Radio mic in noisy enviroment

G

glamb

Hi,

I need to record several people speaking in a football stadium. We will be recording inside a stand but you will still hear the crowd from outside.

We will be using a Sony UWP radio mic, does anyone know how I can best minimise the background nosie.
Should I record lower than normal and boost in post? Hopefully someone can help

Thanks
 
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You need to get the microphone really close in that sort of environment.

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On the serious side.....

The Inverse Square Law - In physics, an inverse-square law is any physical law stating that a specified physical quantity or intensity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source of that physical quantity.


So if you hold the mic two (2) inches from the sound source it will only be one quarter (1/4) as loud than if you held the mic one (1) inch away from the sound source. If you are four (4) inches away it will only be one sixteenth (1/16) as loud than if you held the mic one (1) inch away from the sound source. If you hold the mic eight (8) inches from the sound source it will only be one sixty-fourth (1/64) as loud.

You also need to keep in mind that the further away the mic is from the sound source the more ambient noise will be captured.
 
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glamb said:
I'm using a clip on lapel mic so don't know how i could get it any closer!
Click to expand...

You seem fixated on using the wrong tool for the job. If the crowd is quiet enough for long enough, you might get lucky and record something usable using a lav but it's very unlikely.

glamb said:
Should I record lower than normal and boost in post? Hopefully someone can help
Click to expand...

Recording lower and boosting in post won't solve the issue, if anything it will just make it even worse. Unfortunately no one can help because there is no solution to using the wrong tool for the job. There is no perfect tool or solution for the job of recording in such a loud environment. If the crowd decide to get noisy, even a handheld mic close to the mouth might not give usable results but this method does provide the best chance of usable results and that's why at large, noisy sporting events they always use handheld mics and never lavs.

G
 
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+1 lav being a terrible choice. Also, standard practice in audio is to try to never boost as a fix for things -- as a general rule it causes more problems that it solves. Proper mic choice, placement, and gain structure is the only solution. Or your post engineer is going to just start buying shares in Izotope and crying himself to sleep.

It would be like taking a camera shot from too far away, and then cropping and enlarging the part you actually wanted -- you'll lose quality that you would have if you had just framed it right in the first place.

Can you fake the shot? Take some ambient sound of the stadium and some b-roll footage of it, and then make the actual actors stand and deliver the lines in a place that looks like a stadium but is more acoustically sane?
 
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