Man with a Gun!!!

jlames

jlames

Well-known member
Question for the Group. And by the way, a very large thank you to Coffee Sound and Dave. And Dave, tell John I'll be asking the Department about the lapel mic on Wednesday.

A man is running toward you firing a gun; a big, loud gun. He comes from a distance of, say 50 feet to a distance of 20 feet, turns and runs away still firing. Your outdoors, it's a night shot and the air is moderate to fairly heavy. What's the mic of choice for the scene???
 
dynamic sennheiser 441 would be ok
the octava with 10 db pad would also be fine from 10-15 feet
if the gun is extremely loud - you might be distorting your mixer or camera input stage , so if it dynamic mike you can come directly to line input and if it condenser use external phantom power supply and go to line in ( if you have line with 48 ph you can use it directly , this function is exist on recorders like sd744,722 )
the distance shot would be about 10-12 db less in loudness( 6 db on double range )
better to check the loudness in the close range shooting
you can combine another microphone in 30-50 feet behind the closest mike to get
more open sound ( i think that almost every mike would work in 60 feet range without collapse .
that would give ability to use the best of 2 or combine them togethe for some effect
 
Assuming he is firing blanks, I choose a sound library. Blanks usually come 1/4 charge and do not sound "like a gun". It makes a loud popping sound, not the traditional "bang" you hear in the movies.

Best
 
Actually, the loads are full but they are, of course, movie set blanks. I'll look up the specs on the sen 441 and thanks. Any other suggestions out there???
 
No problem. We are here to help.


I like the Sennheiser 421's for high SPL stuff. The Oktava's also handle high spl's as well. DPA's are pretty much the best of the best..which means expensive, but very very good. Chances are you are going to replace the gun sounds in post anyway, so if you are just trying to get a reference track, then the Oktava's should work well.

-Dave
 
ExileOnTheMainStreet said:
wabbit - you know **** happens , it might be real:-)
Click to expand...
:) Well in that case I want a dynamic mic with some weight to throw at him as I run in the other direction.
 
Thanks, Dave, but you know, even with my vast, almost endless sea of knowledge in the audio arena and matchless experience...what's a DPA??? Seriously, we're shooting what we were talking about in the store the other day and because of the shear number of shots over the course of the competition, replacing them in post is out of the question. The mics on the top of the XL1s and 2s work surprisingly well but not really well enough unless they're within 10 feet of the gun. I want to give the audio post guys as much good stuff to work with as possible so I need something that will capture past that a bit and remember, I'll be outfitting 5 cams...er rather three. The other two are in the pits. Also, your lapel mic's information was introduced today to SEB so they have yours and John's name to get ahold of you.
 
I'm not going to comment (much) about mics, I think everyone here has covered that. I am going to make another pitch for set safety though (yes, I know this is a bit off topic, but even us sound guys need to be safe, and he did say the guy was running at him firing). If you do not have a qualified arms master/stunt coordinator on set, I would insist on not being anywhere near the gun. I work on both sides of the camera, and as an actor have had to have guns aimed at me a couple of times, and I always insist on verifying myself that they are empty (even in the case of one gun that had the firing pin removed). Yes, we sound folks take a lot of crap, but having guns fired in our direction in an unsafe manner is not acceptable.

(Okay, now I'm off my soapbox....)

Phil
 
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