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Can someone tell me about sound on a low budget movie?

I don’t want to make the mistake of a lot of low budget filmmakers.

For example there is a scene in a kitchen and their voice Echo’s

What’s that from?

Is it because the Mic is not close enough or its not the right kind of Mic?

If you use wireless Mics on the Actors and add the room tone later in post will that work?

If you were making a low budget to no budget film and cant afford a sound guy whats a good mic to use?

How would you do it?
 
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The biggest cause of echos is lots of flat surfaces. Which one generally encounters in spades in a kitchen. Bringing in soft materials to break up the hard flat surfaces is a good starting point. Moving blankets work well for this, or in a pinch a largish piece of acoustic foam or two.

Type of mic, and mic position are certainly factors as well, but reducing the surfaces able to reflect sound will go a long way to dampening echos.
 
The biggest cause of echos is lots of flat surfaces. Which one generally encounters in spades in a kitchen. Bringing in soft materials to break up the hard flat surfaces is a good starting point. Moving blankets work well for this, or in a pinch a largish piece of acoustic foam or two.

Type of mic, and mic position are certainly factors as well, but reducing the surfaces able to reflect sound will go a long way to dampening echos.

If you were making a low budget to no budget film and cant afford a sound guy whats a good mic to use?

How would you do it?
 
Just to expand upon Will's explanation...

Hard surfaces are very reflective. Since most rooms are rectangular with parallel surfaces (walls, floor, ceiling) you get acoustic "bounce," which is the acoustic version of having two mirrors facing each other giving almost infinite reflections. Kitchens and bathrooms are especially susceptible as there aren't any "soft" surfaces to absorb sound.

Because of the way microphones work they exaggerate these reflections, and the narrower the polar pattern, the more this effect is exaggerated - so a shotgun mic will be the worst choice for these types of locations. A hypercardioid mic is a good choice. The Avantone CK-1 and sE Electronics SE1A are acceptable micro budget choices. However, the mic is only 25% of the solution; the skill with which it is wielded on the end of the boom-pole boom is a major factor. This is why an experienced boom-op is so valuable.

As Will mentioned, lots of sound blankets and acoustic foam will somewhat reduce these reflections. Carpeting on the floor will help as well.


There are no cheap, easy solutions.
 
If you were making a low budget to no budget film and cant afford a sound guy whats a good mic to use?
Do a search on the posts by Audio Post Expert and Alcove Audio (who posted above). You'll find many posts on recommended (micro) budget audio gear for indie film makers. If they recommend something, listen.

For indoor shooting, the Audio-Technica AT4053B Hypercardioid Microphone is also an excellent choice but it may be well out of your budget. It's 2x to 3x more than an Avantone CK-1 or sE Electronics SE1A. Since you did not say what your budget was, I don't know if $600 is too much.

If you're interested, I list all the gear I used on my first indie feature here:

http://www.indietalk.com/showthread.php?t=52432
 
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