How to mic a wide shot

[orchidsofwrath]

hello, I've been really experimenting with audio recently, and I seem to be stuck on how i would go about micing a wide shot such as this frame grab from fight club:

To me this looks like a shotgun mic would just be to far to stay out of the shot. Maybe thats just me? I have a pretty low end shotgun mic (azden sgm-1x). How would one of you audio pros go about micing a wide shot like this?

Thanks.

 

[Steve House]

Boom mic just out of frame at the top, about 2 feet this side of directly over the actrss's head. Booms used in features are often 16 foot or even longer, well able to reach far enough into this shot from a boom op position just to the left of the male character, just out of frame on the left. You could also mic the actress with a sub-mini lav such as a Countryman B6 hidden in her hariline - plenty of room in that hairdo - or in her cleavage just at the top edge of the fabric of her nightgown. Mic could be between the fabric and her chest with the cable running down between her breasts then around her waist to a transmitter in the small of her back or fastened to her thigh with an ace bandage. In fact, if you look really, really closely there's a little dark dot just there in the "V" of her nightgown that could be a lav peaking out. Finally, if worse comes to worse (the still doesn't tell us much about the scene blocking and camera moves), you record a scratch track on set, then go into the studio for ADR.

Just FYI, this isn't that wide a shot. This framing would usually be described as a medium long shot since the bottom frameline falls about halfway between her ankle and her knee. A wide shot would show her feet and more foreground space under her, conveying more information about her relationship to the environment. This is tight enough to keep its focus on the relationship between the two characters. As I look at the framing, it's also interesting to see how they've anticpated the loss of a portion of the frame on the right as it's pan-and-scan framed to 4:3 proportions for tv release and conversion to DVD. Cut off the rightmost third of the frame and the scene still works.

 

[orchidsofwrath]

hmm. I would have though getting a boom out of this frame would pick up huge room reverb and such. Well thanks for the suggestions steve house. I will try some of these methods as soon as i can.

 

[Steve House]

hmm. I would have though getting a boom out of this frame would pick up huge room reverb and such. Well thanks for the suggestions steve house. I will try some of these methods as soon as i can.

Most likely they would be booming with a hyper, not a 'gun, and it's likely that the acoustics on the set were very carefully controlled - probably on a soundstage conditioned to eliminate reverb, etc.

 

[smithy]

Most likely it was boomed with a long boompole. A lot of times on features, they would use both but usually the boom comes out more natural sounding than using a lav. In addition...they would usually do a room tone recording in case of reverb. But when your on a soundstage..there will be undoubtedly some external noise. But a good engineer can cleanup a lot in post.