Need creative audio solution

D

David W. Richardson

Chapelgrove Films
Here's my situation....

I'm shooting a feature. I have three actors in three different rooms in my house. Each will have a camera and mic pointed at them. But I need them to be able to hear each other. I don't want to split the audio feed being recorded by the cameras, so I know I'm going to need an additional mic for each person.

Now here's where it gets tricky.

I want the person in Room A to get the audio from Room B and Room C -- but NOT get their own audio feed. I'm hoping this will reduce the feedback problem. Room B should get audio from Room A and Room C only. Room C should get audio from Room A and Room B only. The audio quality doesn't have to be stellar, as long as they can hear and understand each other without straining.

Is there a creative and INEXPENSIVE way to do this?

I worked out one scenario that involved using three mic mixers -- one for each room. But I'd rather not spring for three mixers if I don't have to.

I have a 3-station wireless intercom, but of course it only allows one person to talk at a time. I wonder if I bought two more 3-station wireless intercoms -- would they interfere with each other? Would wired intercoms be better? Full duplex (2-way) transmission would be a plus.

Anybody have any other cost-effective ideas??

David
 
Use remote ENG breakaways for each room. They provide dual return monitor points which you can feed to the other two rooms.
 
inexpensive , no
creative , there is nothing be creative
you need mixer with sub outs( you can send to 3 different transmitters
each person will get 2 mic mix
you can place inductive loops on every one neck with small inductive reciever inside the ear ( if all of them have long hair you can use regular in ear monitors in flesh color)
if your actors could live with their voice ( there is no delay ) you will need 1 transmitter and 3 recievers and regular mixer with mono auxiliary out
very simple :-)
 
Interesting, Oleg. But how about this....?

What if I run a line from the headphone jack of all three camcorders? From the cam in Room A, I split the line once and run it to amplified speakers in Room B and Room C. From the cam in Room B, I split the line once and run it to amplified speakers in Room A and Room C. From the cam in Room C, I split the line once and run it to amplified speakers in Room A and Room B. (I would use Y-cables to connect the feeds to the speakers.)

That would work, wouldn't it? (Don't know why I didn't think of it before.)
 
that would ruin your sound , you need to record the actors not the speakers
if there will be overlap you have a problem as you cant cut clean sound

look, you can do what ever you like - i just sudgest you do it right :-)
 
But I can pull an actor's dialog from the audio recorded by their camera, which will be louder than anything coming through the speakers. Overlay that on top of the video, and the audio from the speakers should be effectively masked with the 'good' dialog. I'll have to test that theory, but it seems like it should work.
 
chapelgrovefilms said:
I'll have to test that theory, but it seems like it should work.
Click to expand...
By all means test it out, but be sure to do so under real-world conditions (ie. at the location in question). All you need is for the speaker lines to pick up a hum or buzz, and you'll be completely out of luck.

Even if you keep the speakers off-axis, you're still going to hear them. Even if you have no dialogue overlap, you'll still be adding the room tone of two other rooms to each room's noise floor.

Flesh-coloured in-ear monitors can be dressed in such a way as to be invisible to the camera, whereas live monitors will always end up on your recorded track.
 
You make a good point, SMuir. But I just have no budget for anything like that. I'll definitely do the testing under real-world conditions -- my house is the shoot location. Fingers crossed that we can keep the noise to a minimum.

Thanks!
 
Zaxcom TRX900s on your actors.

These are mini pack transmitters that you can plug a mic into, that will take the audio to your camera or mixer in the usual manner.

However, they are also IFB receivers, and one can therefore plug into an IFB monitor in the actor's ear so they can simultaneously hear whatever's coming to them on their 900's frequency.

You can also turn them off and on, set the volume, etc., all wireless remote.

Great gear. Zaxcom.com.
If you're in Los Angeles, Wexler Video rents them.
 
as we say - you can alwais fix it in the post :-)

by the way the ifb is only 2 weks from now in sales and he would need to sale the house to rent it
 
Yeah, I wish I could afford to go that route, but it's just not in the cards. I hate the 'fix it in post' idea, and had hoped to find some low-tech way of doing what we need to do. Trying to think outside the box here.

Thanks for all the advice!
 
chapelgrovefilms said:
But I just have no budget for anything like that.
Click to expand...
Just stating the obvious, but there is an inexpensive solution to your situation: record the actors one at a time. As long as you're following the script reasonably closely (and have someone keeping track of continuity), you can just have the other two actors in the same room deliverring their lines from off-camera. Repeat for each of the three actors/locations in turn. One mic, one camera, and the director will be able to direct each performance in turn. You'll still have to avoid dialogue overlaps, but you'll be dramatically decreasing your equipment budget and avoiding a number of potentially show-stopping technical problems.
 
True SMuir, but I'd also be tripling (at least) the length of my shoot. And I'd still like to give the actors someone to bounce off of.

Interestingly, if everything goes as I hope, only 2 of the 3 actors will even be seen on-screen. And one of them only appears in the last few minutes of the story. The third person is intended to be heard but never seen. I intend to roll video on him just in case -- if seeing only one POV for the whole movie proves to be way too boring, then we can go back to editing and intercut the footage of the other person.

The main story involves an online conversation between a woman and a man. It's that man who won't be seen. The third person -- also a man -- comes in in the last 5 minutes, and he will be both seen and heard. There are other characters, but they're all seen within the POV of the woman's 'webcam'.

It's going to be challenging, but I like a challenge. Want to hear the best part? We're going to try and shoot the whole movie in just one day. (Yes, it's a feature.)

Should be fun! ;-)
 
chapelgrovefilms said:
The main story involves an online conversation between a woman and a man.
Click to expand...
Why didn't you say so? :)
If the actors are interracting via webcams or some sort of voice-chat, then those playback speakers are actually in the scene.

In a perfect world, each of the three actors would have their own wireless lav as well as a boom mic (and boom op', of course). Barring that, wired booms are going to be the most reliable/flexible option, so for the sake of argument I'll go with that tactic.

The three wired booms can feed into a mixer with at least four mic inputs (I'll explain the 4th input later) and four line outputs (ie. 2 stereo outs), as well as 3 aux sends. Character A outputs to Channel 1, Character B outputs to Channel 2, and Character C outputs to channel 3. Characters B and C are sent to Aux 1, Characters A and C are sent to Aux 2, and Characters A and B are sent to Aux 3. Make sure that all the Aux's are post-fader.

I'll assume that you're recording single-system, although I would strongly reccomend using an SD744t to record Outputs 1-4. You'll need enough XLR cables (in addition to the mic cables) to provide stereo feeds to all three cameras. Camera A get's Output 1 on the left and Aux 1 on the right, Camera B get's Output 2 on the left and Aux 2 on the right, and Camera C gets Output 3 on the left and Aux 3 on the right. Here's the trick: you need to find a way to feed each camera's R-channel into the webcam speaker's with which the actors will be interracting. Whether you use a Y-cable to tap the line before it goes into the camera, or else take the R-channel line output from the camera is up to you. Keep those webcam speakers as low as possible, and you should be in good shape.

Each boom op' can use the headphone feed from their respective camera, altough you'll have to split the headphone output so that you can get you're return feed as well. You'll have to find a way to simultaneously monitor the left-channel headphone returns from all three cameras. Otherwise, you won't be able to identify audio problems until its too late.

Communication will be an issue, so you'll want a talk-back mic plugged into the fourth mic input on the mixer, and going out to all Aux's (and output 4, I suppose). Keep the pot closed when you're shooting, and open it up when you need to communicate with anyone in the three rooms.

At the end of the day, each camera will have a clean recording of the on-screen actor on the Left channel, and a mix of the other two actors on the right (as a synch reference). Be sure to record all three room-tones simultaneously, with all three webcam speakers open.

Hopefully someone else will be able to clean up my bird's-nest routing and suggest a more elegant and simple solution.
 
not sure if you are using wireless at all. if so, another option for ifb would be the icom ic r-5
http://www.icomamerica.com/products/receivers/r5/
they run about $200 each new (160ish on ebay)
they can pick up specific uhf frequency(not sure of vhf)
in addition, they have speakers as well as 3.5mm jack for monitoring so can use telex cord or loop

not sure where you are doing this, but some rental houses carry these
 
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