What mic for 2 actors conversing?

Randall_Oelerich

Randall_Oelerich

Veteran
My first short film was one actor, 5 minutes. In pre-production for my second film, 2 actors, 15 minutes. What type microphone would be best for capturing dialog scenes with two actors talking between each other, separated by perhaps 3 feet? I have a Rode NTG2 shotgun mic, would it be better to just swivel the boom pole between the actors as they exchange lines, or hold the mic straight down between the two actors, or buy some other sort of mic that has a less narrow cone of audio capture than the shotgun mic and hold that mic between the actors?
 
Point the mic at whoever is talking, swivelling between the two. What mic you should use really depends on your location. Basic rule (which of course can be broken) is hypercardioid indoors and shotgun outdoors. The NTG2 is a decent short shotgun though and I've had some OK results using it indoors before I got my ck93. Now I only use the ntg2 outdoors.

Might want to check into the Sound for Film and TV DVD put together by a few of the good folks of DVXuser. Its well worth the price and actually an enjoyable video to watch in addition to what you will learn.
 
Ideally... two of whatever mic. Of course, that requires two boom ops. You can do it with one mic, but the boom op needs to be skilled, and should also have been in on rehearsals with full blocking so as to be familiar with the dialog and the delivery.

On top of that, what Jeff said...
 
This will be an all-indoors shoot, inside a large warehouse type room. So maybe I need a cardioid? What is the ck93, who makes that mic? And thanks for the tip on the tutorial DVD, I will look for that.

Jeff Anderson said:
Point the mic at whoever is talking, swivelling between the two. What mic you should use really depends on your location. Basic rule (which of course can be broken) is hypercardioid indoors and shotgun outdoors. The NTG2 is a decent short shotgun though and I've had some OK results using it indoors before I got my ck93. Now I only use the ntg2 outdoors.

Might want to check into the Sound for Film and TV DVD put together by a few of the good folks of DVXuser. Its well worth the price and actually an enjoyable video to watch in addition to what you will learn.
Click to expand...
 
Why isn't there a gizmo widget to hold two shotgun mics pointed away from each other to two different actors, that could be real useful such in my situation with my two actors who will be pretty much stationary but separated by a few feet?

C2V said:
Ideally... two of whatever mic. Of course, that requires two boom ops. You can do it with one mic, but the boom op needs to be skilled, and should also have been in on rehearsals with full blocking so as to be familiar with the dialog and the delivery.

On top of that, what Jeff said...
Click to expand...
 
I would use one cardiod or hyper-cardiod mic on the boom and swivel it. If a shotgun is all you have then use that. The only time I've ever used two mics (MK41's) in such a situation when it was a long sit-down interview.

With regard to blocking, unless talent has to go to the bathroom or is soaking wet or covered in something that needs to be cleaned off right away, they, the director and all the key department heads should be gathered, G&E and the like sent away, and a blocking should be staged for the next set-up so that everyone knows what's going on next. If this is not happening then the production is seriously broken!

A.


C2V said:
Ideally... two of whatever mic. Of course, that requires two boom ops. You can do it with one mic, but the boom op needs to be skilled, and should also have been in on rehearsals with full blocking so as to be familiar with the dialog and the delivery.

On top of that, what Jeff said...
Click to expand...
 
Randall_Oelerich said:
This will be an all-indoors shoot, inside a large warehouse type room. So maybe I need a cardioid? What is the ck93, who makes that mic? And thanks for the tip on the tutorial DVD, I will look for that.
Click to expand...

Most cardioids are intended for farily close micing situations and would not work well at the longer working distances required to keep the mic out of frame. They also don't have sufficient off-axis rejection to keep a lot of the room ambience from intruding - you need a directional mic to isolate the subject from the environment.

The 'ck93' is the hyper-cardioid directional capsule for the AKG Blueline modular microphone - an excellent economy hyper.

Swinging from speaker to speaker is the way to go if you don't have two booms but it's not as if that's the only sound you're going to have to work with. Yes, you'll need to use that technique for the two shot but you can have the talent pause a beat between their lines to give the boom op a moment to re-aim. And you will be shooting coverage, right? That means you'll have perhaps 5 takes to choose from - medium 2 shot to establish, over the shoulder outer reverse of actor A, inner reverse of Actor A, over shoulder outer reverse of Actor B, inner reverse of Actor B. That gives you mutilple takes of each actor's lines to choose from in post.
 
Randall_Oelerich said:
Why isn't there a gizmo widget to hold two shotgun mics pointed away from each other to two different actors, that could be real useful such in my situation with my two actors who will be pretty much stationary but separated by a few feet?
Click to expand...

There are brackets made for mounting two mics together... really designed for XY stereo configuration and for press conferences. Problem is, for on-cam dialog, "pretty much" stationary isn't reliable. So moving one mic moves both, and that's a problem.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top