[Mike Lattimore]

My experience with lavs is limited but I do have $0.02 to contribute.

One of the largest contributing factors to the level of your subject to the background noise rejection is the volume of the subject and the proximity of the microphone to that subject. The closer or “tighter” the subject is to the sound source, the more inherent background rejection there is.

Unidirectional lavs reject more off-axis background noise but they also have a very small sweet spot. This means if your subject turns his/her head or if you’re forced to pin your mic on a jacket or similar garment, the mic can easily be off axis and sound very distant. If your talent knocks the mic off axis, you’re hosed. this is very easy to do if they are jestering or contorting their body to turn to address an interviewee or co-host. I’ve always tried to stay away from unidirectional lavs because of these problems.

Also, as your unidirectional mic gets closer to your sound source there is a tendency for low frequencies from the source to be increased (known as proximity effect). You may want to move your mic closer to the sound source (usually a mouth) but you end up dealing with proximity.

Your description of ‘open’ or ‘closed’ is a little ambiguous and so is the description by the author of your article. I’m assuming open and closed has more to do with the frequency response of the microphone than the directional qualities. Frequency response can emphasize certain tonal qualities that can help or hinder any situation. I’ve added a link to Sony’s PDF of their LAV series. You’ll find that ALL the omnis have uniform pick-up patterns in 360 degrees, however they have varying frequency response. I’ve also included a link to Sanken’s lav products.

https://www.sanken-mic.com/en/product/index.cfm#product5

https://bssc.sel.sony.com/Professional/docs/brochures/a-1108.pdf

I’ve also looked up the Sanken line of COS-11 mics. If I’m reading the frequency specs (NOT THE PICKUP PATTERN) right the Sanken has a significantly higher boost around 5kHz-10kHz compared to an ECM-55. This is probably the contributing factor to what you’re coining as “open” or “closed” sounding. In the studio we often call this “brighter” and “darker” sounding; but again the choice of adjectives isn’t a definitive as FREQUENCY RESPONSE.

I would suggest learning about frequency response (as well as pickup patterns) if you’re looking to be knowledgable about predicting the behavior of a microphone. That way you can just look at specs and know what you’re getting.

Now about self-noise and transient response…

[Mike Lattimore]

The solution is to fix it as well as you can with the tools and expertise available. Then when the director or others complain about it, tell them that the production crew screwed up by NOT parking the generator a decent distance away and someone is going to have to cough up the money and time for some preventable ADR.

I’ve had this happen before on a campfire scene where everyone was in such a rush that they didn’t give a flying-bojangle (Flanders style word substitution).

This is a classic example of ‘let’s just fix it in post.’ I wonder what the cost is for a few extra yards power cable versus a full blown ADR session with multiple actors?

[Mike Lattimore]

FCP can natively export OMF 2.0 files. I believe the number of tracks are unlimited. HOWEVER, unlike Avid, FCP forces you to export your OMF in one self-contained file (think of a zip file). The only audio files your ProTools guy will receive are those that are used in the timeline. They will be truncated into files at the edit points with short handles (I believe you can dictate to FCP how long the handles are).

For most situations this is acceptable, but should your audio editor need to dig for alternative lines, room tone, etc. that is not part of your timeline, you’ll have to figure out how to get the files over to him in an organized way.

[Mike Lattimore]

This may be a very low tech solution, but is it POSSIBLE to have an experienced pest controller come in and fumigate and spray the entire area for crickets? I’m sure this would be less expensive and more practical than trying to ‘fix it in post.’