two actors, one mic, two levels of voice

M

matthewd5

Veteran
hello.

here is the situation i ran into, i had two actors one male and one female.

the male had a signifigantly louder voice.

they were having conversations with dialog back and forth

i was using an oktava mic on a boom pole with my 302 mixer.

even if i kept the mic directly over the female actor the male's voice came through louder than hers.

what if anything could i have done to fix this?

i figured it was better to record both voices as well as i could and if there needs to be any adustment they can lower his voice in post.

if i had a dedicated boom operator i could have played with the levels between each actos lines but that didn't seem like a good idea, i figured i would wind up with crap.

the recording i did get i am pretty sure is nice and clear and in the end i figured that was easier to work with.

matthew
 
Lowering one voice in post will give you fluctuating ambience; not good. You have to right idea in favoring the boom to the weaker speaker. There is always fluctuation between speakers and in a perfect world you have actors that are consistent in their line delivery.

If you have an actor that is speaking so softly they are falling below a comfortable signal to noise ratio then it is ok to ask them to speak up a bit (ask the AD to ask the director to speak with the actor). The problem that comes with that is the actor will usually speak up for the next take but then drop right back down to their comfort zone, leaving you with inconsistent results.

Another pitfall to avoid is cranking up the softer actor's voice on his/her close-up. You need to keep the voice to ambience ratio consistent between shots within a scene.

Good luck
 
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