Hyper or shotgun in large indoor area??
 

I am going to be shooting a scene inside a large (approx 5,000 sq ft) auto shop. Concrete walls and floor. Metal roof that is 20' high. Basically a large open area with a few cars parked around and a couple metal hydraulic lifts.

I am confused if I should use a hypercardiod since it is indoors . . . or if it is so large that it would be more like shooting outside and then I should use a short shotgun.

Any advice will be greatly appreciated. (mic will be on a boom pole for this shoot)

Thanks!

Bill

Are you talking a Sennheiser 416 vs a Schoeps MK41? Or some other options. I would try and do a test between the options you have. You don't say how many people are in the scene you need to cover. I would lean towards a good Hyper for coverage of a couple of people. If your boom operator is good ether could work

How noisy is it and how close can you get the mic? Generally I'd use the hypercardiod unless you needed more reach. If you get a chance do a test.

Shotguns are much more susceptible to room reflections than cardioid variants are. I would not use a shotgun in your situation, it will sound thin and imprecise. The only time you should possibly use a shotgun indoor are in dead rooms with no reverberation or reflective surfaces nearby. It sounds as if your entire huge place will be filled with nothing but reverberation and reflective surfaces.

Dan

Thanks for all the feedback guys.

The scene will have 3 people who will all be in very close proximity to each other. I can get the boom down to about 2 feet above them for a lot of the shoot.

If I get time to test I will do it, but it sounds like the Hyper is my safer choice.

Thanks!

Bill

I'd definitely try both and experience the results.... and of-course report back.

Yes, definitely do a location scout if at all possible. Remember the difference is not indoors versus outdoors, per se. Rather it's a matter of reflections that may hit the mic - you can have outdoors locations with a lot of reflections - a ball court or paved playground next to a brick school building, for instance - or a reflection free interior - a sound-treated soundstage, for example. You want to avoid the 'gun in the presence of signifigant reflections.

The hypercardiod indoors/shotgun outdoors rule is a lot more nebulous than people realize. It depends a lot on which particular hypercardiod and shotgun you are talking about, as well as the room acoustics, distances involved, extraneous noise that happens to be on the set, and the nature of said noise. There's also a fair amount of mystery. I'm not kidding. I have been in many situations where I was sure a particular mic was going to sound better than another one, and was proven wrong. That's the thing with mics in general actually.

Absolutely true (based on my 25+ years of shooting.)

There is nothing 'nebulous' about it.

Hmmm timely thread.

I have a shoot on Thursday inside a very tiny liquor store. I am headed over there tonight to assess the audio situation. I will be taking an ME66 and an Oktava hyper to test with. I'll post my findings here after if y'all interested.