Recording Director/Producer Commentary

[pekar1876]

We're recording our commentary for our special ediiton DVD and wanted to ask your advice on recording it. Should we just set up our boom mic above and just in front or go for clip mic or another way?

What time code would you start at to synch up to the picture?

 

[JordanBlock]

I recently recorded a commentary with four participants. We were recording in the Producer's basement, not exactly an ideal environment, but my setup was something like this:

A dynamic mic in front of each participant, all run to my board. The soundtrack was also run through my board. I mixed the mics down on the fly, but also recorded isos for each one, just to be safe. The headphone mix for the participants was just my live mix with the soundtrack added, using an aux feed from my board and a headphone amplifier.

For sync, we added a leader with a couple beeps to the video file and I included the sountrack in my recorded mix for the first couple seconds to get the beeps, and it all synced up in post later.

It certainly wasn't an ideal setup, but it got the job done.

 

[Richard Crowley]

We're recording our commentary for our special ediiton DVD and wanted to ask your advice on recording it. Should we just set up our boom mic above and just in front or go for clip mic or another way?

What time code would you start at to synch up to the picture?

Mic with what you have for whatever sounds good. Don't have to worry about what it might look like.

As long as you record the sound track along with the narration, it should be easy enough to sync. Nobody's going to say anything that needs to be frame-accurate.

 

[Jim H]

I did a commentary a while back with three people. Used a standard cardiod mic with an omni pickup pattern, which sounded just fine actually. Just placed it on a table in front of the three people (heads perhaps between 2-3 feet away), and had the seating arranged so they all pointed to it. Perhaps not ideal, but the audio is quite clear and easy to understand.

 

[Steve House]

I did a commentary a while back with three people. Used a standard cardiod mic with an omni pickup pattern, which sounded just fine actually. Just placed it on a table in front of the three people (heads perhaps between 2-3 feet away), and had the seating arranged so they all pointed to it. Perhaps not ideal, but the audio is quite clear and easy to understand.

'Scuse me? Just what is a "Standard cardioid mic with an omni pickup pattern?"
Cardioid = Heart-shaped hemispherical directional pickup pattern
Omni = Spherical non-directional pickup pattern
The two are mutually exclusive.

Why would you mix the narration and soundtrack on the fly? Put each participant on an iso track in your recorder, do the mix in post where if you mess something up you don't have to start over again. If sync is truly an issue - not likely - there are a variety of ways you could use a timecode burn on the picture that the commentators are viewing and feed that to your recording device.

 

[Jim H]

'Scuse me? Just what is a "Standard cardioid mic with an omni pickup pattern?"
Cardioid = Heart-shaped hemispherical directional pickup pattern
Omni = Spherical non-directional pickup pattern
The two are mutually exclusive.

Why would you mix the narration and soundtrack on the fly? Put each participant on an iso track in your recorder, do the mix in post where if you mess something up you don't have to start over again. If sync is truly an issue - not likely - there are a variety of ways you could use a timecode burn on the picture that the commentators are viewing and feed that to your recording device.

Sorry, just mistyped. The mic I used has a switchable pattern, between omni, figure 8 and cardiod. That's what I was messing up, I usually have it on cardiod (for vocals) but for this purpose switched it to omni.