2K to spend on mic for Indy Film

wbrock001 said:
$150 a day sounds like a gift if they have any skills/equipment at all.
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When you below the union scale gigs the market is very variable. In a big market you probably have folks under employed and $150 is better than $0. It really depends. I've done gigs at that level between gigs that payed $650/ day. In this economy there are, I am sure, some very good deals to be had. Plus low budget films almost never pay close to the "going rate" for commercial work.

So your right it is a bit of a gift, but one that can be had. And as I said that is what producers are for. If your cooling your heels and a producer can't convince you that it's in your interest to help out on their film, well you need a better producer.
 
Now let me get this strait, work for $150/day and include $15,000 of gear? I don't think so. At least not on the East coast. Maybe a rich-kid wannabe.
 
Yes, I suppose $150 is better than zero if you need the money, but that really is giving. Can't make a living at those rates. I'm not a specialist sound guy but I "helped" out an indy crew for a couple days for less money than that for audio (but all they got was me, not my equipment), but then they didn't seem to care much about the audio, they were more smitten by their several canon 5d's floating around, yet all they had for audio was a ME66 shotgun, short boom, and a couple Sennheiser G2 wireless with standard mics. I did the best I could for them with their first generation Zoom recorder they had rented/borrowed. Oh, they even had one of the letus adapters on an ex1 but they were stopping way down which has the effect of showing off the texture of the glass image plate in the adapter! ha ha Guess they didn't read Philip Bloom when the adapters were all the rage...

So they had gotten all this pretty cool camera gear for nothing through friends at rental houses out in LA, but they completely neglected the audio which I'm very sure they could have gotten some decent stuff from those same rental houses. Its just ignorance I say!
 
I shot a feature with a 4053, a 4073 and two G2 lavs plugged straight into the camera. Most of the scenes were talking heads so the mics were on fixed booms. Initially I had planned to use a professional sound guy for the bigger scenes and lined one up for the first major scene, $350 a day with an impressive resume and mixer. Due to his attitude I didn't use him again and did the rest myself. No noticeable difference sound wise between that scene and the ones I did. But I am a gearhead and take sound more seriously than some.
 
My audio experience comes from music recording but after watching Barry's sound DVD last night it's all the same. Get 3 or 4 cheaper mics with different polar patterns, maybe a cardioid, hyper and a shotgun and put the rest into support gear/better recorder. There are many good affordable name brands: Sennheiser, RODE, Shure. Hell, I've seen a lot of video professionals getting good results out of Behringer! In fact I personally use the C-2 matched condensers for my overhead mics on drums out of choice. Also found them decent for binaural recording.

The difference between a $500 mic and a $30000 mic is 10% at best. Buy options, not quality. Buy for what it can do (does it have built in attenuation? does it have selectable polar patterns?) Poor quality ain't what it used to be. Mid-range mics have never been such good bang for buck, cheapies even more so.
 
Rick R said:
Now let me get this strait, work for $150/day and include $15,000 of gear? I don't think so. At least not on the East coast. Maybe a rich-kid wannabe.
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A $150 a day sound guy isn't going o have $15K worth of gear as I noted above. He'll have maybe $3K to $5K worth of gear. A $1500 recorder, a couple of $500 mics, a pole, a blimp, a dead cat, maybe 1 or 2 Lavs. He's going to be some 23 year old straight out of school with 10 or so low budget films under his belt who sees getting paid SOMETHING better than sitting home watching Dr Phil.

You won't get the results of a union guy with $15K worth of gear either (or at least probably not), but you'll usually get WAY better results than handing a broomstick boom pole to a PA so he can record sound into an H4n.
 
gonzo_entertainment said:
A $150 a day sound guy isn't going o have $15K worth of gear as I noted above. He'll have maybe $3K to $5K worth of gear. A $1500 recorder, a couple of $500 mics, a pole, a blimp, a dead cat, maybe 1 or 2 Lavs. He's going to be some 23 year old straight out of school with 10 or so low budget films under his belt who sees getting paid SOMETHING better than sitting home watching Dr Phil.

You won't get the results of a union guy with $15K worth of gear either (or at least probably not), but you'll usually get WAY better results than handing a broomstick boom pole to a PA so he can record sound into an H4n.
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I think maybe people didn't really read my post?

No you can't make a living at $150 a day, well actually you could if you worked all the time but that's not the point. What you CAN get if you have a producer or director who can sell the project is someone with a lot of experience who is available when your shooting and who is convinced that it's a good project to do.

I'll take me out of the picture because you might just think I'm crazy. Lets talk Skywalker Ranch, no slouches. CLIMB AGAINST THE ODDS a breast cancer doc had all of the post sound done at Skywalker for free. All of the editors donated their time and the facility let them work in rooms that were not in use at the time. They mixed on a stage with mixers (that now have a few Oscars but were then just starting out). So that was maybe six or seven editors and a couple of million in equipment.

You can't get that deal on a commercial project but nobody posting here is asking about getting crew on a commercial budgeted project.

True if you just post the $ and go searching then you are likely to get somebody with not much experience. If you go looking for the body and then sell the project you most certainly can get somebody good. At $150 they are doing it for a bit over cost so they have to want to do the project, but that is you job - to get them to WANT to do your film.

It also doesn't take $15K to do a decent job on a low budget production. It takes about twice that if your working on decently paid jobs but that is a different situation. For 90% of low budget features a decent FX recording rig is all you will need. You are NOT going to be handing out comtec's to everybody or laving up the entire cast. With few exceptions all you really need is a decent indoor mic and a shotgun, preamp and recorder. You will end up booming like all films were recorded till quite recently.
You need to plan and talk to the director and they need to know the limitations and that your not bringing the kitchen sink to their nobudget shoot.
 
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No, I agree with that thinking as well.
My DP is a Union 1st AC and Operator. He works for me for slave wages ($100 a day) because he's sold on ME and the projects I'm doing and the work environment I create. So there are other paths to a skilled technical person on a budget besides the straight out of school route for sure. Now if lightning struck and I had 750K for a film, he's rightfully expect to get paid scale.
 
mainstreetprod said:
I shot a feature with a 4053, a 4073 and two G2 lavs plugged straight into the camera. Most of the scenes were talking heads so the mics were on fixed booms. Initially I had planned to use a professional sound guy for the bigger scenes and lined one up for the first major scene, $350 a day with an impressive resume and mixer. Due to his attitude I didn't use him again and did the rest myself. No noticeable difference sound wise between that scene and the ones I did. But I am a gearhead and take sound more seriously than some.
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Well paying attention to the sound is a big step that is generally overlooked. But you were going straight into the camera? So you hired a sound guy and then used him as a boom op?

Did you bring in a DP and then just have him work as a cameraman? If you did you might have noticed very little difference between his work and yours.

A profesional doesn't touch things and make them better. You need to partner with them if you want to get much benefit.

Like the rest of the artistic team you need to have them in when things are getting planed. Ideally you will have your post sound person and your picture editor in then also. These folks will save you money and time because they will keep you (try anyway) from making bad decisions that will bite you in the butt later.

Film is a TEAM sport. If you don't treat it that way and respect your team your doomed before you start. Doomed may be total melt down to just not getting all that you could have from your time and budget. You bring somebody on and treat them as some kind of technician that is what you are going to get. They will do well enough but it will only be as good as you have planned it since you have not created a team.

So even if your sound is great, you were paying attention to sound when you were supposed to be directing, so your directing took a hit.

Film takes a lot of specialized skills and lots of focus. If you are doing more than one job your not doing them as well as you could.
 
"So even if your sound is great, you were paying attention to sound when you were supposed to be directing, so your directing took a hit."

This... big time.
 
Well in 32 years I have never spent 2k on a mic, I have used a few but mostly in music recording studios, these days it is my 32 years experience that allows me to use budget kit and still get great results.
 
I've been using a Schoeps 641 inside and a Rode NTG3 with great results. In fact, in a small hotel room I used my NTG3 in a Rode Blimp with my boom pole with excellent results, little to no unpleasant reverb. The hotel room was all solid walls and typical textured solid ceiling. So most modern shotguns can do just fine, especially if you follow the basics of keeping it as close as possible to the speaking source. The Schoeps is $1900+ for the kit, the NTG3 is $600-700, the blimp is $200-300. That would leave plenty of dollars left for a nice mixer like a sd302.

I had recently thought of investing in a Zaxcom Nomad Mixer/Recorder, figuring 6 channels, upgradability, etc would be my stop gap for audio as in never need anything more. I do believe I never would need more simultaneous channels even at legal depositions. But then realized through others input and uses, that that was way too much mixer for my real needs...meaning my money could be better spent on other items.
 
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