Moving from Music Studio to Film Location Sound

M

mab538

New member
Hey,

I've been running my own little project studio for a few years. So I'm pretty familiar with audio recording basics...in a studio environment anyway...However, I'm starting to branch out into location sound for independent/personal film making projects.

I'm working on a horror short right now with filming starting in a few weeks. I was wondering how the sound department usually sets up. I

have a boom mic (Azden i know...not the best...it's first on the list to get upgraded once I have a working system) for exteriors

a hyper cardioid (a Neumann small diaphragm condenser) - for interiors

Sony closed back headphones

Zoom H4

Alesis IO26 interface and computer

Mackie 1604

Here's what I was thinking. I want to record the boom mic to the zoom. Then feed a wireless signal to the director (who wants to monitor the sound as well)


Now. Is that sufficient?

Finally, in the future I would like to expand the setup - do I go for another shotgun/hyper cardioid mic or do I move to lav mics? Wireless I'm guessing, since I mostly do narrative fictional stories and wired doesn't seem practical. These would feed into a Mackie 1604 then into my Alesis then into the laptop for recording tracks. This seems much for flexible during post (as each actor has their own dialogue track and the boom is overall sound. Maybe this is a hold over from working in music recording when you can mic everything individually.

I've been reading the forums and can't seem to find the answers to these basic questions. Thanks in advance for your time.
 
So I guess...to clarify...i want to know how to set up a one man sound department haha. Use a boom mic to cover the whole scene and plug that into the Zoom H4 while I save up for a SD 702. I'm planning on splitting the mono boom signal to both channels with one having a low gain to cover for unexpected sound spikes...if actors are anything like musicians they always perform louder when the mics are running than practice.
 
I will say that the difference between music in a studio and production recording on set is, well light years apart. Do sound reports, post will need them. Your shot gun is near useless, but you know that. Narrative fictional is probably 90% boom, maybe only 80%. Boom almost always sounds better than lav. Get a shotgun worthy of the name. Get a field recorder. I'll let others who do this more than I expand but you need a lot of stuff to do a reasonable job on production and it is all expensive and very little of it crosses over from the studio. Don't get me wrong nothing you have learned is a waste but it's just a very different skill set. Assume you know nothing and be happy when something actually crosses over.
 
Noiz2 thanks for the input, I am in the same type of situation as MAB, i come from a history of live recording and have recently added video. Granted in my case (live concert recording) the addition of video does not change the recording end as much but I do plan on getting into more conventional video/film work as it comes around (or have another very expensive hobby). It's good to see that the simple questions get attention on this board, thanks.
 
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