Recording dialogue in a church

A

Artkoudos

Member
Hello Everybody,

I have a job on a church in one weeks time. The place is really reverberant and it's difficult to achieve nice intelligible sound on voices. I did a trial the other day and used lavs and my 416. The lavalieres were not amazing but not bad. One character keeps moving his head left and right and generally looks quite up (this is part of the character's attitude). Of course I loose him a lot when this is happening (off and on axis issues) and his voice is more reverberant and unpredictable than other characters. Do you think that placing the lav on the head or under the ear will give better results?? The lav that I used was an ME2 do you think that a higher end lavalier mic will help on getting better sound? Dialogue on the ME2 sounds really close and kind of compressed in general so I thought that it might reject more reverberation than other more natural sounding lavs.

I know that a shotgun is not recommended in highly reverberant places but the 416 did sound much more natural and nicer than the radio mics. What type of mic and model would you suggest for a situation like this so that I can keep the warmth of a boom mic and minimize the reverb of the place? Would a zepelin windshield with a windjammer help on dumping some reverb in comparison with a foam windshield??

Please give me your thoughts. Any help much appreciated.
 
Yeah...I agree, Jockomo's mic will perform better than any lapel mic but most Pastors, Priests, etc. in Churches are not too keen about wearing large clunky headsets. Consider an earset mic which is very unobtrusive when worn and performs very well. Audio-Technica makes one, and probably one of the best is the Countryman by Countryman and Associates (also distributed by Shure and other vendors). They can be purchased with various connectors to accomodate Shure, Sennheiser, ATW, etc. bodypacks.
 
Boom with your 416. Behind and side of the camera, put up tons of furni pads on C-stands and on the tiled-floor. What you want to do is cover up at least 1/4 of the walls, the more walls you can isolate, the better.
 
Would you think that a hypercardioid would be better than a supercardioid or short shotgun. The production is willing to rent an additional mic if this will improve the quality of the sound. Fortunately we will black out the windows with drapes and I'm sure that it will help a lot. Additionally I will ask them for as much dampening material as possible to put against surfaces.


Answering to Jockomo and DGW: A headset mic system would be great but if it was not clear its a short film production so I won't be able to use something like that.

Any other suggestion mic wise would be great. Is there any boom mic that is famous for dropping more reverberation than others?? As I said before I will use some lavaliers as well but still not sure of the model.
 
A mic that I like a lot for interiors is the Sennheiser MKH8040, if you can find one to rent. My experience was that it cut together beautifully with a 416 and it seems to reduce the reverb more than the 416.

Glen Trew used it for interiors on a Hannah Montana movie and said this:

"I used the MKH-8040 for interiors almost exclusively on "Hannah
Montana, the Movie", and liked it very much. (Keep in mind that for a
pattern nearly identical to the Schoeps 641 hypercardioid setup, the
8040 is the choice, not the tighter 8050.) It is small, light weight,
and sounds great. I also recently used it on exteriors during a US
Army documentary (serious run and gun stuff, recording dialog in and
out of moving tanks, etc...) and it did very well, especially with the
low ceilings of the new Striker vehicle. For my ears, it sounds
identical to the MKH-40. It is definitely more susceptible to handling
and wind noise, but I think this sensitivity may have more to due with
it's smaller design than a difference in frequency response."

. . . But, wow, inside a church. Good luck. There probably is not a worse location for natural reverb. The suggestion of putting up blankets is certainly helpful.
 
My experience with recording dialogue in churches here in the Bay Area has been good so far. The ONLY mic I use is the Schoeps 641. The Sanken CS3-e exaggerates the 'ping' effect even more when I use it in large and small reverberant churches. Even though it has spectacular off-axis rejection, it's still the front pickup that gets the back surrounding of the actors.

So just keep your 416 and dampen the place up a bit, but not to the effect that it sounds dead.
 
It might sound counter-intuitive, but try mounting the lav farther from the mouth, almost at the belly button. Then you can increase the gain a little and the relative movement off-mic will be less and you'll get a more consistent sound.
I've used this for a wedding with only one lav to cover the groom, bride, and pastor. Ultimately, you'll want a little room sound on the dialog anyway, so a tiny bit won't hurt. (of course, reverb can always be added- much harder to take away, so the cleanest sound is probably the safest)
I would use the lav in combination with the 416 as long as they go to separate tracks, and experiment with the boom positioning so it's pointed in the direction that will absorb the most, (carpets, drapes...etc.) A zepplin or wind jammer won't do you any good. They're designed to be acoustically transparent.
 
Thanks for the replies guys. I'm orientated to rent a Schoeps 641 hypercardioid just to have the ability to choose between it and the 416 after I have the second rehearsal. I'm a bit afraid of the handling noise problems of the MKH8040 and I will need to rent equipment from two different companies in order to get it.

What would you think of the Neumann KM100 powering Pre-amp module with the AK50 Hypercardioid capsule or the AKG C460 pre amplifier module with the CK62 Hypercardioid capsule?? What I'm gonna get is subject to availability as well and these mics are widely available. I've seen the mics used mainly for music applications but I know of some recordists that used them for indoors location sound when they don't want to spend the extra money for a schoeps or a sennheiser..
 
Conclusion

Conclusion

A rather late post on the results of shoot in the church. At the end I did use the Schoeps 641 Hypercardiod. The truth is that it worked really well and it gave me literally "real sound". Not much colouring not much of frequency exaggeration. I did have small problems getting good signal on soft spoken words or on mid-wide shots but the 416 was adding a lot more reverbation. Additionally the actors were always wearing a lavaliere providing more possibilities on the post production stage and ability to sort out things when the boom was a bit far.

The most important of all elements to the success of the shoot was the creativity in our attempt to dampen the place and reduce the reverberation time. Apart from using loads of duvets, mattresses, pillows, announcement boards, pieces of carpets etc etc to various parts of the upper part of the church, we also used on each setup the technique of building a wall/shield of dampening material facing the talent or all around the particular area of each take.

All in All a very successful shoot in a very difficult location and hopefully this will prove useful to people in similar working space.
 
Yeah I agree, the Octava would do the job really well.. The reason that I chose the Shoeps was because it was available in renting equipment company.. I think that Octava mics are not used widely in the UK. At least not yet...

It was also a good chance to use a Shoeps... Have heard so many things about the mic but never got to use it. They say that the Octava is more sensitive to handling noise but I'm really up for renting one at some point... If it works out as they say I will definitely consider buying one.
 
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