I'm beginning to get that strange feeling....

[John Brawley]

@Amadou can you please consolidate your many questions into one thread. It's really bad form to just spray posts around on multiple threads, especially when you're all related.

JB

 

[IronFilm]

Will there be an experienced boom operator? A competent and experienced boom operator is a must.
Good preamps in the camera aren't a must, since there are separate recorders with excellent preamps for reasonable price, like the Zoom F4.
Also, having the camera operator monitoring and adjusting the audio levels, on top of taking care of all the cinematography details, is a task that takes lots of experience and competence. Since you didn't shoot a movie in 10 years, perhaps it will serve you to reconsider it.

Yes, ideally a feature film should have a crew of three or more people in the sound department.

But smaller / lower budget films will often get away with only two people in the sound department: the boom op + sound recordist.

If you feel like a gambling man and willing to accept significant compromises for sound now and then, well, you could have some poor sucker just do the sound solo! (I've been that sucker many times! ha. And every time I'll do my utmost to get the best possible sound I can, but obviously going solo I can't perform as well as a team could. Just like the camera department can't perform at its best if it is only one person)

But to put NO ONE onto the dedicated task of capturing sound? That is just begging for trouble.

And to be running sound into the camera directly as the only place to be recording it, that is just asking for both the sound department and the camera department to have a lot more troubles and pain on set during the shoot. Don't do it!! Not for a narrative feature film.

Especially when we've experienced such a revolution in quality and features in recent years with the low priced recorder options we have now, such as the Zoom F4 which costs but a fraction of what you're considering to put into a FS7!!

Although to build up a basic low budget sound recording kit you're looking at nearing on around $5K+ easily! (but less if you have patience and knowledge to hunt around for secondhand bargains) And a proper sound professional's kit for a feature film who has been doing this for years would be more like ten times this at fifty thousand dollars (and figures several times higher than this is not unheard of either).

 

[Joshua_G]

…
But to put NO ONE onto the dedicated task of capturing sound? That is just begging for trouble.

And to be running sound into the camera directly as the only place to be recording it, that is just asking for both the sound department and the camera department to have a lot more troubles and pain on set during the shoot. Don't do it!! Not for a narrative feature film.
…

I second it (and the rest of what you wrote).