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Recording sound

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Hi!

As far as field recorders, solid state (ie. Compact Flash media or similar) devices are pretty common. Some manufacturers: Marantz, Edirol...

For a smaller, more affordable option, the Zoom H4N has received some nice reviews.

Sync can be accomplished with a good ol' fashioned slate/clapper board. It provides a visual and audible "CLICK" that you can use to align the audio with your film footage in the editor.
 
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Townsville is my favorite name, for any city.

Hey guys, what should we name this place?

Let's keep it simple. Let's call it Town. Cuz it's a pretty sweet town.

Nah, that's too boring. How about "Townsville"? Yeah!

For ultra-low-budget folk, which I'm kinda assuming you are, the H4n seems to be a popular choice. But not by itself. You need a relatively decent mic (I used the Rhode NTG2). Put the mic on the end of the stick, and BOOM, there ya go (pun intended).

Now, if you're talking ultra-ULTRA-low-budget, you can always just plug a cheap $30 mic directly into your camera. This will get you better results than using the in-cam mic, but nowhere near the quality of the setup listed above.

Oh, and syncing in post is quick and easy. You don't even need a slate (clapper).
 
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That depends on what you mean by independent. It can be anything from a mic plugged directly into the camera:

boommic.jpg




to this:


IMG_0818.jpg


or this:




IMG_0881.jpg




You can check out my "Basics of Production Sound" blog here:

http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=111888913&blogId=265521269
 
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Cracker Funk said:
Townsville is my favorite name, for any city.

Hey guys, what should we name this place?

Let's keep it simple. Let's call it Town. Cuz it's a pretty sweet town.

Nah, that's too boring. How about "Townsville"? Yeah!

For ultra-low-budget folk, which I'm kinda assuming you are, the H4n seems to be a popular choice. But not by itself. You need a relatively decent mic (I used the Rhode NTG2). Put the mic on the end of the stick, and BOOM, there ya go (pun intended).

Now, if you're talking ultra-ULTRA-low-budget, you can always just plug a cheap $30 mic directly into your camera. This will get you better results than using the in-cam mic, but nowhere near the quality of the setup listed above.

Oh, and syncing in post is quick and easy. You don't even need a slate (clapper).
Click to expand...

I have a question, sir.

When you shot 'Antihero' did you only use the NTG2? Did you not use a cardioid condenser mic for the indoor scenes? And if not, did it work out ok?

I really don't want to have to buy both mics... :P
 
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I used the NTG2 for everything. I just finished the first edit, so now I'm starting to edit audio. As soon as I have one interior and one exterior scene, I'll post them online so you can judge for yourself. That should be within a few days.
 
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FreakshoW said:
and how do you sinc them up later?
Click to expand...

By the way, it's "Sync".

You can do it the old fashioned way, line up the visual and audio "SMACK!" of the slate; which was a real PITA when it was film and analog tape that had to be manually telecined.

These days computers make it a lot easier; you can line up the wave forms of the "SMACK!" from the on-camera mic and the separate system recorder.

No matter what, you need to keep very accurate, detailed video and audio logs; it saves you hours of transfer and sync effort (time/money) during the post process.

There has been a lot of buzz recently about PluralEyes; some love it, some think it's a crock of dung, but it seems to be pretty good taking a huge number of video and audio clips and getting things pretty close.

Unless everything is running off of a common clock there will be drift, although it's usually unnoticeable unless you have unusually long takes (30+ minutes).
 
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hey there, from my experience, when I'm doing zero budget films and when the sound recording is voice overs, I've done them with a simple boom mic, connected to a dslr and recorded in a car.

You'd be surprised how sound proof and nice acoustics some cars are :)

definitely something to look at when you have no budget at all for the project :)
 
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