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Mic Stand
- Thread starter skywalks
- Start date
Steve House
Veteran
Is it unwise to use a Mic stand instead of a boom pole? To capture dialogue.
Hard to get the mic close enough to the talent without getting the stand in the shot. In multi-person dialog, the mic is usually too directional for there to be a 'one-size-fits-all' aiming that can cover all the players at once and it needs to be continually re-aimed as the dialog shifts from one person to another.
Steve House
Veteran
so when two people are talking, in say a medium shot, you'd shift the mic from person to person rather than mic them individualy in a close up? .
In closeups, yes, mic them individually. But dialog recorded in closeups will probably be intercut with other portions of the same conversation seen in longer shots. And for a two-shot it's going to be rare that you could point one fixed mic somewhere between them and get good sound from both players. Both distance from the speakers and the directionality of the mic will conspire against you. Plus the talent is going to be moving and the mic must follow their moves - even a small change in the direction of their look or their head placement can change the timbre of the sound being recorded. A boom operator monitoring through headphones can adjust for all this on the fly - a mic stand cannot.
There's also a safety issue - to get the mic into a proper position for dialog - above the performer and slightly towards the camera so its axis is angled about 45 degress downward and pointed at the speaker's mouth or throat, about 24 inches between the mic and the speaker, and yet remaining clear of the frame, would mean a mic stand about 8 feet tall supporting a horizontal cross-arm about 12 feet long with the mic hanging out on the end of it. Very unstable unless you put a LOT of sandbags on its base.