Making a lav sound like a boom? at DVinfo.net

Xiaoli Wang · April 11th, 2005, 10:22 PM

Hello,

I recently shot a short where we made the poor decision of not being consistent from angle to angle. In the closeups we used a lav on one of the actors, and the wide angle had a boom on him.

Thus, I'm left with the wide shots being very realistic and crisp/roomy sounding and the CUs being monotone, deep, near, and dead sounding. Are there any surefire ways to improve this in post? I've tried upping the reverb in FCP on the lav track but can't get it to sound any better.

Thanks.

Jay Massengill · April 12th, 2005, 02:18 PM

You can roll off the bass a little and add some mid and upper mids, but this may not be enough to make it sound natural. You could experiment with playing back your lav tracks from a very high quality speaker in a room similar to your original location. Then mic the speaker using your boom mic at various distances to get the sound you want.
There are also plug-ins that utilize advanced reverb techniques that are modeled on samples from specific rooms. These can be costly but effective.

April 11th, 2005, 10:22 PM	#1
Xiaoli Wang Regular Crew Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: Austin, TX Posts: 94	Making a lav sound like a boom? Hello, I recently shot a short where we made the poor decision of not being consistent from angle to angle. In the closeups we used a lav on one of the actors, and the wide angle had a boom on him. Thus, I'm left with the wide shots being very realistic and crisp/roomy sounding and the CUs being monotone, deep, near, and dead sounding. Are there any surefire ways to improve this in post? I've tried upping the reverb in FCP on the lav track but can't get it to sound any better. Thanks.

April 12th, 2005, 02:18 PM	#2
Jay Massengill Trustee Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Burlington Posts: 1,976	You can roll off the bass a little and add some mid and upper mids, but this may not be enough to make it sound natural. You could experiment with playing back your lav tracks from a very high quality speaker in a room similar to your original location. Then mic the speaker using your boom mic at various distances to get the sound you want. There are also plug-ins that utilize advanced reverb techniques that are modeled on samples from specific rooms. These can be costly but effective.