On-Board Mic

A

Andrew McCarrick

Carbonite Member
I need some help choosing the best mic for this situation. We're shooting with a few different cameras; HV30s and HV40s, DVX100A, DVX100B, HMC150, HPX170, HVX200(a) and HPX3000. The actors are shooting everything themselves handheld; except for the HPX3000s. What is our best mic to use for all of these cameras? We're just looking to capture the audio with in a 3-5 foot radius of the camera. (Boom Operators will be following around the actors, but are recording into seperate DAT recorders.) We're going to be shooting entirely outside.
 
Just to make sure I'm interpreting this correctly...

A boom operator will follow the actors throughout the shot, but you also want microphones on the cameras as well?
Is there a reason that you don't just want to rely on the boom mic? It'll be the closest mic to the actors plus picking up the most natural and clean dialog. If you want audio for each camera, it would make the most sense to send the boom mic signal into a mixer, then send a line level signal into each of the cameras.

Or am I missing something?
 
Gohanto said:
Just to make sure I'm interpreting this correctly...

A boom operator will follow the actors throughout the shot, but you also want microphones on the cameras as well?
Is there a reason that you don't just want to rely on the boom mic? It'll be the closest mic to the actors plus picking up the most natural and clean dialog. If you want audio for each camera, it would make the most sense to send the boom mic signal into a mixer, then send a line level signal into each of the cameras.

Or am I missing something?
Click to expand...

It's more like Destination Truth, Ghost Hunters, Blair Witch, Paranormal Activity... the actors need to move freely. We're going to be out in the middle of the woods hunting for a Cryptid creature. So if the actors hear a noise they're going to be taking off after, or running from, that noise, I don't to want to have them wait for a boom operator to keep up or a cable get pulled or something.

So the boom is there when they're in a group, but if they run off, they don't have to wait the boom operator. Then when the boom op catches up, they can get the mic back in there. Carrying all that audio gear, they're surely not going to be running right next to the actors.
 
We will be using the built-in mics, but most of the cameras can have 4 channels of audio, so I was planning to route the two built-in mics to channels 3 and 4, and the add-on mic to channels 1 and 2, with different audio levels, so no matter what, we have clean audio. This is pretty much a one take situation, we can't retake something because of bad audio.
 
You may end up being best suited to go wireless for this type of shoot. (Pretty common for reality shoots, which this sounds very similar in style to)

Due to all the actors moving around, I'd also try to record the lavs on isolated tracks.

With actors moving around unpredictably and handheld cameras, it's almost impossible to imagine you'd get any useable audio from camera mounted mics.
 
Gohanto said:
With actors moving around unpredictably and handheld cameras, it's almost impossible to imagine you'd get any useable audio from camera mounted mics.
Click to expand...

The actors don't need to be moving around or the cameras handheld to end up with unusable audio from a camera-mounted mic. There is almost NO situation where a microphone on the camera will produce usable tracks.
 
Richard Crowley said:
The actors don't need to be moving around or the cameras handheld to end up with unusable audio from a camera-mounted mic. There is almost NO situation where a microphone on the camera will produce usable tracks.
Click to expand...

Okay, then what are your suggestions? I'm going to be having between 15 and 25 people that need to be mic'd simultaneously. So if we go wireless lavs, I need a wireless system that can deal with that many people and an audio board that has 32 xlr inputs. And of course syncing is post is going to be a pain in the ass.
 
Andrew McCarrick said:
Okay, then what are your suggestions? I'm going to be having between 15 and 25 people that need to be mic'd simultaneously. So if we go wireless lavs, I need a wireless system that can deal with that many people and an audio board that has 32 xlr inputs.
Click to expand...

Consider adopting "The Great Race" or "Cops" strategy of putting a crew consisting of a camera person and a sound operator with each couple or team. You don't have to send all the sound to a central recorder - in fact, your problem of not having a sound board with 32 inputs is far less an issue than the lack of a 32 track multichannel recorder. Trying to mix all of that in the field would truly be a nightmare far more horrific than any horror movie script.
 
Steve House said:
Consider adopting "The Great Race" or "Cops" strategy of putting a crew consisting of a camera person and a sound operator with each couple or team. You don't have to send all the sound to a central recorder - in fact, your problem of not having a sound board with 32 inputs is far less an issue than the lack of a 32 track multichannel recorder. Trying to mix all of that in the field would truly be a nightmare far more horrific than any horror movie script.
Click to expand...

Or the traditional method of hiring an experienced boom operator (or 2) for each "unit". There appears to be a growing cadre of production people and staffing agencies who specialize in "reality" productions. It might turn out that clipping a little flash recorder to each boom pole as a recorder (vs. linking to a mixer/recorder/camcorder) is more practical for whatever kind of production this is.
 
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