Shooting a doc

[MontrealAudio]

*sorry in the title I meant interview for a doc,

Ok was wondering how others did this so I could have some other ideas before my shoot this weekend. Im doing a sit down interview sort of thing. Generally my experience is with commercials or shorts. The interview will be one on one for the first part and the one on two for the second part. I was thinking one lav on the interviewer and one on the interviewee as well as a gun or hyper planted on a stand right out of frame. However I will have my boom op with me at least to run some cables. Should I just get her to boom the interview? That way I can get away with one gun/hyper and she can cue between the subjects as oposed to setting up two guns/hypers one on each subject? Never the less everyone will have a lav mic for extra coverage. The interview will take place in a medium sized drama theatre so the acoustics should be nice. Im just trying to get some other ideas floating around in my head before we shoot. Thanks guys.

 

[Rippie]

well unless you're recording to a multitrack..
you have 2 tracks to play with...
so get the 3 microphone idea out of your head immediately unless you really know what you're doing.

If you NEED the off camera questions on tape..
CH1- lav OR boom on camera CH2- interviewers lav OR boom.

If you're using a hyper..
you can 95% of the time get away with putting it between the 2 on camera interview situations. Usually the people are moved for picture as close as possible so it works
to your advantage. I usually don't put the mic directy between them, but favor on an angle
the person who seems like they will be the quiet one.
(kinda hard to explain in text)

If they are farther apart than you feel comfortable with having the boom stationary between..
time to pull it off the stand and swing it. OR goto 2 lavs, and ditch the interviewers mic.

 

[MontrealAudio]

well unless you're recording to a multitrack..
you have 2 tracks to play with...
so get the 3 microphone idea out of your head immediately unless you really know what you're doing.

I will be using my Edirol R-44, so I have can have 4 mics running at a time all going to separate files on the flash card. At the same time I will either be feeding the camera snake with a mono mix (I have confidence/experience mixing several mics live on location) or just giving them the direct out of my boom and do some bracketing.

Thanks for the sugg, I think I will try and get the hyper on a stand between the two subjects cue'd slightly more towards the quieter subject.

Since it is a theatre and the room will most prob not be so reflective, I might try using a shotty, I find if the room is not very reverberant it sometimes sounds better going with the shotgun, as oposed to a hyper. But that depends on the location and how I feel with the sound of things.

That being said, I will prob run two lavs one per subject, and plant a mic on a stand mebbe ntg-2 between both parties.

 

[MontrealAudio]

Hey everyone, I just got home from day one shooting this doc. Very interesting stuff, they interviewed 2 guys who frequent Montreal's "Tam Tams", a weekend event where people gather outdoors to play the djembe together. *The Tam Tams are an amazing thing, words don't do it a justice.

In effort to "give" information and stories as much as I "take" from these forums, I figured I would recap in how I went about the shoot. The interview was indoors. It was in a very large room, empty fairly reflective. I put a lav on both the director (asking questions) and the interviewees, they wanted the mics hidden on camera so I had my utility do the old triangle duct tape bit on each side of the lav and got it under his outer shirt layer (he was wearing a few shirts) I then set up two mic stands with hypers over the subject and over director. This served two purposes, one. it opened up the dry sounding lavs a little in my mix and two. acted as a safety in case we had too much contact noise. Low and behold there was some contact issues with our second subject who wore only one undershirt, I believe it was his chest hair , I asked the AD via a pen and paper if I could get a chance to re-adjust it and he allowed my utility to get in and sort out the contact issues.

We had the luxury of our guests playing some Djembe for us. I left the lavs in place on both of our subjects, this was smart because they started singing too! For this I got out an SM-57 (the 421 was being loaned out to a friend) and put it about 1-1/2 feet away from the top of the Djembe, as well I put a card and a hyper about 3 feet away and 2 feet above the djembe in order to pick it up how its sounding in the room. This allowed me to mix between the room and the close mic picking up the fingers on the skin. The jam session came out great! I was worried I wouldnt get enough low end, because normally I use a kick drum mic underneath drums like this in the studio however I do not have one in my location kit, as I am usually not doing intruments on set. but the low end came through nicely.

In terms of my snake, they originally wanted a direct out of the main subjects lav + a room mic that would pick up the off camera stuff stricktly for editing purposes. The camera (I guess rented) had a dead input on ch1. We resorted to a mono mix from my Edirol out to ch2, so that they have something to work with for quick post edits, and I am burning my session (each mic on its own file) to DVD so they can pick and chose in post and have complete freedom with thier mix.

Hope this helps some people, as I am generally doing boom type operations and was slightly unsure about my setup. What helped a lot was the day before I drew a singal flow chart brainstorm sort of thing with how I would set up for this shoot.

Ill link some vids when they get through post:thumbup: