"A Verse Before Dying" - AF-100 Western Short

I can't speak for Matt, our sound guy, but here's what I know…

Many of the shots in the film involve steadicam/movement, and would have been very, very difficult to boom. And sometimes, it's just too hard to get the boom in a position that doesn't throw a shadow somewhere. I believe we boomed when we could, but it wasn't always possible.

It always seems like it's faster to lav, and, it just sounds cleaner or am I way off???

I listened to some audio from my feature and I sort of am not too crazy about the boom audio, but the lav audio is typically nice.

Matt should comment!
 
Whenever I'm cutting, I maintain both the boom and lav tracks and let the sound designer choose, so that i don't have to. :)

Personally, I tend to prefer well boomed dialogue to well laved dialogue. I like a little perspective in the sound and lavs generally sound a bit like a voice over recording to my unsophisticated ears -- which again is why i defer to my sound dept who are making choices based on education and experience. I sadly am not.

Although if you do commit to lavs, i've had the experience of noting they're easier to match ADR to in post. depends on the realities of the shoot but in perfect conditions, i prefer the qualities of a boomed mic.
 
OK... grab a cup of coffee.

I just got in... so... slightly late to this conversation. I'd have to watch the sound dvd to see what I said... but I've had conversations with people about what shotguns do, and don't do... what lavs do and don't do... and those people and I don't always agree.

I've said this a million times, "the closest mic wins." That's how I try to explain location audio to people... this is... as I probably said on the dvd... all things being equal.

Probably the only lav that naturally sounds as good as a decent shotgun is a DPA or maybe a Sanken COS11... but generally speaking... a decent shotgun in the right setting... OR even an Oktava or other hyper, in the proper use... will sound much better overall then any lav. This is as long as that mic can get in close. That's it... bottom line. If a shotgun or hyper can get even remotely close... just out of frame... then yeah, I'd take a boom any time. Really close for a lav means right where a tie-knot would be... really close for a shotgun means a CU or MCU with the boom just out of frame.

This also factors in things such as decent environment... etc.

Every situation is different. If you expect to be able to use wireless and just forget your boom, or other mic options... you'll quickly come to a situation where the lav let's you down. Look at a newsmic... so those sound "clean" in the worst environments... why don't we only use those? Because it's not always the right tool for the job.

I use what I have to use to get the best results for a particular shot. My lav rigging is solid and reliable... as long as wardrobe is compliant... which, in this case, they were... I had mostly lightweight, but well-fitting cotton on everybody... buttoned all the way to the top button... without multiple clothing layers (on the mic) to create secondary clothing noise (beyond the lav mounting area). The reason emilio's dialog isn't as good as the other two is because he had to have an open, loose shirt... plus he had on these crazy skinny jeans that wouldn't let me hide a pack anywhere. I wanted to belt him and put the pack on the small of his back... but his very few lines (and the fact that they were covered in other takes) meant that he was only wired up a couple times. I can clearly here when he is, or isn't... but that's not to say that the "cleanest" boom takes are even being used... because maybe his acting was better on one take, even though I like my audio better, on another? I couldn't "immobilize" his shirt the way I could on the other actors... There are places on all the other actors where the clothing couldn't move, but you can't see that in any shots. On Ben and Robert... in most shots the lav is just under the top button... within an air pocket created with tape, fur, etc... so that if you stick your finger into a button up shirt... right there... I made a specific air pocket for the lav... and it's just subtle enough that you can't see it.

When I said I'd planned to lav the bulk of this project... I don't want to say I got some eyebrow raises... but most people don't have that good of luck with lavs... as far as avoiding clothing noise, etc... but I've become pretty compulsive about this issue. This wasn't as simple as popping a lav on people and kicking back... I was very tenacious about maintaining the rigging... and sometimes changing it completely after a take. I even came prepared to sew my mics into the wardrobe... and honestly, I don't always get lav audio this perfect... I could tell at the time they'd sh*t when they heard how good it was. I'm the type of person that's never happy with anything... even though I always expect people to be happy with my location sound work... but on this project... even I was happy with how perfect the dialog was going... it seriously sounds almost too perfect... like a studio... but earlier this year I did a pretty big gig for CBS... and my cam op asked me how I thought it went... and I told him the same thing... "they'll think this came from a VO booth"... some days are like that.

I agree with Zak's statement above... that I actually would have liked to dial on a little more ambiance. You guys are probably partially judging the super-clean dialog with the help of the post work. I can hear specific lines... such as the first time the word "rain" is spoken... that to my ears sounds like it came from a different take... i.e. the dialog could have been massaged a bit beyond my work... but still... yeah... I have definitely "evolved" away from expecting boom to carry the weight on productions. I'll have to pop in the DVD and see how vocal I am against lavs... this was a discussion when we were doing that... and even then I virtually never used a wireless in a situation where I wasn't also using a boom.

If you think you're going to consistently beat a boom with lavs, I hope the first thing you do is buy Lectro... GOOD lavs (they'll be around $300 each) and usually, when possible... both regular and attenuated lavs (I have regular lavs and -10db lavs). I use regular lavs when I have less unwanted noise that I'm fighting... and can get more ambiance on the track... and -10db down lavs when I need to put the mic right on top of the speaker's mouths... and have that luxury due to wardrobe and/or other factors. So... we're talking about what... about $5K to mic a couple actors? (or rent, of course)

Any time I had the 416 really close... it sounded a lot better then the lavs ever did. It just happens that all the audio was pretty damn good... and so I think in editing there was little reason to take the audio from a different take then the one the editor was looking at... which was already in sync... straight out of the camera.

I don't always get the results I want "that easy"... and honestly... it's never that easy to get good results anyway... I was sh*tting my pants on the first day with the wind... until I got my rigging dialed in... in such a way I hadn't planned on but was able to do because of wardrobe, etc.

At the time I contributed to the DVD I didn't expect it to be regarded as a set of "all solutions for any situation" that one may encounter... I don't do the same thing on every shoot, but I use the same principles to get the best results... and I was really hoping that the sound dvd would be packaged... and received... with that understanding... that what I really wanted to convey were the fundamentals... to get the best results in a variety of situations.
 
Very good info, Matt. Thanks! Just wondering. Why didn't you use the Rode NTG-3 with Blimp? I thought, if memory serves, that you were pretty sold on that at one point.


Also thanks to everyone involved for sharing this short with us. I really enjoyed it.
 
I've had some mechanical problems with my NTG3... and I'm definitely overdue to send it in... I shelved it after it made some noise and had some intermittent issues... Rode said they'd be happy to fix it for me under warranty, but honestly... I've got a bunch of mics... knew I had a 416 for this shoot... and just haven't bothered to get my NTG3 fixed or replaced.

I regret that I didn't get it taken care of sooner... I think this would have been a good shoot for it. Maybe I'll send them an email tonight and see if I can get it sorted. I really like that mic.
 
I enjoyed this project and the results are encouraging. The camera looks like it'll definately work for my humble projects.

Audio: Since the conversation is now around booms & lavs, I noticed a difference in the BG audio on the grave scene and the others. It sounds boomed vs. laved, was it? I hear BG sounds but I can't identify the noise, is it intended? (I listened on head phones so I pick up details) It sounds like a truck/motorcycle???? is starting to move when the boy is about to enter the cabin. Any thoughts on what this is? I once did audio on a short that was located near an international airport... I didn't pick the location -- what a nightmare! ... I felt sorry for the editor! :-)

Thanks... and once again, this was a really fun project to see unfold with very promising results.
 
There was excavation going on over the hill behind us... sometimes with what sounded liked a giant jack-hammer... and other big equipment. We also had a road adjacent to us, with a dirt-hauler loaded with earth frequently passing by. In the scenes where emilio is picking up sticks... if the cam had been running during a truck passing... you'd have seen it clearly in the BG. You wouldn't notice a road back there because of trees and brush just blocking it... but there's a diagonal line of foliage behind him, that lines a road.

I stopped the shoot a few times for audio issues... but there were times when it wasn't practical to bring things to a halt for too long (such as fading light at sunset, etc). I made it clear to everyone when I had an issue with the audio... and when something could be done about it... it was... when it couldn't, I did the best I could do with the situation and we got what we got.

We had a reasonably quiet generator on this shoot... but not real quiet. I've worked with the quiet honda generators before and they really are quiet... if you can get them behind something solid... so that no sound can bounce back into the set... you can't even hear 'em (through the location sound)... but if you have a generator that's pretty quiet... but not really quiet... you can't always prevent some of it from bleeding through. In the cabin scene... we're in a little "village" of cabins... and some of the genny sound made it to us... for the most part I think it was handled well.

In the scene you mention... where the boy walks away from the eulogy... I hear a change in the ambient sound... that I think another poster called "the crickets dropping out"... and I think that may have been a glitch that happened in post(?)... In that setup I had a tram on the priest... again, in a pocket between the top and second button... but I also had a 416 to try and get usable foley on the footsteps walking through the brush (which I thought sounded good).
 
thanks Matt..that was real informative. And yes the sound dvd really layed a good foundation.

I always wanted to learn how to rig lavs in interesting ways. Are there any links to tutorials online or articles you know of?
 
There was excavation going on over the hill behind us... sometimes with what sounded liked a giant jack-hammer... and other big equipment. We also had a road adjacent to us, with a dirt-hauler loaded with earth frequently passing by. In the scenes where emilio is picking up sticks... if the cam had been running during a truck passing... you'd have seen it clearly in the BG. You wouldn't notice a road back there because of trees and brush just blocking it... but there's a diagonal line of foliage behind him, that lines a road.

OK, this makes sense. The problem with great gear is that it picks up things really well,-- maybe too well! With a little more time & resources these tracks would be completely scrubbed through for these tiny annoyances. Overall I have to hand it to you and the crew for pulling off the illusion that this story was taking place out in the middle of nowhere; it's hard for me to imagine there's any humans within a hundred miles or more. Thanks for the good work.
 
Loved the magenta lens flares at 06:19.

Fantastic job, all.

Where the F@&$ was the spaghetti? ;-)
 
OK, this makes sense. The problem with great gear is that it picks up things really well,-- maybe too well! With a little more time & resources these tracks would be completely scrubbed through for these tiny annoyances. Overall I have to hand it to you and the crew for pulling off the illusion that this story was taking place out in the middle of nowhere; it's hard for me to imagine there's any humans within a hundred miles or more. Thanks for the good work.

This is where the -10db lavs became valuable... but also "closed in" the sound.

I might put a video together showing some lav rigging... I'd planned to put that in the Sound DVD thread anyway... I actually called those guys before the DVD was done (before it went to press, but may have been done?)... stating that I wanted to redo, or add to, that part of the video.

The Sound DVD is the foundational part of the knowledge... after that it's about how to apply those ideas to individual situations. I've actually thought a very specific "recipe" video would be a good thing. Specifics... like the old "filter test" vid.
 
This is where the -10db lavs became valuable... but also "closed in" the sound.

I might put a video together showing some lav rigging... I'd planned to put that in the Sound DVD thread anyway... I actually called those guys before the DVD was done (before it went to press, but may have been done?)... stating that I wanted to redo, or add to, that part of the video.

The funny thing about that... is I think I've been gradually talking myself out of a job... and people say "no it's the opposite"... no, that's definitely what I've been doing. Locally, some of the guys that I used to do sound for... and talked about what came up and how I handled it... now do their own sound.

Now I understand why the sound felt the way it did, which has been my limited experience with the lav mics as well. What I find, is that when people use a lav mic, they are less inclined to get the ambiance filled out in the sound. It is SO clean, it really just pops out. The sound we record with the boom in many instances has enough of the ambiance in the recording, that everything else in the scene is tuned to fit in with that vocal audio.

I spend a LOT of time with a reverb plugin called Altiverb in post matching the room response to the vocal takes to make sure EVERYTHING matches (the reverb is used for sfx, Foley, ADR, background, not the dialog recorded from the boom).

One thing I'd like to add is that there is a point where the microphone is too close. I mention this because I hear a LOT of ADR that people do that NEVER sound realistic and they might not realize why. When you use a microphone too close to a person, you get the proximity effect. This is the bass frequencies being boosted WAY too much. I control the distance of a voice actor to the microphone in the studio when doing ADR by using a pop filter that I set the distance that they cannot go under. For some people, I've even had them speak off axis a bit to get the right tone for where they are in a scene. Now, if it is an intimate scene with two people RIGHT on top of one another, yes, the proximity effect can help, but the less bass in the voice, the farther away someone sounds.

To bring this all back around, with lav recordings, for us anyways, they always seem a bit farther away to me, so on wide shots they work great, but on close intimate shots, they always seem to lack just a little punch of the bass (but not too much) :)
 
I know there are tracks with ambiance. We actually recorded room-tone a few times. In that room-tone there is wind, metal creaking, and other good natural sounds... but it's possible that there's also distant heavy machinery or other issues and they decided to just bail on it in the edit. I honestly don't know. I thought I had some pretty good ambiance recorded a few times... and again, I didn't mic everybody the same way all the time. There are tracks in there where the lav isn't that close. It's mid-chest at times... with the diaphragm facing out... and in those takes there's definitely ambiance... I just don't know if there were other reasons why they chose the super-tight mic'ed takes instead.
 
Well one reason is they released this REALLY fast :) I am amazed at how fast this went together and how quickly it was finished. I've spent more time on shorter pieces with JUST the audio, so that is why I can understand why things are how they are.
 
It would be nice to have an option for Mac users to win something they could use?


perhaps we can have a prize that is system neutral for the next contest. vegas was the prize by default because it was an unclaimed award from last season's NYC filmmaker's Festival
 
Looked great. But of course it did. Timur shot it.

Okay, now I'm going to be an ass. But I like you guys, and frankly everyone involved in this should know better. I mean all of you know the stuff I'm going to criticize. Which leaves me scratching my head as to why it's not there...

Acting
I thought the acting was pretty amateur. Or maybe just not enough time was taken to get the actors to the places they needed to be. Either way, they were a LOOOONG way from getting it.

Story-telling with a Camera
Probably the biggest issue for me though was the lack of clear storytelling through shot choice. The whole thing seemed made up of very flat mid and wide shots. It seemed like you didn't break down the script and then storyboard it, asking why this shot now. Why specifically this shot. What does this shot say[\i]?

For instance, the bad guy's walk to the bar was like this wide, flat, proscenium shot. Like something Lucas would have put into Phantom Menace. Why a wide shot there? Seemed like a golden opportunity to use that walk, slow down time, really use that walk to emphasize...whatever that scene was about.

Likewise when the horse rides up with the body. I really think we needed to be in those peoples' faces to see the thoughts going through their heads. Instead, more flat mid and wide shots. I never really got who that was on the horse. I mean, it couldn't have been the wife, right? Because no one was nearly freaked out enough for that. But I think we needed some shots in their faces. See the weight of this situation playing on the preacher. Is this the first body, or has this been going on for days? Weeks? The camera loves to watch you think. Give us some of his thoughts.

Also at the climax. I think we really need a series of shots there showing the kid's thought processes as he puts it all together. But it seemed like he just knew it... Also, the story there is a little wonky. I don't buy any bad guy who conveniently puts his weapon away. Immediately, I think about Austin Powers and Seth Green( Dad, just kill him! ) Besides, he didn't say he wanted to kill the kid. He said the kid would get killed if he did something stupid. Then the kid just assumes he is getting killed...a little weird and needed some more script critique prior to shooting, I think.

Seems like a general lack of basic cinematic storytelling.

Art Direction
Everything in the film looked like an abandoned movie set. Didn't look like an actual place with actual people inhabiting it. Needed a LOT more set dressing, maybe some more extras...hell, more props on the bar!

And speaking of art direction, no fogger? For-poo pooing-real? Nobody brought a fog machine? Or your poo pooing 350-ton lighting truck didn't have one? Really should have hazed that bar up some, give it some depth and atmosphere. Would have really helped alleviate some of the blandness of those shots.

Spend less on things like the helicopter and more on art direction. It would make the difference between a believable world on screen and a collection of pretty demo footage.

Sound Design
I think this would really benefit from an actual sound design. Sound just feels like a mix of the on set audio, but no real sound design.

Again, sorry to harsh on this, but again I feel like this is all s**t you know. So why not do it? You know how a camera should be used to tell a story. Go watch a Speilberg film. Watch how he chooses shots to create moments.

I mean, I know there's probably some scheme to sell the footage or put it on a lighting DVD or something, so maybe none of this really matters. But I actually think it's a drag that so much talent and skill thrown at this, and yet you guys just leave out some very basic filmmaking.

Also, I guess I'm a little mean in here too because it seemed like this was absolutely rushed through post. I was pretty shocked when I heard it was ready. But now it seems like more time would have been in order.

Okay, I realize hating on a film full of mods is probably unwise, so if this is the last post I get, It's been nice knowing you all. :)
 
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