Studio indoors. Allan Black if you are reading.

[Bob Hart]

I look like getting involved in a low-budget feature shoot which may involve sometimes up to three SI2Ks in a multi-cam sequence.

For dialogue recording we can go into the cameras from a Sound Devices mixer at 48K 16bit two channels. The recovered audio is adequate for dialogue purposes. There may be be a Sound Devices digital audio recorder on the job as well in which case the camera audio will revert to reference track.

Whilst we have a Rode NTG1 for dialogue, I have found that dialogue audio indoors can be sweeter sounding with the Rode NT2a mikes I bought in and used on a symphonic orchestra recording. I did not have to resell them afterwards as was originally the scheme.

I have observed on some BTS extras for major movies indoors, that directional mikes like short shotguns are not used but a smaller, apparently omnidirectional mike on a boom pole.

My question is, except for the extra weight and the boom swinger getting the shakes, it is worthwhile using the NT2a indoors switched either figure eight or directional. More to the point, is anyone already doing this? Most of the indies here seem to be wedlocked to directional mikes indoors.

Not being a soundie, I am in your hands for suggestions. There is no budget for any other than the existing selection of mikes. We will have sound blankets for some lively environments.

Rode NTG1.
Sony C74.
Rode NT2a
Sony ECM-674 - a little more mellow and lower gain than the Rode NTG1 but slightly more directional.
Sony ECM-55 body mike - no radio pack.

Whilst we may have a soundie who has good gear and knows his stuff, this being a low budget project, a good soundie may not prepared to get out of bed for lower than standard reward. "Lovers" of the craft prepared to work for the sawdust of the meatworks floor and a mouthful of dominos Pizza sometimes yield less than ideal results.

I am just after hedging my bets against a last-minute "can you do this I know you can". I have been ambushed before and I am getting a bit too old for desperate hasty scrambling.

Any advice is appreciated.

[Charles Newcomb]

Originally Posted by Bob Hart

Any advice is appreciated.

Don't eat yellow snow.

And since I know about as much about sound as I do about nuclear physics, I can't help other than the yellow snow advisory.

I will be interested in reading qualified responses, however.

G'day, Bob.

Charles

[Bob Hart]

Yellow snow?

Damn. - I thought I had rediscovered "Golden West Aerated Waters" flavour "American Cream And Soda" which I preferred half-frozen. It was taken off the market when the big players like Coca Cola et.al. took over out here.

The chemistry in the fizz mist which came off it somehow relieved my childhood asthma when I was a kid in olden times way before things like Ventolin came along.

All the best for the upcoming festive season. I guess the creatures which abound in your neighbourhood are digging their winter burrows and going out of sight by now.

[Charles Newcomb]

That they are, except the foxes. They still come around to mooch in the morning (because the mice & chipmunks and other varmints are scarce now), but they don't stick around too long because because it's so friggin' cold out. They skee-daddle back to their dens immediately after their morning mooch. Red foxes become quite tame if you let them.

Orange creme soda was one of my favorites, back in the day. But those days are gone now that I'm a borderline diabetic. We still have vanilla-creme available, too. Shall I send you a case of it?

Sorry about hijacking the thread.

[Colin McDonald]

You are surely not thinking of using it on a boom??

The Rode NT-2A weighs .860Kg (nearly 2lb) and the RM2 ring mount, AFAIK the lightest mount to hold it on a boom, weighs .059Kg - together that's .919Kg - definitely over 2 lb. It would probably be far too sensitive to handling noise to use like that, so you might have to include something like the SM6 shock mount which weighs .682Kg (together that's a Guinness Book of Records entry for a boom mic at 1.542Kg). OK you could unscrew the pop filter bit and save a few ounces, but who is going to hold a 3lb mic at the end of a boom?
Even if you clamped the boom on to a light stand it would be a liability.

I am normally up for jolly caper but I positively refuse to try it out for you even for a minute despite the fact that I have all the bits sitting right here in front of me here as I type.

[Bob Hart]

Way back when Noah was a pup in the late seventies, I built a pole of my own from scrap aluminium tube I found in an industrial tip.

The first pole was too light. It bend and folded like a melted candle with the weight of the heavy Sony C74 mike I was shivering and shaking, trying to hold up and aim. So it obviously needed to be stronger. The next was made out of thicker walled tube.

For a sound muff I used a felt covered paper aircleaner segment from an ore truck. It was a "used" aircleaner and took some airblasting to shift all the gathered fine red dust. It worked fairly well but a light shower of rain fixed it. It was a dreadful brute to hold, so I made a counterbalance for it and a sliding shoulder sling with lock-off made of automotive seatbelts. Think whipper-snipper ( weedwhacker pole on roids ).

At the time I thought it was a lack-of-fitness issue on my part. I had never seen a real boom pole in the flesh and did not know what I was missing until I tried one of the "real" poles. As for flying the NT2a, I had contemplated doing it with the old heavy pole and sling.

[Colin McDonald]

OK - so I'm a wimp. :-)

Still think there are easier ways of micing indoor dialogue.

[Bob Hart]

Wimp? - More likely I am the glutton for punishment. You would have loved the large wind muff I made for the C76 mike out of skeletonised sewer pipe and other bits and pieces. Needless to say, it is a historical artifact along with the mike which is not much to write home about with self-noise fit to raise the dead.

As I was living in an isolated environment for some years, it was a case of do-it-myself learning - When I think back on it, so much wasted time and dead ends, like trying to make a different sort of ENG-style steadycam around about the time the real steadycam was introduced, constructed out of a sort of homemade shoulder yoke, countermass like batteries and automotive tie-rod ends - worked but a fail ( too heavy ).

I made a one-man ride-on crane/dolly out of bediron, carparts and airconditioner pulleys with automatic tilt for height and self-equalising to selected stop height without bounce, worked but a fail, ( too heavy ) and intimidating to the "rider", due to the foot operated controls for trim ballast. I was using water-ballast and got stuck up in the thing for several hours in the middle of the night too ashamed to call for help.

Then came the forementioned mike shield.

Living in the city and discovering the internet is a wonderful thing - having ready access to everyone else's knowledge. I am fervently hoping this production will find a good soundie with his own good gear. If there's one thing I cannot abide with low-budget films is muffled voice work.