On location with bouncy room

G

George Loch

Well-known member
So, how do you handle an interview situation where you need to shoot in a conference room with bouncy walls and you need to see the talent (no blankets covering their heads)?

Boom with shotgun or lav?

-gl
 
Thought for a moment you were wanting to record an interview in a bouncy castle :)

Back on topic...I'd position the talent with the least bouncy wall as their background (presuming that wall will also look ok as a shot background), and use out-of-shot blankets and other portable sound absorbers to minimise general bounce. Hmm, you may even be able to use a sound absorber as the shot background, especially if you also use shallow DOF to put only the talent in focus - talk to your DoP.

Re the mic, I'd have thought a shotgun would be more likely to pick up room tone than a lav, simply because it's further from the talent, but I could be wrong, and it probably depends on a lot of other issues. Definitely something to test, if at all possible.
 
I've done this several times for a local school event, as in a sit down interview on the stage of an empty auditorium with old wooden seats. I would always close the stage curtains and seat the person in front of them, then use both a lav and a boomed hypercardioid to see which one has less reverb/echo. I almost always end up using the hyper track - I suppose it's due to the lav being an omni.
 
Good point re curtains - they're common in conference rooms (although not all have them), and better sound absorbers than nothing, and usually look ok as a shot background.
 
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