I used a shotgun mic indoors

Status
Not open for further replies.
M

MeAgain

Carbonite Member
...but to be fair, the guy doing my sound told me it was going to be a cardiod.

I was doing a shoot last week and my friend did me a favor by borrowing some nice sound equipment from his school and offered to do sound. I asked him what the pattern was, and said I preferred a hyper or a cardiod. He said it was a cardiod. It turned out to be the MKH-416.

I didn't find this out until the day of the shoot, but he seemed to know his way around the mixer and equipment. So I let him do his thing.

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 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. We recorded to a 702 so there's really no noise, but I'm wondering any tricks to dampen that sound.
 
Yes, indirect and roomy. You now have a great example of what bad sound sounds like. No way to tell if the acoustic environment was making things even worse.

Start thinking about music. It will eat up some of the ring.

Regards,

Ty Ford
 
With a shotgun mice it's important to point very carefully on the mouth.

Using a shotgun inside is not a "big crime", but it needs some more "trained" boom handling.

It's important to point straight on the mouth. And to have one to see if it's realy on the mouth, because there is that "parallax" error.
 
If by "no big crime" you mean sloppy, slappy audio then, right.

Inside, the difference between a good hyper or super like a Schoeps cmc641 and a good shotgun like a Sennheiser 416 would prove you wrong, though.

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.

Regards,

Ty Ford
 
What a mean with "not a big crime" is that when your doing like a 48h project short, or a short with friends to build up a reel to show to future sponsors and investors.... A shotgun is not always perfect, but will do the thing.

I don't say: "use shotgun all the time". But don't go jump in the river when you only have a shotgun and only have scenes inside.
 
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.
 
Well if you know it it's better to be prepared ... true.

But sometimes.. "what you got is what you have"...

I've never said that "shotgun inside is the rule". And cardiod is better inside though.

But... as I said... don't kill yourself if you haven't.....
 
to me, being prepared means having an assortment of mics to do the job correctly in the first place. You can do 9 holes of golf with a 5 iron, but your drives will be short and your putts will be wonky.
 
I have never had a problem with a gun mic. indoors (and I have used an MKH 816F indoors) - it's knowing your mic. and understanding what the off-axis response is.

Also - don't forget that the short gun goes only 2.2 times the distance of an omni for the same sound - too many people think the gun can be used at a longer distance than it really can.
 
I agree to both John and tyreeford.

It is important to be fully prepared. But sometimes, as I said, what you get is what you have.

So if someone is doing like a 48h project and the only mice he has is a MKH416 and all the scenes our indoors, that doesn't mean he has to cancel his project and jump in the river....

On the other hand if you have a 500.000$ budget short.... Go get different types of mices and lavaliers and wireless systems.
 
dre83 said:
I agree to both John and tyreeford.

It is important to be fully prepared. But sometimes, as I said, what you get is what you have.

So if someone is doing like a 48h project and the only mice he has is a MKH416 and all the scenes our indoors, that doesn't mean he has to cancel his project and jump in the river....

....
Click to expand...

No, it doesn't mean you cancel the project, what it means is that you plan your shoot well in advance and do whatever it takes - buy, rent, borrow, cajole, finagle - to insure you arrive on set with all the proper equipment in hand to do the job correctly before the actual shooting begins. You don't need massive budgets, all you need is the willingness to do all the boring grunt work it takes to prepare properly.
 
No offense, but when you guys are done agreeing and disagreeing to agree, can someone please answer my question?
 
Can't really fix badly recorded audio. A shotgun will run into all kinds of reflection problems when used indoors, sounding messy and hollow due to the way it's designed (ty ford has a good demonstration somewhere that lets you listen to how different a lav, shotgun, and hyper sound indoors).

That being said, If you have to do such a thing in the future (OK, so I do it all the time until I can afford a new hyper), keep the mic as close as humanly possible (within 1-2ft aimed directly at the mouth) and it will make a big difference. I've been lucky to shoot indoors in fairly large, dry rooms, but my audio is lacking that close Hyper goodness.
 
Well, it's ultimately my fault. But for the record, I requested a hyper, my friend showed up with a shotgun and then claimed he knew what he was doing. I learned he did not.

So I've learned a different type of lesson, I guess.
 
John,

I suggest you try a cmc641 against your 416. I have both and experience tells me differently.

Respectfully,

Ty Ford
 
MeAgain said:
Well, it's ultimately my fault. But for the record, I requested a hyper, my friend showed up with a shotgun and then claimed he knew what he was doing. I learned he did not.

So I've learned a different type of lesson, I guess.
Click to expand...

Dear Me,

We all learn something on every shoot if we're lucky. I wonder if your friend even had a hyper. Weirdly, Schoeps calls their cmc641 a supercardioid not a hypercardioid.

Regards,

Ty Ford
 
That "roomy" sound is one of the hardest problems to fix.

I've had some limited success using noise reduction, EQ and downward expansion (individually or combined), but the key word is "limited". At best I've made the dialog a little more intelligible.

Another option is, if there is enough coverage, to use dialog from close-up shots from the unused/alternate takes. I've done quite a bit of that on my current project.
 
tyreeford said:
John,

I suggest you try a cmc641 against your 416. I have both and experience tells me differently.

Respectfully,

Ty Ford
Click to expand...

If you are talking to me, I don't understand the comment. I don't have a 416 and don't use it.

An interference-tube mic. has off-axis anomalies, comb-filter effect caused by the interference tube.

Indoors, as sound reflects from the walls it will be picked up at different levels depending on frequency and angle.

If you move a gun mic. the off-axis sound will change as you move the mic. and the comb-filtering effect will become more noticeable.

If you keep a gun mic. stationary and watch how you position it, it can work very well. I have a friend who regularly records classical music with a gun mic as the mid in an MS set-up in the Wigmore Hall in London.

I'm not saying problems are not there at all - just that you need to know and understand the characteristics of the mic. you are using to get the best out of it.



tyreeford said:
.....Weirdly, Schoeps calls their cmc641 a supercardioid not a hypercardioid.
Click to expand...

This is because the CMC641 *is* a super-cardioid, it'd definitely *not* a hyper.

The 646 is about -10dB at both sides and rear.

A Hyper would be about 12dB down at the sides and only -6dB down at the rear.

The 646 has its angle of maximum rejection at 120 degrees - because of the large rear lobe, the hyper would have its angle of maximum rejection at 109.5 degrees.

A classic super-cardioid actually -8.7dB at the side and -11.6dB at the rear - but many companies, Schoeps included it seems, think it better to have the attenuation at the sides and rear the same - this works out to about -10dB and brings the angle of maximum attenuation to 120-degrees and this is what most of the main manufacturers call a super-cardioid.

I hope this is clear.
 
MeAgain said:
No offense, but when you guys are done agreeing and disagreeing to agree, can someone please answer my question?
Click to expand...

It has been. The answer is, once it has been recorded, there's not much that can be done in post to repair that particular flaw and recover good quality sound. The only thing you can do is learn from the error and develop a strategy to make sure it doesn't happen again on future shoots.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top