challenging audio location

P

powerdog

Veteran
I have to shoot in a university's dairy science lab -- all metal equipment, cement floors, and tile walls. I couldn't afford enough sound blankets to deal with it effectively.

The question: am I better off using a lav in such a location than a shotgun? My hunch is that, because mic is closer to mouth, I'd get a greater proportion of the subject's voice vs background sound.
 
Yes. Lav.

If you've got a good lav and you can hide it or don't mind seeing it in the shot it will eliminate most of the room reflections that you don't want. Depending on the size of the room you'll still get some ambience so that it doesn't sound like a studio dub... but a shotgun at any distance beyond 2' will be 50/50 room and talent... in a bad way.
 
I've recorded some dialogue in worse situations before with good results from lavs. My "bad location" was indoors abandoned grain elevators. All concrete floors and walls with creeky old metal garage-type doors on two walls. It's was soo reverberant! But, the lavs seemed to do alright, at least better than any of the three different shotgun mics I tried out. I like Matt's idea of getting some room tone, but just be sure to capture room tone using the same microphone and relative position as when recording dialogue. Mixing room tone from a different mic isn't very convincing, usually. Hope this helps. Good Luck! (also, pm me if you'd like to hear some samples of that room I talked about.)
 
Thanks to both of you. Lav it is. For room tone, I'll just have the talent shut up and stand still for a few seconds.
 
Use a lav for the talent, and a stereo mic for the room tone. ...and you'll need more than a few seconds. Get a few minutes if you can.

-Dave
 
Don't pretend to be a sound expert.
But did a project recenlty where talent. two actors, were surrounded by stainless steel and polished aluminum. Thought it would be a nightmare. But sound came out better than expected.
My sound guy used a shotgun and lavs as backup.
Shotgun sounded better.
This was a pretty confined location though,---a small area.
We may have benefited from that.
 
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