Noiz2
Sound Ninja
Ah, yes. Mic and a boom just got bumped up in priority.
OK specifics to TANKED. Don't ever record in a moving car. That's the rule break it when after a lot of soul searching you find no other option. And then immediately after the shot, pull over and do instant wild ADR. Also record some int driving in the car with no talking. Mix the two in post to get driving dialog that is understandable. If you take a few minutes you can usually figure out how to frame the shots so that you can't see enough out a window to know the car is stationary (most CU of the actors qualify for this) and make sure you have someone bounce the bumper a bitt so the car isn't TOO still. Then you shoot with the car moving. By overlapping dialog on the moving shot between the CU's you can usually get the whole conversation in a nice quiet still car and the intercutting with the moving shots will sell it as one continuous shot. The other perk there is that you can use camera positions for the CU that would be impossible with out $$$ on a moving car.
Yes if your in big bouncy rooms you need to get close with the mic and you need some kind of sound treatment. Hanging packing blankets on the unseen walls would be a start, and on the floor if there is a lot of that exposed. The idea is to have something absorbent across from any hard surface. The closer the absorbers are to the action the "smaller" and less echoey the room will be. With out a lot of green there is only so much you can do but anything will help. There is no fix in post for this kind of issue.
Planning will go a long way in helping the sound. Just keep in mind that the ideal is that you capture ONLY dialog during production and add everything else later. You'll never get that but the closer you get the better. And it's not just for sound. You picture edit becomes more flexible if you don't have much but dialog in the track. Otherwise you will have to make some cuts because of sound issues (or have a bad cut). Things like phone conversations, the flip side of the conversation needs to be recorded separately and clean. Make it "phone like" in post not production.
It's all about flexibility and control. If you record everything in production that is where you are. If it was a noisy warehouse, that is where the scene now takes place, even if you tried to make it look like a small living room. If you have traffic all over the production, your in the city and it doesn't matter what's in the script. You can say country house all day long, if I here honking city cars in the BG I'm in the city. If the track is quiet, you can put it anywhere from the city to the country to the Moon. A few airlock sounds, a little high tech whatever, some engine rumble and your on a space ship. The more your production is dialog only the more sound post can put you in the world you WANT the story to take place in. Otherwise it will always sound like a documentary. If you have documentary sound on a narrative film you start to scream LOW BUDGET. If your sound says high budget and you have some wanky video shots they become a "stylistic" choice. Put that same footage with "documentary" sound and you have most of what you see in small film festivals. Do the same with crappy sound and high and low budget images and you end up with two flavors of low budget film. People will go and talk about sound being 50% of the film, but that is kind of BS. Sound and picture slide back and forth all the time. They both deliver different kinds of information to the audience. MOST of the time (other than dialog) sound (when it's done right) is adding depth and realism to the picture. People are visually oriented. Sound I would say is more like 25% of the film, but it is also 1/3 of the image. A shot of something big isn't BIG unless the sound tells you it's big. Case in point the car crash. It sounds a little like someone hitting a garbage can with a baseball bat. I'm sure it was a "car crash" sound FX off some disk or site but it's not nearly big enough or detailed enough to be the climax of your film. Layers, layers, layers.
I'm putzing between gigs at the moment so I might just grab that bit and post an example. But the short story is you have a hit, it's OK but it's only part of the story. He probably hit the brakes at some point? Probably hit something on the way to the big hit. The car has weight, so crunching sheet metal is fine but where is the thud, the second car, the impacts and crashes that had to happen after. There is a long tire screechy thing but it doesn't really fit the image. Anyway I know your working with what you have and this was a MUCH bigger project that the first one, and it's your second film. How many have I made... a really short one many years ago so anyone who gets one done gets points in my book. As much as post will make a huge difference, you need to deal with production audio first. You can always go back and do the "directors cut" and fix post, but you only get one shot at production.
It turned out pretty good - sort...the story is kinda lame but we were just trying to make ourselves laugh