Sound Advice - What would you buy?

T

TheWakePlace.com

Well-known member
Hey Everyone

So i am looking at shotgun mics for a production i am about to start. Most of the people within the production are going to be on wireless lavaliers - but what shotgun would people recommend for ambient sound?

If we can stay around the $500-$600 budget.

Thanks!!!
 
TheWakePlace.com said:
Hey Everyone

So i am looking at shotgun mics for a production i am about to start. Most of the people within the production are going to be on wireless lavaliers - but what shotgun would people recommend for ambient sound?

If we can stay around the $500-$600 budget.

Thanks!!!
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Why a shotgun for ambience? As I usually think of the term, amibience is the general sound environment in which the scene is taking place, those vague, unlocalized sounds coming in from all directions. For that you want a mic with a broad coverage like an omni or cardioid, not something focussed on one spot like a flashlight. Also you DO NOT record ambience at the same time you record dialog. You want your dialog as clean and pristine as possible, free of ambience, and your want your ambience clean and free of any dialog. That way you can marry them in post. If you try to record ambience with a mic distant from the characters while at the same time recording the dialog with a lav, you'll find the voices are picked up by the ambient mic with a delay compared to the lavs due to the different distances the mics are from the speakers mouth - that can make them difficult to mix cleanly in post. You might record dialog with lavs on the talent AND a boom above them as well but you don't mix them, you decide in p[ost which tracks sound better in post and discard the other version. In that scenario the boom mic is not recording ambience., it's recording alternate dialog tracks.
 
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It's a bit more expensive that you're wanting, but the AKG C414 microphones are absolutely incredible. They're in the $1,000 range, but they have 5 (!) recording patterns you can switch between depending on what you're going for. Recording studios often use them, and they're the top choice for many professional musicians, too. They're great for close-up and for distance, and have an optional omnidirectional recording pattern if you really want to get a LOT of ambience. It comes with a shock mount and a pop filter, too! I don't know how boom-mountable it is, you I doubt you'd have many issues with it.
 
composeralex said:
It's a bit more expensive that you're wanting, but the AKG C414 microphones are absolutely incredible. They're in the $1,000 range, but they have 5 (!) recording patterns you can switch between depending on what you're going for. Recording studios often use them, and they're the top choice for many professional musicians, too. They're great for close-up and for distance, and have an optional omnidirectional recording pattern if you really want to get a LOT of ambience. It comes with a shock mount and a pop filter, too! I don't know how boom-mountable it is, you I doubt you'd have many issues with it.
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please tell me you're joking.
 
Rippie, you have to look at Alex's screen name, then it makes sense. Alex, we are just ribbing you be because the C414 would not be the most practical for this application. Large diaphragm condensers are really designed for the sound booth with voices or instruments near them.

For ambient sound, I would use the camera mic, it is stereo and honestly, ambient does not require nearly the quality required for specific sounds, it just needs to have a wide soundstage and be stereo. I have used my little consumer Sony 907 stereo mic, a $79.00 consumer mic for recording ambient that ended up in a pretty decently budgeted theatrical feature. Ambient is easy.

Dan
 
I'm sorry. I was just trying to help! :embarasse

The C414s are obviously not designed to record dialogue in a forest or something like that. But, in a room, stage, or otherwise controlled environment, they can do wonders.

I know they're designed for voices and music, but I was just trying to share a great mic ... :Drogar-Dum(DBG):
 
composeralex said:
I'm sorry. I was just trying to help! :embarasse

The C414s are obviously not designed to record dialogue in a forest or something like that. But, in a room, stage, or otherwise controlled environment, they can do wonders.

I know they're designed for voices and music, but I was just trying to share a great mic ... :Drogar-Dum(DBG):
Click to expand...

They're ribbing you because the "doing wonders ... in a controlled environment" is exactly the opposite of what the OP needs. He specifically was looking for a mic to record ambience in uncontrolled spaces. Ambience, also known as "room tone," is the sum-total of all the little backgrounds sounds that serve to define a space and give it its character. Those are all the sounds you're trying NOT to record in the controlled space scenario. You record it either on location by having the cast and crew stand silent for a few minutes and roll tape to capture the otherwise unheard, almost sublminal, sounds of the place, or the recordist might return by himself to the location at another time and just record its natural sounds - wind, running water in the creek nearby, birds rustling in the grasses, traffic on the freeway over the hill, whatever. This is laid in under cleanly recorded dialog, behind ADR recorded in studio, or as bridging material across cuts in post to establish the continuity of the space. This is quite different from isolating a voice and capturing it without any extraneous sounds for a vocal track being laid down in a studio.
 
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