OR you could set up 2 mics, use one for the lead singer and the other for 2 backup singers and have control over the BALANCE between the lead and the backup vocals. OR you could mic each singer individually and post mix the balance of everyone to taste.
Each of those approaches gives you different options, requires different complexities of setup – and employs a different arrange of equipment.
Extrapolate that to what might be needed to record a 5 piece rock band with 2 singers and you get a HUGE range of approaches. Which one is best depends on budget, time, expertise, and the required results. And there’s NO single correct answer.
I can’t even BEGIN to answer your questions because I have no clue what you’re doing – what budget or resources you have at your disposal or what final result you want.
If you want to take the time to plot all that out and then ask me for some ideas about the SPECIFIC situation you’ll be facing, I’ll be happy to do so. But there’s simply no way to make blanket advice that fits all situations.
Sorry.
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Let’s see, you’re hanging your creative hat on a spot that features a pair of white guys – one of whom is dressed up in a cheesy indian headdress and buckskins and sporting a lousy hollywood indian accent talking to a younger guy who looks about as un-native american as is humanly possible.
And you’re concerned about the PICTURE COLOR BALANCE?
Yes, in reality this is kinda what groups like Indian Guides does for real – but society tends to give them a pass (I was joyfully an Indian Guide myself!) because the foundational function of THAT group is providing a bonding experience for dads and their sons (fathers/daughers in Indian Maidens, etc, etc.) – something almost everyone supports no matter their ethnic background.
But you’re SHILLING SOFT DRINKS here. There’s NO similar context to remove the sting.
Sorry, but I once owned an AD AGENCY. Ideas like this commonly get stopped by cooler heads at the table pitch stage where someone on the team of asian descent mockingly says “Hey, maybe we could make it a bit LESS culturally insensitive by making it about a couple of chinese guys who run a laundry?”
Just sayin I don’t think your problem here is related to your picture quality at all.
Sorry, but you ASKED for critique, right?
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Once upon a time, video making was a profession, populated by professionals who used professional tools.
Likewise Photography (beyond the snap shooter) was a profession.
Pros in photography nearly always used light meters. Made sense since you couldn’t SEE the results until your film was developed.
Pros, however, in video NEVER used light meters. Why? Because pro cameras nearly always came with a FREE tool that made light meters completely unnecessary. They were called Zebra stripes. Since the video practitioner had a LIVE picture to judge visually, and could with a simple switch, set zebras to indicate typical exposures (like 70ire for skin tones) there was NO NEED to carry a device to tell one what one could see for themselves in the viewfinder.
Today, with the advent of CONSUMER style camcorders that don’t have zebras – one might argue that carrying a light meter would once again make sense.
However – the moment you develop your practice to the point where you move BEYOND consumer and prosumer cameras – YOU GET ZEBRAS! And your light meter can go back to the drawer.
Use any tools you like, but for those coming from Photography into video – this is the basics of why you seldom see a pro videographer carrying a light meter. It’s simply unnecessary.
YMMV.