Category: LO3

Learning Objective 3 Review

Joseph Pallot / / LO's and Evaluation, LO3

– To use relevant techniques to attain the best possible audio on location

This objective links strongly to LO1 but an extra point that adds to this LO would be the fact that we were recording everything through multiple devices to give us more options and opportunities to capture the best sounds we could. I was also able to put all of the boom techniques I learnt into practise, meaning that the sound quality improved from the first filming day to the last day because I was becoming more comfortable with controlling the boom pole and also becoming more confident with judging the amount of space I had while still being outside of the shot.

Speaker problems and considerations

Joseph Pallot / / LO3, problems

A major problem we ran into towards the end of this project was interaction with the media group, which we eventually found out was because of the speaker quality that they were listening to our finished tracks through.

We were able to meet with the group to find out what was wrong and when they played the track through the speakers they were using the bass and treble frequencies were boosted while the mids were dropped.

This obviously gave them a bad impression of the quality of work that we had given them. This was later rectified once we had taken them into the sound theatre, and showed them the same mix with the higher quality speakers. This has made us reconsider the way we worked, and in future we will invite media groups into the sound theatre to listen to our work so they can have an accurate representation of what we’re really going to be giving them in the finished package.

This problem confused us when we first heard that the group was unhappy with the audio and was having a lot of bad problems with it because we had run everything through Izotope Insight so we knew that it was within loudness regulations and that there was nothing bad happening with the EQ of the different sections.

Once the media team had heard the true version of the work we were presenting them with they were completely fine and happy with the project, even cancelling some of the changes they were requesting because the film sounded different to how they were hearing it on their setup.

location research – Microphone Tape

Joseph Pallot / / LO1, LO3, research

So some important research for us was finding out how to get the best results from our radio microphones, this proved to be a challege because not only does the type of tape affect the quality but also the way that you use the tape.

In multiple online forums there were different bits of advice with people swearing by specific brands and types of tape, the main ones being either moleskin tape or medical tape, we opted to go for the latter because of ease of access to buy.

This forum post was helpful with experimenting the different taping techniques once I’d found the right kind of tapes.

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/remote-possibilities-acoustic-music-location-recording/412231-art-attaching-hiding-lapel-mics.html

After practising I found that making 2 loops out of tape, attaching one to the clothing and one to the chest, then wedging the mic in the middle gave the best sound with the least amount of rustling.

 

Filming Day 3

Joseph Pallot / / Filming, LO1, LO3

on the final day of filming we repeated mic’ing up the actors, this time finding a combo of tapes and techniques that worked the best for us after looking through online forums for some better answers. we noticed that the quality of recordings improved greatly. we then set up recording equipment, tested everything, and were ready.

we followed the routine filming the last little bits, before the car scene at the end of the day, for this I crouched down in the back of the car with a zoom to get the soundscape of inside a moving car, then, while the film crew moved on to film some scenes with no sound, Callum drove the car around the same circuit a few times so we could get a good quality sound of the car engine approaching, again in the unique space, as well as getting some more foley recordings of the big main door and the car doors.

we also went back and refilmed some of the other scenes because the director wasn’t happy with the visuals of the recordings that they had, we realised at this point that the performance of some of the lines had changed, this was because the actors were still learning their lines over the weekend, meaning that the performance was quite different each time. this could work out to be a problem for us when it comes to editing together the best takes.

Filming Day 2

Joseph Pallot / / Filming, LO1, LO3

So today we started to film, we set up the radio mics onto the actors making sure there was easy access to change batteries and switch the packs to standby while they weren’t being used, this was to cause as little distraction as possible to the actors.

we filmed all day, trying different methods of taping the microphones to the actors to cause the least amount of rustle, using different tapes and attachment techniques. By the end of the day we had some very usable sounds but were still not happy with the final products, we knew we could get better results so once we were back home I researched into the types of tape that sound recordists usually used and found through multiple forums that medical tape was the generally accepted standard within the industry. This blog taught me the technique of “adhesive sandwiching” which means to make two rings out of tape and suspend the mic between them, this creates a hollow chamber in which the microphone is not rustling against anything causing unwanted noise.

we recorded some more foley such as dancing steps for future use because of the unique sound of the rooms that the actors were using. we did this because there was music being played at the time of actual filming so we wouldn’t be able to use any microphone recordings from the actual shoot.