Stereo mics

S

scottfs

Well-known member
I enjoy watching movies in stereo or 5.1 or whatever. Is there a place for a stereo mic in doing wildlife films? I think the Rode ntg-4 is a cheap stereo mic

Is this a system that could be used with a two-track recorder to record birds and do on? I'm striving for a documentary type project for local television or the web.
 
A stereo shotgun mic would be better for outdoor directional recording and some folks put wireless spot mics where where the 'subjects' congregate. On a lot of the wildlife programs, a lot the audio is recorded separately and other S/FX and 'foley type' sound added in post.
 
I use a low cost sony ECM-M/S 957 mic to record stereo sound FX for TV and film use but a mono shotgun such as the Rode NTG3 etc is more useful for spot effects.

As stated most of the soundtrack you hear is created in audio post production and sometimes all of the audio is recorded afterwards.
 
scottfs said:
Is there a place for a stereo mic in doing wildlife films?
Click to expand...

Sure. But that's probably not what you were hearing. What you were hearing was sound design. Layers upon layers of sound to create the sound field that supports the image. You'd think they'd record the sound at the same time as they record the video, but that almost never happens. The main reason for that is that getting the mic where it needs to be to record good clean sound almost always spooks the wildlife.

The (vast?) majority of nature sound that's recorded in stereo is done using the mid-side technique. There are some excellent reasons for this. I'll just hit a couple. First, it's relatively easy to make some level of adjustments to the stereo field in post. But the biggie for me is that it's a very compact system that you can actually boom if you want to. Rycote even makes windbaskets specifically for M/S. And outside, you're going to need at least some level of wind protection. Just sayin'.

The most commonly used mics for M/S exteriors is almost certainly the Sennheiser MHK 40 mid, and the MKH 30 side. Sennheiser's MKH line are RF condensers, which lets them shrug off damp and humid environments. AF condensers can short out and give you dropouts when exposed to too much moisture. Also, the RF condensers have no static charge on the diaphragm, so they don't attract dust, and thus stay cleaner.

Rode also makes RF condensers; I don't think they have an RF condenser figure 8 mic, but I'm not that familiar with their catalog.

One last thing -- viewers pretty much universally dislike a moving stereo field. Some get physically ill, something like seasickness. So don't think you can mount a stereo pair on your camera and pan with it, or worse, use it with a steady-cam-ish system. We already know that's going to give a really bad result.
 
While I do post I will point out that how much can be added/ modified in post has a LOT to do with the producers. A fair amount of documentary folks are of the view that if it wasn't recorder at THE time it was filmed it's not acceptable. The sane ones allow sound post to fill in what would have been there if the camera crew hadn't changed the dnamics, and some blow it all off (but not many).


SO wildlife show... If it wants to be a documentary show then the above needs to be taken into consideration. If it's a show that doesn't have illusions of grandure then post is the way to go.
 
From about 6 months ago...

I am recording the crow roost in Sacramento. I want to do it in stereo, since they are a cacophony bunch. I have Zoom H4n pro. Is that going to be good enough for a short documentary that will have stereo sound only with the crows? Or is it a really crappy sound?
 
Just for picking up crow sounds? Should be OK. Placement and monitoring is going to be important and probably some decent wind protection.
 
Years ago I was a very junior assistant at Anglia TV when the made the survival series. Most of the material back then was 16mm film, with sep mag recordings for the audio, but huge amounts of it had no audio at all. The one lenses meant the camera was far too far from the subjects anyway. One of my jobs was using motorcycle leather gloves to make the sound of eagles wings. Lots of the other stuff came from sound effects discs (as in records!). Good fun for a 17yr old.
 
Leather gloves are a classic for wing flaps. For a film I worked on with a ton of geese about 90% of the wing flaps are done with an umbrella I bought in London in 1974. Worked really well and was supposed to be just for the temp but most of them stayed in for the final. My first film gig ;~).
 
Nice. Certainly one of the best depictions of actual Foley done realistically. My only quibble is that in the US anyway things like the waterfall would pretty much never be done in Foley. Oh and in the US it would be layered more, ie fewer things in a single pass so it's more editable. That is probably true there also but it's a lot more fun to watch this way.

One thing a bunch of the other Foley videos imply is that what isn't done in Foley comes from old libraries full of sounds that get used over and over. There is some truth to that but not a lot except on very low budget films. Most films with a decent budget have a number of people who are recording and others creating specific sounds for that film. Each film ends up with a library of sounds but a large amount of that library was recorded just for that film.

I think this happens more in northern California than in Hollywood. In N.CA a lot of times editors and assistants would go out recording and I don't think that happens much in S.CA. But most films in either location have dedicated people going out recording a hit list of sounds that are needed. With a really sound aware director there may even be some FX recordists on location where the film is shooting.
 
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