Alternative to Wireless Microphones?

A

ASchear

Well-known member
I was looking at wireless radio microphones when an idea struck me. Has anyone had the idea, with portable audio recorders now, to just purchase those and record with them rather than sending a wireless signal and recording somewhere else? With the price of one wireless lav being in the $500 range at least, I was thinking it wouldn't be so bad to just buy the lav microphone and hook it up to something like a Zoom h4n / similar that someone can slip in a pocket. That way there would be no chance of a wireless drop out, and you'd have a standalone audio recorder.

Thoughts?
 
You have no way to monitor the recording, no way to adjust levels, no way to know if you're even recording anything at all. If you don't care about any of that, go ahead and give it a shot.
 
The only thing that allows you to do that, and be able to monitor the audio, remotely start and stop the recording, use timecode, remotely play back the audio, and remotely adjust the frequency is the Zaxcom digital wireless, and they are VERY expensive. The reason Zaxcom came out with their wireless transmitters that record was for the reason of avoiding any potential wireless hits. If you are using a Deva, you can even have the transmitter remotely dump the recorded audio to the deva in between takes when you aren't rolling.

Note: I do not work for, represent, or get any sort of money from Zaxcom. I am just familiar with their stuff.
 
I'm not so familiar with any of these portable sound recorders, but doesn't some "auto level" function exist? As far as monitoring goes, if I was shooting a wedding or other event alone, how much am I gonna be able to accurately monitor audio anyway? The last event I was shooting, I was so concerned with shooting because it was handheld that I eventually gave up and just tried to set the levels on my DVX100 so they were consistent. The sound came out fine. If I could set the levels prior to, for example, the groom walked up the aisle, then shouldn't his vows come out fine?
 
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ASchear said:
If I could set the levels prior to, for example, the groom walked up the aisle, then shouldn't his vows come out fine?
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Okay... so what if he bumps the recorder and recording stops? What if he bends the wrong way and manages to disconnect the mic from the recorder?
 
It is my understanding that Edward Burn's used this method to record his audio for his new film "Newlyweds", which was shot guerrilla style. While the other posters above are absolutely correct that there are some obvious serious limitations and risks of this method of location audio recording, I believe that it is very viable and worth trying. I am prepping up to shot a micro-budget feature and we are going to get a couple of Zoom H4Ns and experiment with them in the manner described, and figure out a possible workflow. We are also going to incorporate at least secondary recording to camera mounted short shotguns and to boomed mics when appropriate. Since we are going to be doing a fictional narrative film, reviewing the audio before leaving a set up, and recording wild tracks when appropriate will also incorporated into our production workflow. So, do I believe that this method could be used as a viable means to record location dialogue? Yes. Is it an industry standard method of recording location dialogue? No. Are there much more preferred ways to record location audio? Yes. Is this method fraught with risk, and involve possible inappropriate changes to a production workflow? Yes. Would I reject any consideration of this method as a viable method for acquiring production dialogue? Absolutely not.
 
Sure, using little voice recorders in lieu of a wireless mic is a trick that has been used for many years. Others have already identified the major problems with the technique: mainly lack of any kind of confidence monitoring. "Auto-level" is not good enough for high-quality production. But if you are only making home movies....
 
David, thanks for the great insight. Taking into account all the other posts here as well as yours, I think I might give this a try. It's risky, but I think it might be a good idea and work really well! For my purposes of shooting a wedding, I think it's totally a good experiment to run. A groom is going to have a inside coat pocket that won't get knocked, and I like your example where you review it on location and record a wild track if necessary. I don't think my clients would be against re-reading their vows later if something went horribly wrong.

Thanks everyone - I'm really glad, especially to hear that other people already do this. Gives me some confidence.
 
Let me just go on record and say in my opinion this is an awful solution.
If you had absolutely no other way to do it, thats one thing.
If you have choices knowing in advance, I think this solution is terrible.

Once you might get lucky, I'd hate to be around when you get totally burned.
 
ASchear said:
David, thanks for the great insight. Taking into account all the other posts here as well as yours, I think I might give this a try. It's risky, but I think it might be a good idea and work really well! For my purposes of shooting a wedding, I think it's totally a good experiment to run. A groom is going to have a inside coat pocket that won't get knocked, and I like your example where you review it on location and record a wild track if necessary. I don't think my clients would be against re-reading their vows later if something went horribly wrong.

Thanks everyone - I'm really glad, especially to hear that other people already do this. Gives me some confidence.
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Yeah, that suggestion was for shooting a more controlled fictional narrative. If you are shooting an event, since you can't monitor the participant mounted audio, I would make sure that you monitor your camera audio and make sure that those levels are where you want them. My question with just putting the mic on the groom, is what are you going to do for the bride and the clergy? In our gig, where most of the scenes involve dialogue between two people, we plan on testing putting the recorders and mics on both of the folks. In a wedding, there are three participants. If you have only one recorder, that may be difficult. You may want to see if stand mounting the recorder close to the clergy, bride and groom, with a mic with a broad pick up pattern could acceptably record all three participants. A recorder like the Zoom H4n has an on board stereo mic with, I believe, an adjustable pick up pattern. It also can record 4 tracks and you can add additional mics for the other two tracks.
 
Rippie said:
Let me just go on record and say in my opinion this is an awful solution.
If you had absolutely no other way to do it, thats one thing.
If you have choices knowing in advance, I think this solution is terrible.

Once you might get lucky, I'd hate to be around when you get totally burned.
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Can I ask why?

Thanks.
 
If you're getting paid to record something like a wedding, you need to be damn sure you're actually recording the wedding in a manner that you can use. You get exactly one shot to get a quality recording, impress the bride and groom and have them recommend you to others in the future. Your clients are not going to be at all thrilled about dubbing in new sound over their real vows because you cheaped out on your gear while taking their hard earned money.
 
Hmm, lets see...

At first this seemed like a stupid idea, but really...

If he put a recorder on the groom and officiant, and did the split-level trick where both tracks are recording the same lav mic, but one is like 9db lower, that really minimizes the chances of complete burn...

If he's operating in the budget realm of not being able to afford a pair of G2s, then a couple of H4ns and cheap lavs would be a good investment. Once he gets some more paid gigs he can upgrade to some higher quality wireless lavs and use the old ones as backups. I don't think that's too bad a plan.
 
I would advise against doing something risky for a wedding. If something happens, and you get bad audio that is not salvageable, your clients will be extremely upset. They will ask for their money back, and you will get very bad word of mouth, which is really hard to undo. For weddings you should do what you know will absolutely work. If someone has gone to the trouble to hire a videographer for their wedding, that means they really care about that day, and it is very special to them. That is something you can't screw up. You don't want to have to put yourself in a situation where you have to go to a "plan b" because now you are concentrating on something other than what you should be. If you can't manage to deal with shooting video and audio, then maybe you should consider getting someone to help you with the audio. You may get lucky and have a risky setup work a bunch of times, but the one time everything fails, it'll be ugly.

Now, if you want to experiment around on your own stuff, then go for it.

Post Script: If I hired a wedding videographer, and he asked me to re-read my vows because he didn't make sure it was done right the first time, I would fire him on the spot. You need to be invisible to the bride and groom. It is their day, and it is already stressful enough. A wedding day is not a film production. You don't get second chances. I'm married, so I can speak with some authority on how I would feel if I were in this situation.
 
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David G. Smith said:
Can I ask why?

Thanks.
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Because if doing this were a good idea, everyone would be doing it. I've spent a lot of time doing support for production sound mixers, and every now and again one of them would think they have this great idea to cut some sort of corner, tell me about it, I would advise them against it, I would say "because if it were a good idea that worked reliably everyone would be doing it". Inevitably they would not listen to me, then a few days later I get a frantic call from either the production sound mixer or someone in post screaming about how the production sound is all screwed up and I have to help fix it.

Trust me on this. It sounds like a neat idea, but when you think about it, it's too risky....and again...if it were really all that possible to get reliable audio 100% of the time this way, everyone would be doing it.
 
I feel that if it's something you explain to the wedding couple beforehand, dubbing the vows wouldn't be such a big deal. I have no experience to speak from, however.

I don't know either if I'd consider this a "cheap" solution. A G2 set on eBay goes for about $340, while an H4n + a Sennheiser lav on eBay would cost about the same. Obviously I'm in the used marketplace.
 
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