[Richard Crowley]

Do you have other options for audio capture?
For example can you use wired (or wireless) clip-on body mics instead of shotguns?

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Recording audio without metering and monitoring is exactly like framing and focusing without looking at the viewfinder.

[Richard Crowley]

The problem with those inexpensive mixers (and lower-end recorders and camcorders) is the low performance (gain and noise) of the mic preamps. Think of a cheap mic preamp (in a mixer or in an audio recorder or camcorder) as having a low film ISO number.

If you are shooting film with an ISO number of 64 you know that you will need some combination of strong light, fast lens, slow exposure. Same with audio. If you have a low to average cheap mic preamp, you will need a good audio level. Some combination of loud sound, sensitive microphone, close mic placement) to deliver a decent enough signal into the cheap mic preamp.

As Mr. Ford and Mr. Watson have observed, there is no short-cut or work-around to capturing good audio. If you need a piece of gear that you have rare use for otherwise, it is time to rent, borrow, or just turn down the job.

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Recording audio without metering and monitoring is exactly like framing and focusing without looking at the viewfinder.

[Richard Crowley]

Wow, that is as hopeless as I have ever heard. Even with a human ear, it is hard to tell even what voice sounds you are trying to extract. The noise is so random and essentially indistinguishable from the dialog you want to preserve, I cam’t imagine that there is any software that can do that. Sorry.

My only solutions would be subtitles and/or dialog replacement/”translation”. (Pretend you are voice-over “translating” from Sentinelese or Klingon.) This is an excellent demonstration of why it is a good idea to send the prime audio into the camera even if you don’t anticipate using the camera audio track. That camera audio track is hardly even a “sync” track, much less a “transcription grade” recording of the dialog.

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Recording audio without metering and monitoring is exactly like framing and focusing without looking at the viewfinder.

[Richard Crowley]

https://www.sounddogs.com/ is my favorite source for SFX and many music cues.
They have probably the largest catalog available online (something over one million trax)

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Recording audio without metering and monitoring is exactly like framing and focusing without looking at the viewfinder.

[Richard Crowley]

[ryan elder] “Should we just live with the wetness like Paths of Glory did?”
Only you can answer that question. If it were me, there is no way I would try to record a dialog track like that.

[ryan elder] ” Or what did they do before the lav mic age?”
Dialog Replacement.

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubbing_(filmmaking)#ADR/post-sync

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Recording audio without metering and monitoring is exactly like framing and focusing without looking at the viewfinder.

[Richard Crowley]

[ryan elder] “before lavs came along, but is it possible to do it old school and still be good?”

Sure, in SOME cases. But that is a question with 10000 variations. It would be insane to try to offer a simple “yes” or “no” answer.

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Recording audio without metering and monitoring is exactly like framing and focusing without looking at the viewfinder.

[Richard Crowley]

That is when it is time to break out the wireless body mics.

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Recording audio without metering and monitoring is exactly like framing and focusing without looking at the viewfinder.

[Richard Crowley]

That particular film, and that particular scene are the most “wet” I remember every hearing in any film I have ever seen. At least in any scene where it seems clear that the dialog is actually important to the plot and the audience is meant to understand it.

If that film/scene were shot today, you an be sure that the sound would be MUCH more distinct. And whatever “ambient reverberation” would be mostly artificially generated and added in the post-production mixdown. IMHO it is VERY RISKY to record that kind of extreme reverberation directly on to the dialog track. I would never do such a thing.

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Recording audio without metering and monitoring is exactly like framing and focusing without looking at the viewfinder.

[Richard Crowley]

That was a very old film from back when they had very poor equipment and techniques compared to what we have today.

Remember that in the recent era, wireless body mics are frequently used for good dialog pickup when shooting long/master shots. And dialog replacement is much more common now that there is modestly-priced software available to conform the match of the ADR to the original recorded tracks.

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Recording audio without metering and monitoring is exactly like framing and focusing without looking at the viewfinder.

[Richard Crowley]

[ryan elder] “Also, when I boom, I keep reading how you should hit -12 decibels. “

There is no single target peak value. It depends VERY VERY MUCH on what you are recording and how. The general concept is that you should record at as high a level as possible SAFELY without clipping. The reason being that you can get the maximum Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) before clipping. This is the case with ANY source and ANY recording method. It has nothing to with booming or any other technique of sound pickup.

[ryan elder] “If I can get it in close I can, but when it comes to mastershots, with a few actors in the shot, it becomes more challenging. Like this scene here, for example, is what I have to do a lot when it comes to mastershots:”

That is not a very good example. In the long shot, the dialog is VERY reverberant. Perhaps as “wet” as I have ever heard in any feature film. That room is big enough that they probably used a long shotgun (because of the framing). But they were operating at such an unusually long distance, the dialog pickup is among the worst I have ever heard in any feature film. Note carefully that when they finally did a medium-close-up of Kirk Douglas, the sound became MUCH more distinct because they were using the microphone at a much closer distance. Perhaps they meant for the poor-quality dialog track to convey the feeling of our presence in the very large, reverberant room.

[ryan elder] “Also would a different field recorder than the FR2-LE allow for higher pre-amplication, and therefore can record from further distances, at even less than 90% gain and volume, or no?”

Most certainly. The mic preamps in the FR2-LE are by far the weakest link in your audio chain. You can be sure that feature-film and prime-time TV productions are not using such little plastic consumer gadgets. They are using mixers and recorders from Sound Devices, and more recently the Zoom F8 and F4 are making their way as a couple of steps up from the FR2-LE

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Recording audio without metering and monitoring is exactly like framing and focusing without looking at the viewfinder.