Any advice for documentary-type remote sound recording?

[spigoat]

Hello-

I am working on a documentary project. This will involve filming and recording in a variety of mobile situations. The sound will mostly be of people talking. Our budget is not completely set, but it should be decent. Does anyone have advice or urls that answer any of the following?

-What's the ideal setup for recording sound for a documentary? A boom holding up a condenser mic that plugs into a mixer/DAT that is strapped onto the sound guy?
-DAT vs. a newer technology for actually capturing the data?
-Are particular brands/models of equipment better suited (more durable, etc.) for this type of work?
-Does anyone have general advice for techniques to get the best sound in mobile scenarios?

Thanks in advance.
Ian

[petsematary]

You might consider putting miniature cordless mics on the people that will do the interviewing and such. All the people that will be featured frequently in the documentary. And then use a boom on the people they talk to. I've done it that way and it worked fine for me. We captured ambience sound with a stereo cam mike (external one) and put cordless minis on the talent and then boomed everyone else... The sound guy carried the recorder (a four channel Edirol - that was enough for us. If four channels won't cut it you might want to get a computer solution of some kind for the actual 1's and 0's.)

[pkautzsch]

I think I'd go for MS on a boom. Shotgun or Super-Cardioid as M, and a fig-8. Mind to get the fig-8 capsule where the actual diaphragm of the shotgun is.
Schoeps have a special boomed MS setup, it's a CCM41 and a CCM8. Really small and lightweight.

DAT is OK if it's a good one like the Fostex PD-4. Today's state of the art, though, is HD or CF. Sound Devices 7xx series is said to be best. MS decoder in the monitor section makes sense when recording in MS...
Mind that in documentary you don't always have the opportunity to get a sync point via clapperboard, so a timecode connection to the cam is good. Also have your recorder send audio to the cam (always, also when you're not recording) so there is at least the 16-bit camera sound when you press rec late.

All digital recorders need some time to boot. That's why I have a good old analogue Nagra which basically needs one turn of one switch and is running after one second from OFF state.

[ghellquist]

Oops, this is a wide-ranging question. I think it will help with a lot of experience, I only have very little. Later I will search the links I have on another computer and post. There might be something of interest there.

I believe that what you take along might vary a lot, from only a mic up to a full lorry-load of stuff.

Minimal equipment woud be a mic and cable connected directly into the camera. Old style TV reporter, where the reporter holds the mic and points it at the person answering. I have an old scratched Sennheiser MD21 that does eminent work for this. Modern cameras does have built-in sound, but I have never heard any good sound coming from the camera mounted mic -- it is simply to far away to pick up anything useful (in my limited experience).

Next step might be to add a boom as well. The reporter mic on one channel, the boom on another, both into the camera. Booming is difficult and takes quite a bit of training to do well. Ideally the mic should be just an inch outside the camera field of view. Outdoors a short shot-gun might be best bet, indoors with low ceilings a super-cardioid or even a cardiod might be better (reflections from the roof does enter the shotgun). I would not try stereo on the boom, much too complicated for me (but your mileage may vary as they say).

Next step up might be to add a mixer person with a good mixer, still sending the sound into the camera. A dedicated mixer person with headphones can concentrate on getting a good sound mix and also tell when there is too much disturbing noise. The camera man is probably too occupied to notice, and generally camers does not have very good monitoring facilities. Just maybe the boom operator and mixer may be the same person, but that takes two skills in one.

So, once you have the mixer, you might want to add more mics. Radio mics are very nice, but can also be a lot of trouble -- the range is definitely variable and sometimes there simply is too much other things going on on the channels.

You might want to add a recorder to the sound mixers pack of goods to carry. It is a good backup for the camera, or if you want to change it the other way around, the camera may be the backup. Time code saves a bit of time in post processing but is definitely not necessary from a technical point of view. Dat recorders has been used for a long time in this respect but more and more of HD recorders are coming into use.

If you go for a recorder, do check up what sample rate to record at. There is a special situation called pull-up, where you would want to record at 48.048 kHz but lable the files as 48kHz. (Don´t ask me the details).

There are a number of specialized equipment manufacturers in this area. Sound Devices is known for their mixers and lately for their 7xx series of recorders, often used together. Deva is larger and more expensive recorder, Aaton makes an even more specialized one and there is always the Nagra brand. As for mics, I think that lately Roede has added a line of decently priced stuff that sure looks useable. Otherwise the mic brands are typically Schoeps, Seennheiser or Sanken. If you record outdoors you will definitely want to have a Rycote Zeppelin (but you will be surprised at the high price of buying one).

I think that your best bet is to find a local rental house that can offer you a package with sound recording equipment. It is often surprisingly cheap to rent many of the things on your list compared to buying them.

Anyway, best of luck, some links comes later.

Update: my links are gone in an update. Anyway, google is your friend.
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.a...oduction.sound

Gunnar
amateur recorder