I used a shotgun mic indoors

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MeAgain said:
1) ...but to be fair, the guy doing my sound told me it was going to be a cardiod.

2) he seemed to know his way around the mixer and equipment. So I let him do his thing.

2b) At first, I thought he got low sound because the actors speak softly. After checking it with good headphones in FCP, the levels seem OK with some bumping...

2... not 2c, but 2, continued) but I also noticed the dialogue seems kind of...bad sounding. Not inaudible. Just poor somehow. Then I realized that's why everyone warns not to use a shotgun indoors.

So I sort of have that echoey tube sound.

3) We recorded to a 702 so there's really no noise, but I'm wondering any tricks to dampen that sound.
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#1) Room acoustics (environmental acoustics) will do more to affect good, and bad, sound then even the choice of mic will... within reason. (I don't want to turn this into a complete mic lesson paragraph, as you can find that already everywhere on this site.) I've got a friend in STL that has Schoeps cmc641 and used it for a vid shot in an operating room... all tile walls and everything hard... and reflective... a small space... and guess what? The audio is NOT good... there was no way to get the mic close enough... and on each person who spoke... without having the mic in the shot... there was simply no way to do it... the audio came out very "roomy" and bad. If I posted it and you didn't know better I could say "this is why you don't use the on-cam mic" and everybody would say "yeah, that on-cam mic sucks"... and yet it's the best hyper you can get.

The room acoustics combined with the in-ability to get the mic close enough... resulted in bad audio.

I wouldn't blame the TYPE of mic in this case... I think it's probably less then 10% of the reason the audio came out bad... read on Grasshopper.

#2) Good booming is HARD and requires a serious focus... it's actually a skill beyond YOGA... it's Yoga... with weight and purpose. You have to be strong, smooth, and very very attentive. I've met few people outside of the professional world that understand this. It can be a problem if people outside of the sound department don't understand it either... because Directors, DPs, and cam-ops (sometimes the same person) don't want the boom anywhere near "ruining" the shot... when in fact, a good boom op is continuously right on the verge of doing just that.

A friend booming is usually more concerned about "not pissing anyone off" then he is in getting a few inches closer. I've seen kids hang the boom out over a scene with SEVERAL FEET to spare... that's just stupid... or better to say "ignorant".

This is my long way of saying what Ty says below... a simpler answer to #2.

tyreeford said:
But I do agree that placement is important. The number of folks I've seen who just don't get how important getting the mic close and in the right spot is pretty big.
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#2b) On many gigs I've done... they want tone (reference level) set at -20db... but if I'm shooting something indi I risk it at -12db and try to keep levels max'ing out a few db under 0db. (This is very risky, but few indi-guys expect to work audio in post.) My point is that what you're hearing as very low sound MAY still be totally workable in post... I would never do my own audio at -20db reference, but it's pretty common, professionally.

Your friend may have been even below that... playing it overly safe. Some people get scared of seeing orange or red lights in a mixer... when that may be hitting the sweet spot of the mixer set-up (just below the limiter... which is adjustable... and most likely set up by someone else before your friend got it).

#3) In this case when you say "dampen" I'm sure you mean "try to fix"... but unfortunately there's no anti-echo filter in any audio apps because the echo has the same frequencies going into the recording.

Here's another reasonable answer to #3 below... because what you really need at this point is a band-aid.
tyreeford said:
Start thinking about music. It will eat up some of the ring.
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I have heard perfectly good audio from a "GOOD" short shotgun used inside. Granted, this was operated by highly qualified boom operators and mixers. Don't blame the horse. Blame the jockey!
 
I once accidentally used a shotgun (4073) indoors in a major scene. As described, it sounded extremely roomy. In post, the engineer was able to improve it with eq (primarily a midrange bump and some bass reduction). The scene had music anyway, and once that was added and the EQ was done it was noticeable improved. Not perfect, but a lot better.
 
mainstreetprod said:
I once accidentally used a shotgun (4073) indoors in a major scene.
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This one time... I was up in the scaffolding showing off a new mic to my friend who was running the lights... when suddenly I fell off the scaffold, got a rope wrapped around my leg... and dangled just outside of frame. My leg still hurts but the sound came out perfect.
 
Matt,

You may have created a new way to boom; upside down, dangling by one leg. That is devotion to mission!

Grant
 
I'm doing dialog editing on a movie now with a rookie sound crew. I've done sound with the camera crew before and I ride the frame line really tight. I joked with them that they must have intimidated the kid because the mic sounds like it's 10 feet away. The kicker is it's a real deep/emotional movie and the lead actress whispers her lines at least 70 percent of the time. My ears are telling me that a shotgun was used inside and his aim wasn't very good. Think it was a 416. I have personally used a CK69 short shotgun inside with excellent results. It has great rejection with soft edges. Once again it all depends on the situation. Last two movies I did production sound for I used a couple of mics from Earthworks. Very very natural sound for interiors.
 
Well the thing that angers me is that I was TRYING to do good sound...I was TRYING to get a hyper and run some tests before hand since none of us are pro sound guys. I wanted to at least attempt to do it correctly to the best of our ability.

My mistake was that I figured my friend doing sound had a decent knowledge of the equipment since he's worked on a lot more shoots than me, but he didn't even research what kind of mic he had. I'm beating myself up over it because I didn't catch this problem until halfway through shooting the scene and now I have to deal with the mistake. It's pretty depressing to me and we're probably going to have to try and do some sort of ADR on half the scene.
 
tyreeford said:
I'll reserve the right to disagree.

If you know you're going to be inside a standard office or home, especially if you have no sound blankets, don't use a shotgun.

We didn't use one here. http://www.hotflashmovie.com

90% was Schoeps cmc641. A few countryman B6 wireless.

Regards,

Ty Ford

PS: When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
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So you need blankets to use a shotgun correct too?
 
IP, yes you do. And there are times when a good lav wins. I'm working on a project now and we shot with both Schoeps on the boom and lavs. In most of the interior shots (8 foot residences and offices) so far, the lav wins because it's less roomy. Actually I have found that 75% lav and 25% boom works well a I mix in post. Per the Hotflash short I mentioned, those ceilings were 10' or more. I'm thinking ceiling bounce off an 8 foot ceiling is a bigger problem than most people think. Of course, we didn't have much on the walls of the offices and residences in which we shot.
 
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