Noiz2
Sound Ninja
Ian, how exactly would people know that someone who is listed as having 94 posts be " an obvious newcomer to the group". Granted I haven't seen your name enough to know you as a regular but 94 posts is a fair amount. The post count probably is for the whole board so that may have been your first post in this section, but nobody reading it would know. You later said that it shouldn't make any difference if it's for fun or broadcast, but in fact it makes a HUGE difference. A broadcast show (in the US) may spend upward of $1,000,000 per episode, I sincerely doubt that anyone is going to drop that kind of cash on a for fun with friends "pilot".
So the low side and what most folks would do with a no budget for fun project is on camera mics. It's cheap and it won't sound great, but it may well be good enough for a for fun project. That is NOT what any professional show would do because the sound won't be good enough, and there will be no isolation so editing will be very difficult as will any clean up. A big show would probably have everyone wired, and probably at least one boom op. They are going to go for coverage. I just did a bit of work on an ad and they had 8 tracks of production for an ad that has no lines! Plus 14 tracks of production FX recordings. 90% of that was a wast of bandwidth but it was much cheaper to record it all on the chance some might be used than to record less and take a chance you were missing something.
Another thing to consider is that a lot of the people on this list work/ live in the US. The production qualities (not quality) and expectations are significantly different in the UK. UK shows tend to have a much more theatrical feel and US shows tend to have either a more "film" feel or something I can only describe as a "US broadcast" feel. The first generally has a very polished post that does a LOT of coverage, the second is definitely "stagy" but in a very bright polished way. I tend to think of it as kind of plasticy. Westerns were everyone is starched and clean, sitcom's where low wage folks live in HUGE condos in expensive cities.
Neither US style ever sounds like it was recorded on a stage. UK shows often sound like they were filmed on a stage. So to get a US "style" you are going to need a lot of wireless or some very skilled boom ops. A UK "style" way well get along with fewer mics/ boom ops and possibly no wireless at all.
So, a number of folks who responded are from the UK and their advice is probably more appropriate to getting a UK "style", the rest of us are mostly working in the US "style" so that may be less appropriate.
For an example that relates, get some episodes of the US version of the Office and compare them to the UK version. It's not quite as big a difference as some others since the US version was trying to be like the UK version a bit, but if you go to the later seasons you will see it's a quite different style.
You see it's not actually a simple question and it's not just budget that changes the answer.
So the low side and what most folks would do with a no budget for fun project is on camera mics. It's cheap and it won't sound great, but it may well be good enough for a for fun project. That is NOT what any professional show would do because the sound won't be good enough, and there will be no isolation so editing will be very difficult as will any clean up. A big show would probably have everyone wired, and probably at least one boom op. They are going to go for coverage. I just did a bit of work on an ad and they had 8 tracks of production for an ad that has no lines! Plus 14 tracks of production FX recordings. 90% of that was a wast of bandwidth but it was much cheaper to record it all on the chance some might be used than to record less and take a chance you were missing something.
Another thing to consider is that a lot of the people on this list work/ live in the US. The production qualities (not quality) and expectations are significantly different in the UK. UK shows tend to have a much more theatrical feel and US shows tend to have either a more "film" feel or something I can only describe as a "US broadcast" feel. The first generally has a very polished post that does a LOT of coverage, the second is definitely "stagy" but in a very bright polished way. I tend to think of it as kind of plasticy. Westerns were everyone is starched and clean, sitcom's where low wage folks live in HUGE condos in expensive cities.
Neither US style ever sounds like it was recorded on a stage. UK shows often sound like they were filmed on a stage. So to get a US "style" you are going to need a lot of wireless or some very skilled boom ops. A UK "style" way well get along with fewer mics/ boom ops and possibly no wireless at all.
So, a number of folks who responded are from the UK and their advice is probably more appropriate to getting a UK "style", the rest of us are mostly working in the US "style" so that may be less appropriate.
For an example that relates, get some episodes of the US version of the Office and compare them to the UK version. It's not quite as big a difference as some others since the US version was trying to be like the UK version a bit, but if you go to the later seasons you will see it's a quite different style.
You see it's not actually a simple question and it's not just budget that changes the answer.