"Bloody Mary: A nightmare Collaboration by Mark Harris and Timur Civan"

Herman Witkam said:
The mic choice should depend on the type of effect that is being recorded. I do low frequency stuff in mono mostly, as no imaging is needed. For high frequency FX I mostly do stereo at short distance, to eliminate the acoustics of the recording room a bit (even though there are little acoustics left from using dampening material). Spreaded mics (A/B) isn't neccesarily the best solution. It's true that A/B provides a nice stereo image, but if you need a more stable center use X/Y (mics put together and moved away 90 degrees from each other). This technique (like A/B) is best done with cardioid condenser or cardioid dynamic mics.
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thanks for the info Herman! I missed this post before..
 
Herman Witkam said:
The mic choice should depend on the type of effect that is being recorded. I do low frequency stuff in mono mostly, as no imaging is needed. For high frequency FX I mostly do stereo at short distance, to eliminate the acoustics of the recording room a bit (even though there are little acoustics left from using dampening material). Spreaded mics (A/B) isn't neccesarily the best solution. It's true that A/B provides a nice stereo image, but if you need a more stable center use X/Y (mics put together and moved away 90 degrees from each other). This technique (like A/B) is best done with cardioid condenser or cardioid dynamic mics.
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What type of low frequency sounds do you record? Things like rumbling trains and such?
I like using 2 mics all the time because you can seprate the track if it sounds better with just one and if the imaging sounds nicer you have it. I also found that using 2 different brands of mics has (to me) a very nice image. Like if one mic records low levels and one records higher better, when you put them together it sounds so....deep.
 
Aram Bauman said:
What type of low frequency sounds do you record? Things like rumbling trains and such?
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I'm now talking low sounds I record internally, such as sounds I mix and mangle around with to create impacts and to add more low end to footsteps and other foley.

Aram Bauman said:
I like using 2 mics all the time because you can seprate the track if it sounds better with just one and if the imaging sounds nicer you have it. I also found that using 2 different brands of mics has (to me) a very nice image. Like if one mic records low levels and one records higher better, when you put them together it sounds so....deep.
Click to expand...

Stereo imaging is mostly of most importance to high & high mid frequencies. The lower the frequency, the less important the imaging is. This is due to the way these lower frequency waves travel through air (which rather travels in all directions than more in a single direction the way high frequencies do). It can get very irritating though to have a bass guitar only come out of the left speaker, as a lot of energy would be coming from that speaker, so the panning is still of importance down to a certain frequency, where it's not even possible any more to hear where the sound source is.

Every mic has it's maximum dB level that it can handle, and a noise level the mic itself produces. The further these are apart, the higher the 'signal to noise ratio'. So mics with a lower self noise would be better at capturing soft sound sources.

When doing a stereo recording, In most cases it's best to use a matched pair (same type, mostly sold together). To get that deep low end, an easy wat to do so is to use two small-diaphragm condensers (for instance a matched pair of Rode NT5's) and run them through a nice clean sounding pre-amp and record 24 bit.

Also, for all you cinematographers, you should see a mic as a camera. Zoom in, and you'll capture that fraction of the sound. Zoom out, and you'll capture the whole thing. Zoom out even more, and you'll capture the whole room with it. The best way to test this is to move around the mic(s) and monitor what you're doing, using a neutral pair of headphones, of monitor speakers.
 
Wow, collecting clean sound was much much harder tha ni thought i wwas gonna be. Much respect to real foley artists. They must have one Quiet ass room....
 
Well, now that he's introduced himself with some crazy low frequency knowledge, I would like to welcome Herman Witkam to the Bloody Mary team. I showed him the rough cut of the movie and he liked it enough to want to be invovled. I am very very excited to hear what he comes up with.
 
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