Bob Kessler
Forum Replies Created
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Is the mic going to be placed on a stand or handled by an interviewer?
Is the person speaking standing in one spot or moving around?
What’s your budget?
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Lots of good responses so far. My preference is Automated Dialog Replacement.
If your talent has little or no experience with ADR hold on to your inner peace, the sessions can try the patience of a saint. I’ve found that with the inexperienced types “repeat after me” works well – play the clip and they repeat it back.
Venue appropriate voice projection – a lot of ADR newbs don’t project their voice enough because they can hear themselves so well. When outdoors, in a crowded room, a bar, etc. people naturally speak more loudly. I sometimes lower the volume of their voice in their headphones and put an temp ambience in to get them to push a little more.
Get Vocalign. It does a great job of making most ADR seamless.
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Well, you may have noticed that the NTG-3 is $400 more than the NTG-2, that means they took more care in the manufacture and quality of the components. So yes, it will have better specs. The NTG-3 has been called the poor mans MKH-416; only time will tell if that reputation holds up in the long run.
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Okay…
The Mackie is not a production sound mixer, it is intended for mixing music; it will have (comparatively) quite a bit of self noise. That being said, there are a bunch of other things that you should check.
1. Only the channel(s) that has a sound source you want to record should be engaged, all of the others should have their faders all the way down and the “mute” button engaged. An open channel will generate hiss.
2. Do not use any EQ on the channels except perhaps a little bass roll-off. You can EQ in audio post, and anything done to the signal in the field cannot be undone later.
3. Do not use the master graphic EQ.
4. Make sure that all of the aux sends/returns are off.
5. Make sure that the effects sends/returns are completely disengaged.
I assume that you meant an Azden mic. Azden products have very poor self-noise characteristics, meaning that the mic generates hiss all by itself. The Shure is an decent mic.
No matter what there is going to be noise with the gear that you are using. What you have to learn is gain-staging; that is getting the optimum signal with a minimum of noise; that includes the audio settings on the camera. Take your time and figure out the optimum settings for your collection of equipment.
I would suggest that you may get a better signal by plugging the mic directly into the camera or getting a proper production sound mixer.
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Now comes compromise time. As you get further from the two folks in the car the more noise will be introduced to the recording and the less voice intelligibility there will be.
The Inverse Square Law
In simple terms, this means that a sound twice as far away is only one-fourth as loud. A sound four times as far away is only one-sixteenth as loud. So a human voice that records with adequate volume three feet away is just one-sixteenth as effective at twelve feet.
Once you get into wireless you’ll have more likelihood of drop-outs, RF interference and the batteries have a limited useful life (2 – 4 hrs continuous) and you have two rec/trans systems to worry about. That’s why I recommended hard-wired.
Just one more thought; if you cannot understand what they are saying – and you mentioned that the conversational by-play is the focus of the project – then everything else becomes meaningless.
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Of your recorder choices I would go with the FR-2LE, PMD-661 or used HD-P2. If you go with the FR-2LE or PMD-661 check out Oade Brothers – they sell modded versions that greatly improve the sound for very little over the normal selling price.
As far as sound capture of the driver and navigator can they wear headset mics? Perhaps something like this?
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/247421-REG/Shure_WH30XLR_WH30_Headworn_Condenser.html
They could be hardwired directly into the recorder and would greatly mitigate the other sounds in the vehicle as the crew will be speaking directly into the mics.
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There has been talk about low levels with the NTG-2/H4n combo. You have to keep in mind that the H4n is marketed at musicians whose sound sources are as a rule much louder than conversational dialog, so the H4n is “biased” that way, and the NTG-2 has lower a output level than most mics.
With almost any DSLR it won’t matter what you plug into it unless you can defeat the AGC which substantially raises the noise floor, and even if you do manage to defeat the AGC the audio implementation on DSLRs is very substandard at best.
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Have you checked SoundDogs or Sonomic?
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I’ve never used any of these, really know nothing about them, but here goes:
https://www.tacsystem.com/en/products/softwares/000563.php
https://www.spl.info/index.php?id=463 (Lot’s of positive buzz on this one and I’m demo-ing next week)
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As the camera does not have audio inputs you will have to use a separate audio recording system. A common “basic” package popular with the indie crowd is the Zoom H4n and the Audio Technica AT875 shotgun. I would also recommend a hypercardioid like the Oktava mk-012 if you are doing a lot of shooting indoors. A step up for the audio recorder would be the Marantz PMD-661 or the Fostex FR2-LE, modified versions of which are available from Oade Brothers (which I would highly recommend).