Audio Help

All that ncie gear - Schoeps, Sanken, etc. - and Zoom recorders?

And no hyper?

AA and APE are the audio experts here.

Your audio tech has a lot of really nice gear but his low budget recorder is a surprise.

Saying that, I now have a SD 302 as well (I also have a SD MM1). It's a $1,200 or so audio pre-amp/mixer. I use it with a Tascam DR40 (also a budget recorder) and am able to get decent audio - with an Audio-Techncia AT4053b Hypercardioid. But I'm not an audio pro - I do though fully recognize the value (and difficulty) of capturing good audio hence I have invested in really good audio gear (and practiced a lot with its use).

We have the hyper because most of our filming is indoors, and the AT4053b works very well in that environment. I actually bought it based on a recommendation from Alcove and APE.

Experience, boom handling and mic placement are huge factors in whether good audio will be captured. If your audio tech can do all of these three well, I am sure with their gear they will be able to capture decent audio.

That being said I completing defer to AA and APE in this area, and indeed the inclusion of a low budget recorder and no hyper is a surprise.

If their quoted rate is high and you are filming mostly indoors, the missing hyper could be a significant issue.

How about this one:

" In terms of gear I own a Sound Devices 744T recorder, a Sound Devices 442 mixer, two wireless kits and a Sennheiser MKH-416 shotgun microphone."

thx in advance

Which wireless kits?

Alcove Audio said:

Which wireless kits?

Click to expand...

Hmmm. I'll ask him when I see him. I own two sets of Sennheiser E112P G3. So we could always use those. Is everything else okay?

He is also a NABET boom operator permittee. I'm assuming that means union apprentice of some sort. And from what what IndiePaul said, and from what I've observed myself, a good boom operator implies less takes.


I hope seeking such technical advice so publicly does not seem inappropriate. If people feel this is inappropriate, I'll stop and bug alcove privately. I promise to send you chocolates Alcove.

As I've said so often - along with APE and others - it's the skill with which the gear is used. The guy with the Zooms may be working his way up, so a new audio recorder may be next on his list.

a good boom operator implies less takes.

Click to expand...

You may do fewer takes to compensate for sound issues if you have a skilled boom-op (rather than if some unskilled friend or PA was swinging the boom and handling the PSM duties), but you may actually do more takes; there is less time needed for sound set-up, sound issues are caught early and corrected properly, the boom-op already knows how to handle the blocking, etc. so you'll hopefully have more time to get solid takes out of your actors. In other words, you'll do more takes for "artistic" reasons and fewer for audio/technical reasons.

trueindie said:

" In terms of gear I own a Sound Devices 744T recorder, a Sound Devices 442 mixer, two wireless kits and a Sennheiser MKH-416 shotgun microphone."

Click to expand...

This certainly looks better than the first one, the most obvious difference being an industry standard pro recorder rather than the essentially amateur recorders listed in the OP. I'm presuming this is an abbreviated list though, for example, if someone owns a 744T I would usually expect them to own some time-code generating/distribution equipment (not that it would probably be of any use to you personally) also some monitoring distribution equipment. Of course, just having some/all of the right kit does not necessary mean they really know what they are doing, although it would usually tend to indicate that they do.

trueindie said:

And from what what IndiePaul said, and from what I've observed myself, a good boom operator implies less takes.

Click to expand...

I personally don't think it's wise to think in these terms, for a couple of reasons: 1. You could have the world's best boom op and PSM, with the world's best equipment and there would still be occasions where the production sound is unusable. Obviously for a given situation, you would expect the best in the world to produce better results than someone of lesser ability with lesser equipment but the location itself is also a determining factor. 2. Apart from the additional storage and time requirements, more is almost always better as far as number of takes is concerned (within reason of course!). It provides more options in post (for both sound and picture editorial depts). IME, each take has good and not so good parts (both technically and artistically) and being able to mix and match from different takes will almost invariably result in a higher quality final edit than having to rely on just a single or even a couple of takes.

G

Thank you guys for the help and the input. I'll probably come back after a few interviews.

Of all the bloody things. My site is down, and I'm here tweedling my fingers with a bunch of emails waiting to be sent. Anybody clicking on the links now will be thinking "how unprofessional."

Anyway. Different rant. Thanks again.

Best,
Aveek

trueindie said:

Gear List:
• Sound Devices 302
• Schoeps CMC6-U with Cut1 Filter
• Sanken CS-2 Shotgun Mic (Equivalent to MKH 416)
• 2x Sennheiser G3 Wireless Sets
• 2x Sanken Cos-11 Lav Mics
• H1 and H4n digital recorders
• Boom Pole and Shock mount + windscreens
• Breakaway cable
• Cases, bags and harnesses

Click to expand...

With this setup, is it possible to use the pre-amp for the mixer to bypass the pre-amp of the h4n recorder, and to use the h4n essentially as a storage device only?
I was made to understand that this is what is going on with the above setup. I was given the following link to lookup to understand the situation, but it's getting muddled in my brain at this hour.
http://www.homestudiocorner.com/connecting-preamp-to-interface/

Kindly advise.

trueindie said:

With this setup, is it possible to use the pre-amp for the mixer to bypass the pre-amp of the h4n recorder, and to use the h4n essentially as a storage device only?

Click to expand...

Yes, in fact that would be the main reason why one would want a mixer with a H4n! As Alcove and I have said though, the setup is rather strange. There's a lot of good gear in the list, not the very best pro gear but certainly decent pro gear and then it's all hooked up to 2 different consumer recorders, albeit consumer recorders with essentially bypassed pre-amps.

In a normal pro workflow of an average two shot there would be 3 channels of audio, 1 boom and 2 lavs. With the second guy's listing (SD 744T), you'd record each of those 3 mics to it's own audio channel (the 744T is a 4 channel recorder), then export the audio out of the 744T as a polywav, import that polywav into your NLE and there's your 3 channels of audio, job done! Same situation if you pass those production sound recordings on to an audio post person/team. In the OP's listing there are two consumer recorders each with just 2 channels of audio, so there are two options: 1. Record the boom to one channel of the recorder and then mix the 2 lavs to the other channel. This is far from ideal though because any noise picked up by the lav on the actor who is not talking is now mixed with the dialogue of the actor who is talking!, or 2. Record the boom to one channel of one recorder and the two lavs to 2 channels of the other recorder. You've now got 3 separate audio channels and have avoided the problem with option 1. However, you've now got a new problem; you've got a stereo audio file from one recorder (lavs) and a mono audio file from the other recorder and the two audio files are not in sync and are probably not even named the same. At the end of the day the PSM is going to have to import all the audio files, identify which files from one recorder are the same take as the files from the other recorder and then line them up, which is a time consuming job as they can't just line the files up because they won't have exactly the same starting point or be of exactly the same length, they'd have to manually line up the waveforms (and do all this for every take in the film). Alternatively of course if the PSM doesn't have the time after a long day's shoot, s/he would just hand over the whole mess to the picture editor to try and deal with. Both of these options are therefore pretty ugly solutions. Furthermore, the 744T can be integrated with a higher budget commercial workflow, where the recorder is time-code sync'ed to the camera/s which makes post-production conforming of dialogue to picture a doddle. The OP's listed recorders cannot be integrated into that type of commercial workflow (because they have no time-code capabilities) which of course implies that they have never worked at that level of professionalism. The second person may also never have worked at that level but owning a 744T implies that they do/have or are at the stage where they could.

trueindie said:

Edit: His work looks solid by the way.

Click to expand...

Careful of that. You don't know the recording conditions or how much or how well the post production processing has been done, both of which are variables outside the PSM's control. Given the same conditions (locations and audio-post processing) you'd of course expect the better PSM to produce the higher quality work but as these two variables are not the same, it is certainly possible that a better PSM's work may sound poorer than a lesser PSM's work.

G

Wow!!

Thanks for all that info APE. My head is so much clearer.

Have a great evening.
Aveek

Hey Guys,
Is it true that after the film is locked, I'm supposed to give the locked film to the sound design person? I'm supposed to give my locked film to somebody? That sounds ridiculous. Is this true?

At the low/no/mini/micro budget level, yes, the person doing the audio post would most probably want a locked/final cut. You can continue CGI, color correction, or anything else you want to do to the footage as long as you don't change the length. The reason is that it takes a long time to properly re-conform the audio to the visuals, especially when you have 100 or more audio tracks. The job is MUCH MUCH harder for those of us who do audio post at the low/no/mini/micro budget level because we NEVER get EDLs, and cannot afford auto-re-conform softwares - which never seem to get it quite right anyway.

Someone experienced in audio post will do a much better job than you can; s/he will have all of the tools, skills and experience that you do not. So yes, you should give a locked/final edit to a sound editor/designer.

Thanks Alcove. I thought later that I could always provide a watermarked version.

trueindie said:

I'm supposed to give my locked film to somebody? That sounds ridiculous. Is this true?

Click to expand...

How are the audio post team/person supposed to dialogue edit, created Foley, sound design, SFX and mix the film/short without a locked picture? What suggestions do you have for a workflow which doesn't require a locked picture edit?

trueindie said:

Thanks Alcove. I thought later that I could always provide a watermarked version.

Click to expand...

I certainly wouldn't want to work with a watermarked version and I've never seen such a thing in over 20 years in the business! In addition to supplying the audio post team with a locked edit, you would also have to supply the composer with a locked edit too. Do you really want the music and sound departments to not appreciate the feel of your film because of a distracting watermark?

G

AudioPostExpert said:

How are the audio post team/person supposed to dialogue edit, created Foley, sound design, SFX and mix the film/short without a locked picture? What suggestions do you have for a workflow which doesn't require a locked picture edit?

Click to expand...

Good point.

I certainly wouldn't want to work with a watermarked version and I've never seen such a thing in over 20 years in the business! In addition to supplying the audio post team with a locked edit, you would also have to supply the composer with a locked edit too. Do you really want the music and sound departments to not appreciate the feel of your film because of a distracting watermark?

G

Click to expand...

Again, good point. I certainly did not think that this was unheard of. I'v read too many people say, don't send your final edit to any distributor. So by that reasoning, I thought, I certainly shouldn't allow anybody else to have a final copy either, and it would seem, by your experience, that the sound designer would have a final
copy before even I did. I don't think my question is completely crazy, given how many times I've read and heard people say, don't give copy to distributors.

Most editors, graders, sound editors and the like are very reliable, honest people. If you feel nervous you could have them sign an NDA, although we treat our clients material that way anyway.

trueindie said:

I'v read too many people say, don't send your final edit to any distributor. So by that reasoning, I thought, I certainly shouldn't allow anybody else to have a final copy either, and it would seem, by your experience, that the sound designer would have a final copy before even I did. I don't think my question is completely crazy, given how many times I've read and heard people say, don't give copy to distributors.

Click to expand...

Until the audio, VFX, grading and any other post-production is completed you don't have a final edit, all you've got is a locked picture edit. If you actually want a final edit then you've got no choice but to distribute your locked picture edit to those people/departments who can turn your locked picture edit into a final edit.

If by "final copy" you mean the completed film, the first time all the filmmaking elements come together is in the final mix phase of audio post-production and therefore the first person who experiences the "final copy" is effectively the Re-recording Mixer. Obviously, a Re-recording Mixer/audio post team is not a distributor and so your rule (even if it's a valid rule) of not giving a final copy to a distributor does not apply to the audio post team.

I completely agree with Alcove's last post about professional integrity; audio post is a highly competitive business, anyone who is cavalier with their clients' material would very rapidly find themselves un-employable! I suppose I was a little shocked at your implication, as I myself (and everyone I know professionally) have always taken it as a fundamental basic principle that a client's material is confidential. However, with often millions of $ at stake or even a relatively small budget "work of love", it may not be not prudent to rely solely on one's judgement of someone else's integrity, which is why legally binding documents are used. I would add to Alcove's post that an NDA usually just stops the Sound Designer/Audio post team from discussing your film with any outside parties but it's usually the contract of engagement which stipulates that the materials (footage, edits, etc.) belong to you (the production company) and therefore cannot legally be distributed or disseminated without written consent from you (the production company).

G

Thanks