What technique should I use?

[nyquist-x]

Hi Guys!

The other day we were at location and a really big problem showed up. We we´re shooting indoors in a rented studio for TV ads. Well, the problem was that the place wasn´t acoustically treated, at all. It had 18ft tall, 36ft long and 30ft wide. Walls were of concret as floor, and ceiling was zinc curved shed. So, you must already now that the reverb was truly awful and uncontrollable no matter what foam insulation I used.

Here are two renders of the situation. The question is:


booming

scooping

what mic should I use - polar patterns
what mic technique should I use - booming / scooping / plant / lav

I only had 1 boom op, and 2 channels for recording.

The guys put a chroma on the back, because we only needed the talent in the picture, so, close miking was possible more from booming than scooping.

The action of the shoot was a man walking 5-6 footsteps from right to left (picture position), said 4 sentences and then came back to the starting point.

I´ll glad to hear your advices about this.

 

[jaredgiese]

Typically scooping is never good unless necessary due to boom shadows or being able to see the boom in a mirror or something. So I would suggest going with a Hyper-Cardiod if you have one as well as a Lav, and booming from above. Scooping will pick up alot more of the chest cavity noises and will make the voice sound extra deep and not as natural.

 

[nyquist-x]

Typically scooping is never good unless necessary due to boom shadows or being able to see the boom in a mirror or something. So I would suggest going with a Hyper-Cardiod if you have one as well as a Lav, and booming from above. Scooping will pick up alot more of the chest cavity noises and will make the voice sound extra deep and not as natural.

But picking from above can increment the reverb leakeage due to the mic aim down to the mouth including capturing some reflections from the ground?

 

[Gohanto]

But picking from above can increment the reverb leakeage due to the mic aim down to the mouth including capturing some reflections from the ground?

Reflections off one surface aren't a huge problem in general, now multiple or curved surfaces are where it gets interesting. Usually the chest cavity / bassy voice issue is FAR more noticeable, so that's the issue dealt with by booming from above.

Plus you're putting the mic closer to the floor by booming from below, so floor reflections would likely get worse if anything (yes the polar pattern helps reject noise not in front of the mic, but can't reject 100% of sound by a long shot)

 

[nyquist-x]

Yeap.. that´s what I tough.. even so.. the reverb was terrible. I¨ll upload some samples file on monday! (I´ve those in the office). Thanks for clarifying!

 

[unclebob6958]

Usually the chest cavity / bassy voice issue is FAR more noticeable...

However, it's pretty easy to thin out that kind of sound in audio post, it's much harder to beef up a thin sound. Also, subtracting from a sound does not generate additional noise, adding to a sound may add additional noise.

There are situations that no matter what you do you just can't get great sound, so you have no choice but to ADR. The key is planning on doing ADR and there are a few things you can do to make it easier. You should capture dialog wilds on the set immediately after you shoot; find a nice quiet spot nearby without much reflection and mic closely. It's not terribly hard to match up in post as the talent is still in character and the tone & pacing of the dialog will be very close to what was performed while the talent was on camera. If you do it all correctly you may not have to do an ADR session during audio post which can be weeks or months later.