15+ mics needed for event... what to do?

S

senomar

Well-known member
What's up guys...
here's the situation: 15-20 people in a room (maybe a 100 x 200 feet) that all need to be heard. It's going to be a reality-ish production w/ 3 cameras. What would you guys do for sound? Ideally, I'd like to mic everyone with a lav, but I thought that may cause frequency issues. Plus, I'd have to get those all into a mixer, and out to what? one of the cameras? What would ya'll do? Budget really isn't a concern. We will be renting most of the mics.
thanks for any help
Cody
 
What will the people be doing, and what else will be in the room? Give us some more details of the scenario....
 
sorry... It's basically a roundtable discussion, but they will be getting up to interact at certain points. There's not much else in the room... tables/chairs.
 
Maybe use pzm mics on the table, and a boom to follow those that can't sit still. The pzm's are omni, so they'll pick up conversation around them, covering 2-3 people each.
 
thought about the pzms.... but i'd still need like 10 of those. Almost seems just as difficult.

Do you guys think all those wireless lavs would have problems w/ frequencies interfering?
 
There are lots of reality shoots that are using a large number of mics - if you're going to rent, talk to your rental house about (make sure it is one of the pro rental houses like Coffey, Location, etc.). There is a picture of Scott Farr (big time reality mixer) with his bag loaded down with like 10 Rx and 2 Tx - it can be done. It will be expensive.

Phil
 
senomar said:
What's up guys...
here's the situation: 15-20 people in a room (maybe a 100 x 200 feet) that all need to be heard. It's going to be a reality-ish production w/ 3 cameras. What would you guys do for sound? Ideally, I'd like to mic everyone with a lav, but I thought that may cause frequency issues. Plus, I'd have to get those all into a mixer, and out to what? one of the cameras? What would ya'll do? Budget really isn't a concern. We will be renting most of the mics.
thanks for any help
Cody
Click to expand...

Hire a Sound Pro!
 
One possible solution is to put cardiod mics on the table in front of each speaker and run them all to an automatic mixer. Simple and elegant :) Complete justified even if it is a narrative. Large meetings will often have mics for everyone for, if nothing else, recording for transcription purposes.

Good luck (and ozduc's solution is the best :) )
 
Several things may be possible. But not knowing the "scene" or content it is difficult to be tto sure of anything. If someone is "managing" the people or moderating the discussion you could place mics on stands and have peopel move to them as in a typical conference. You could also split the room into 3 zones with each camera getting a zone and split that between the tracks on the cam. 3 audio ops and three mixers and three audio assists or boom ops.
If it is a confrence there are systems by Shure that rent out, kinda automatic mixing..not ideal but it works when there are that many people to manage and you have to feed a pa as well as cameras.

Just thoughts hope they provoke some more.
 
thanks for the responses guys!
well, i don't want them moving mics around. that's pretty much out of the question. Right now, I think i'm leaning towards pzms, or something like them... I found out that we'll probably be shooting outside with all these people too. that's gonna be much harder... well, if anyone else has ideas, feel free...
Thanks
cody
 
Ha! no... they're just oblivious to the amount of work that goes into this stuff...
Should be interesting...
 
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