A Few Questions

totallymorgan

totallymorgan

Member
I just got an HPX-170, and as you can imagine, am itching to get shooting. Up until this point i've been using a DVX100B with a little on camera rode mic. I'd really like to upgrade my audio set up, but I'm not sure what would be the most practical solution for me.

I make a lot of short dialogue driven comedy films, very minimal, but they can take place anywhere, so I need an indoor/outdoor solution. I occasionally use a tripod, but I have a feeling most of my shots would be handheld. I looked at the "read this first" thread, but didn't see a lot about lavalier mics.

Would it be wise to first purchase two of these Sennheiser G2100, and then eventually save up to buy a sweet shotgun boom kit?

Or should I buy something like this RØDE NTG-3 Kit, and then save up for lavs?

My friend Jon said most people are always looking for lavs, so I might be able to make some money back renting them out.

I'll be attending the School of Visual Arts, so they have some audio solutions, but you can't use their lavs till your third year, and i'd like to get shooting great looking great sounding stuff right off the bat.

If eventually I end up with all three, a boom, and two lavs, how do I go about getting these into my camera? It only has two XLR inputs, so I'd assume I'd need some kind of external mixer. How do I swing this with handheld stuff? Do I sync up two cameras and dedicate one to audio only? There's got to be a more practical solution.

My budget is more or less 2K. I really appreciate everyone's help.
 
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The Rode 3 should definitely be your priority as boom mics are nearly always preferable to lav mics, which are only ever used as a back up.

And while bh is a good place to buy, for the Rode 3 you really want to grab it from here...
http://www.dvcreators.net/rode-ntg-3-shotgun-mic/

The blimp kit is much better at blocking wind than the Rycote softie (which does very little beyond a very light breeze). Plus Guy at DVe is fantastic to work with and has DVXuser discounts.

And for renting lavs, I wouldn't get into unless you wanted to really start your own rental business. Insurance is the big thing as it's expensive, and it's amazing how screwed up stuff gets when you rent it out. And renting from a single person like yourself, a lot of people respect gear even less as they don't have a company that'll sue them if they break and/or lose stuff. With a lot of gear, good insurance, and solid contracts, it's good.

The only way it generally works for people in your position is if you do sound and you rent the gear out with yourself to run it. Then carry a bat if someone messes with it. :evil:
That's actually the way a lot of people get paid. Crew works for free but then get paid for bringing their own gear since it's saves the producer a cost that they planned on. (If you can find these talented audio folk, it might be worth paying them instead of buying gear since they usually have good stuff, and better yet already know how to use it well. But that's your call.)

You'll next want a good mixer. With the Rode @ $1000, a Sound Devices MixPre fits well at $665, but if you stretch for the SD 302 @ $1300, you'll have an extra input and the standard mixer used on a lot of indie sets.
 
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thanks for your quick response. A lot of stuff I do tends to be pretty wide angled, lot's of walking in a distance away or towards the camera. If I don't go with the lavs, are there any tricks to getting far away sound on a boom?

Thanks for the tip on dvcreators, I'll be sure to buy from there if I go the boom route.
 
Wide angles are tricky, and the short answer is sadly no. (the only real tricks are to hide the mic as a plant in the scene, or to digitally take out the boom later, but we just trust the vfx guys to handle that part) However, it's fairly common to have actors run the scene with the boom as close as possible, then record all the lines wild off camera immediately after the take.

With a few takes and some space between lines so the editor can play with pacing, this can actually work pretty well since you're in the real location and considering that the actors are far away it's harder for the audience to judge exact sync. As the actors get close enough you transition the audio to the boom mic that was just out of shot during the take.
 
that's a pretty sweet idea, I never thought of that. Seems like the boom is the best solution to begin with, and then maybe as I expand my gear i'll get some lavaliers eventually.

Thanks for the help.
 
Long, wide shots is also why most sound mixers have many different mics in their bag of tricks. A long shotgun mic (Sennheiser 816 or MKH70) can help a lot in these situations.

Phil
 
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