Boom the Lav!

M

Mitch.Kear

Well-known member
Hey guys. Just thought I'd try to get a view of some different micing techniques just for some variety. I was told years ago about throwing a Lav on the boom. I don't hear many mention this technique but I'm sure many do it. This is what I'm curious about. Whether you throw a ribbon in the room, stereo voice mic, whatever... Share your secrets please.

EDIT: I SHOULD HAVE SAID TAPING A LAV TO THE BOOM WHILE STILL USING A SHOTGUN!!!!!!!

God, I would never just tape a lav to the boom and go at it. Sorry for my lack of explanation. I post from my phone and get lazy sometimes.
 
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In most cases, a lav on a boom is a waste of time and a mixer channel, as a lav is designed for close miking.

For room miking, you could use a LDC or SDC lipstick, but a shottie usually does the job, picking up principle signal with just enough room for tone. Hence lavs for dialogue and a boom picking up the slack, on many productions. sometimes a boom alone fits the bill......

Ribbons are too "dark" for most anything video related.
 
Mitch.Kear said:
I don't hear many mention this technique but I'm sure many do it.
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Nobody does this. Lavs are made for close mic'ing the talent. They are put worn on the talent. When using a boom, people use a shotgun mic, or a hyper. I don't know of anyone that booms with a ribbon mic or a stereo mic for booming dialogue either.
 
I suppose if your as broke as a joke and all you own is a lav and a broomskick, then yeah, have at it, I guess it would be better than just tossing the lav up in the air on action, lol
 
Just want to make it clear that I was just curious about other micing techniques, I'm not a new to sound or a video guy trying to do it myself. I should have worded my opening post differently.

davefisk said:
Nobody does this. Lavs are made for close mic'ing the talent. They are put worn on the talent. When using a boom, people use a shotgun mic, or a hyper.
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I distant mic the boom and tape a shotgun to the talent! No, haha...

I meant taping a lav to the boom and using it as a separate mic with a shotgun, sorry for the confusion.

People do this... Back up track mic (if you fall asleep and the shotgun doesn't pick it up right. Maybe a little more ambient, but it's better than nothing on that perfect take you F'd up), ambient sounding mic (organic, room tones, different options on 1 take).

davefisk said:
I don't know of anyone that booms with a ribbon mic or a stereo mic for booming dialogue either.
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Yeah me either... I was just throwing out random mics to see if anyone would share unique techniques they have used for ambient, dialogue, on set sfx, whatever...

I know it's pretty straight forward, though not easy and not quickly learned to record dialogue. But I like for my own sanity to mic up the scene to pick up everything the best I can, whether it's used or not. I have thrown a SDC in the corner of a room, floor mounted pointed toward the talent, lav taped to the boom, Cardioid mic pointed at the floor...

May be dumb, but when doing low/no indies it gives me the option to get creative, which I find helps out these types of projects a lot in post.
 
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Keep trying new things, Mitch. That's how all of the cool techniques are "invented."I'm not a regular film guy, and I know there are standard practices for a reason, but I don't see what harm experimentation would do, if you have the extra tracks, mikes, and time. For instance, the right ribbon might be a little "dark," but it might also be "just the thing" for taming some of the high end roominess or reflections in certain interior locations. We are finding ribbons to be remarkably versatile (I have a ShinyBox that is great)...GJ
 
15 or so years ago I remember on an ENG job my shotgun went down. I had no other options than to put a lav on the tip of the shotgun to get through the day.
I don't remember many of the details but I recall being able to get the audio to tape but it definitely wasn't an ideal sound.

A few years ago I read an ordeal John Coffey (might have been a different store owner) wrote talking about about going through the same thing/same result.

To echo others who already said it in this thread.. not a good idea.
 
davefisk said:
Nobody does this. Lavs are made for close mic'ing the talent. They are put worn on the talent. When using a boom, people use a shotgun mic, or a hyper. I don't know of anyone that booms with a ribbon mic or a stereo mic for booming dialogue either.
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Dave not too too long ago on Jeff's site someone posted that they did a feature with a stereo mic. I doubted the results in my head until they posted
a clip. Sounded absolutely incredible. Not the norm of course, but with a lot of planning and cooperation they got really good tracks.
 
Thanks Gregg, I knew if anyone a studio guy would get it. I understand things are done a certain way in film but when it is me doing every bit of sound in a low/no budget I get to do it what I want really.

I know it really is experimental but works for certain application. I guess sound design is where you get to have the real fun.

On a side note, I wish I had grabbed one of those ShinyBox ribbons when they were still dirt cheap. Once I believe were $150, now $450, which is still really good but would have been nice had I known then...
 
You can and people have done just about everything. Some things just don't work very well. A ribbon mic is not used generally because they are low output and generally pretty heavy. They also are a bit like dynamics in that they have very little reach.

Stereo for dialog, in a big screen film, is a no-no because your going to put it in the center in post and there is no way to do that with a stereo signal that works as well as having it mono in the first place. It's more complicated now since the big screen is not where a lot of low budget films are heading. If your on a small screen (say under 10 feet) then you can probably go stereo on dialog with out any issues.

Ambient mics on set are generally a waste because they are not the "world" the film takes place in. Say your shooting your WWII battlefield epic on a sound stage. What use is the ambient sound of a large room? If we go low budget and your shooting your epic in some public park, then the odd plane over, car or kid playing ambience isn't much help either. Of course IF your set is or is like the world of your film it can be of use.

I don't see a lot of experimentation with production recording because so much is at stake. But FX work has a lot of odd placements and cool mics. I have a fight announcer mic we have used for odd things and I pick up every old strange "garbage" mic that crosses my path. Contact mics are fun, and under water mics can be, though it's not as interesting as one would think.
 
Noiz2 said:
I don't see a lot of experimentation with production recording because so much is at stake. But FX work has a lot of odd placements and cool mics. I have a fight announcer mic we have used for odd things and I pick up every old strange "garbage" mic that crosses my path. Contact mics are fun, and under water mics can be, though it's not as interesting as one would think.
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I understand not experimenting "on the job", as I wouldn't stray away from the norm either if I were hired on a paying gig. When on an indie lo/no film it gives you that time to experiment.
 
I always encourage experimentation, but even on a lo/no budget thing, whoever is directing might not appreciate getting bad sound because you decided to experiment. If you want to do it, you should discuss this with the director beforehand and make them understand that you are doing things in an unconventional way that may result in unusable sound. If you are going to be sure to have a usable track, but will have extra "experimental tracks", you need to make it very clear which track is which, but even then, expect confusion on the parts of all the editors (picture and sound).

I started out my audio life in the recording studio, where experimentation is encouraged. In that world, you are dealing with different set ups all the time with different musicians, and you have the ability to throw 5 mics on a guitar cabinet if you have them, and the available tracks. Same with sound FX recording. If I can, I'll get as many microphones as i can and something like a 788 or Deva V to record as many tracks as I can. When it comes to production sound, there isn't a lot of room for experimentation. The reason you don't see people putting a lav on a boom pole is because they know it's going to end up as a guide track at best. If you have extra mics as "experimental" mics on set, you have a strong possibility of confusing people in post production, both in picture editorial and sound editorial. This happens even if you communicate to them what's what, and you keep good sound reports. This is especially true on low budget projects where not everyone on the post side knows what they are doing. I've been given "experimental" tracks as a dialogue editor and sound editor, and I've not once used them. I'd rather have good clean dialogue with some extra room tone recorded separately. The only time I've seen dialogue recorded in stereo was when I was working on english versions of telenovelas from Mexico. They record everything in stereo down there, and don't do foley, and very little effects (at least the production company I was dealing with). They do this because it is cheaper than doing the foley and cutting effects. The problem is, the production track isn't very good, AND, when they send it to the U.S. for an english dub, there is no M&E track. Plus, since their budget is extremely low, they can't pay for a foley artist (if they could, they would have done it in the first place), so I had to hand cut all the foley, and rebuild all the effects from scratch. It probably cost them more in the long run to do things that way than if they would have just done it right the first time, but whatever, it gave me work.

Now, if you are doing everything...production sound, picture editorial, and sound editorial...have at it. Experiment away. If you are doing everything, then you'll know exactly what's going on. Just make sure you have a good production track. If you are dealing with the typical production/post production workflow, then it's best to keep it simple.
 
davefisk said:
If you are going to be sure to have a usable track, but will have extra "experimental tracks", you need to make it very clear which track is which, but even then, expect confusion on the parts of all the editors (picture and sound).

I started out my audio life in the recording studio, where experimentation is encouraged.

Now, if you are doing everything...production sound, picture editorial, and sound editorial...have at it. Experiment away. If you are doing everything, then you'll know exactly what's going on.
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I too started in studio and this is where my drive and curiosity is coming from. I 100% make sure I have 2 channels of usable audio (1 main and 1 backup). The other experimental mics are always if I can/have the time.

As for doing it all... I find maybe it's the lack of sound people in my location but when I get hired a lot of the time I am expected or asked to do every bit of sound on a lo/no project. Which is cool for learning more and getting all around experience, but bad for the fact that I am not good enough to mixer/not the best sound designer. Though I get better and learn something new every time. My forte is recording/micing/editing, I am pretty good here and confident enough to experiment. I just find doing a great mix the hardest thing for me! Also sound design takes me a million times longer than people that do it everyday. I very much respect these people and I strive to be there one day.
 
Mitch.Kear said:
Though I get better and learn something new every time.
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This, over everything else when you are starting your career, is probably one of the most important things, and it's good to see you know your limitations and where you can improve. I would do sound design out of my apartment when I was freelance, and people would want me to "mix", but mixing in my apartment (and I never called myself a mixer because I'm not that good at it) was never ideal, but sometimes the budget of a given project doesn't lend itself to going to a mix stage. I hated doing it, and told people it wasn't ideal, but sometimes you gotta just roll with it. I admire your willingness to try new things, and doing everything from production through post is actually a really good thing for you because should you chose one route or another to concentrate on in the future, you will have an understanding of what it's like for the people on the other end. Too many production sound mixers have no idea what goes on in the post side of things....and that's not just guys on the lower end of the pay scale.
 
davefisk said:
Too many production sound mixers have no idea what goes on in the post side of things..
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I completely agree, but even more important I personally think there are too many POST sound mixers that have no idea what happens on set.
They only see what was in frame, but don't always understand the obstacles the production mixer went through to get what they could get.

I 100% agree with you though. I'm a better production mixer after talking to, watching, and learning what goes into the post process.
What they can fix. What they can't fix. What I can do better.
 
Noiz2 said:
If you're on a small screen (say under 10 feet) then you can probably go stereo on dialog with out any issues.
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Hi Noiz2, I wouldn't advocate any stereo voices, too many things like to go strange along the way, from the voice moving off centre when the actor isn't, perspective levels from multiple voices, possible out of phase if the track gets into mono somewhere.

I've seen a respected mixer chaps eyes roll over on a regular weekly TV spot, and he'd never even heard it yet. (It was for one stereo outlet and gets redone every week .. we thought we'd try some new things) Too many demands for smaller budget sound jobs, mixing etc.

Cheers.
 
There's stereo and there's MidSide (mono+figure 8). MS matrixed in post might get an unfolding doc/event situation out of a jam. Above lower end post situations perhaps.
 
I'm not too snobby about the "rules" of what can or can't be done with a lav mic. This full production song was made using only Rode Lavs

 
Dammit, Chad. Now that song is stuck in my head again. I didn't even have to watch it again. The important thing to note is that in your video it looks like most stuff is close mic'ed, or the sound sources are loud enough to be picked up well from a little bit of a distance.


edit...I couldn't stop myself. I had to watch it again. "Oooo! The hecka tight!"
 
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