Audio - need a quick answer, please

[ColorBalance]

I'll be shooting a (short) movie with an external shotgun mic (NTG 3) at a 7/11 type store which has a few fridges running that I can't turn off.

Hooking the mic straight to the camera as using my pre-amp is just way too inconvenient.

Will playing with the audio cut-off work? For example, setting it to -35db?

I don't want the voices to be cutoff or sound muffled. The main interest is in recording very clean dialogues. I also have the wind filter (camera) on that helps.

 

[basspig]

Makes absolutely no difference. Setting (I presume you mean the attenuator) to -35dB would be appropriate for dialog levels with that mic. But removing noise is going to be more difficult. If it were my shoot, I would use a boom pole with a hyper-cardioid and put the mic as close as possible to the actors.


I would not employ any filters in-camera. You can do all of that in post. There are noise reduction tools that can analyze the spectrum of the noise and build a filter to minimize that band of noise, if all else fails. But the best way is to get the mic as close to the talent as possible.

I was thinking of designing a harness, similar to a steadycam harness, but one that has a mechanical arm that comes up and over the camera operator's head, and reaches out about 8' with a carbon-fiber pole, to which a mic is mounted. Cameraman becomes boom pole, great for one-man shoots.

 

[ColorBalance]

Thanks. I did set the filter to -35db, used boom pole, and convinced the store owner to shut the fridges off temporarily. It did help. I did use the in-camera wind noise filter. Probably won't do it the next time based on your advice.

I have often thought of a camera linked boom pole which would follow the camera. That will be so neat!

Other problem I faced working in that store was lighting. It had flo lights. Luckily, they were not flickering. But given that we can get the store only after 10:00 PM, and have only 3-4 hrs to shoot max, the only solution I came up was to leave all the lights on, use a couple of Lowel lights to light up the actors, and set the WB to 4000K. Even then, shadows were so hard to avoid as in a packed store, there are only a few spots you can get where the lights will reach the actors unblocked, and umbrellas won't easily fit in those spots!

Talking about compromises. Regardless, the pictures look pretty decent - thanks to EX1.

And it is just a "time pass" short.