Should I be using multiple mics to record dialogue and sound effects?

[Josh Bass]

Audio in my experience is way easier to manipulate than video. You can chop up lines, sometimes even words, add, fx etc and make it blend/sound real/seamless (if you know what youre doing) way more easily than you can do the same thing with video. Probably something to do with how humans process sound vs visuals. That’s the difference.

[Paul R Johnson]

You need to consider who these people are and are they asking for things they want, or for things they've heard others ask for? This happens all the time. BBC now use producers straight from uni - who know nothing but know the jargon!

[Josh Bass]

Unless Im reading wrong this whole project is Ryan’s baby. So I assume he’s the producer/director.

[Paul R Johnson]

That clearly is a problem as the hired help appears to be running the ship, slapping him all the time. He needs to tell them what he wants and is paying for, and make some sensible decisions.

When you have a project. You set solvable problems - you need to do this, so to make it happen, X will happen. If you are the producer out the director, then you should know how many cameras you would like and how many you can afford. If you have a cast of thirty all talking on one screen, then one mic on a boom isn't going to cut it. However the intimate scene with two people close in probably can be done with a single mic. If the budget is not huge, and the talent not particularly well gifted as actors, then all this stuff about ambience and room sound/tone and Foley is probably best simulated afterwards. Let's be honest. real locations rather than studio sets are rarely nice sounding, so why would you want to capture them when you could do better with dry mics and a few SFX CDs. Back when we used lots of SFX on CD, I was a great fan of the Hollywood Edge collection and you hear so much of their stuff instead of real location sound. Simulation is controlled and almost infinitely tweak able - real life isn't.

If you have every worked in European Churches, you'll know the acoustics for music are generally wonderful. However, none of them record speaking well at all, so why would you even try to record decent audio for speech in them?

[Pete Cofrancesco]

The advent of film making tools inexpensive enough for the average Joe leads to these type of threads. The downside is you have a bunch of guys running around with dslrs on electronic gimbals with no knowledge or experience. Combine that with the millennial generation who rely on google for all their answers instead of thinking for themselves.

As an outside observer I can’t imagine a more unpleasant project. Trying to create a feature film by yourself, in over your head, no money, not the right equipment, little knowledge or experience. Spending count less hours on a message board asking what if this, what if that... with no end in sight. This could take years to complete with no payoff.

The short answer to all of Ryan’s questions, know and understand the standard practices and deviate from them at your own peril. You need experience and common sense to deal with all the problems that will arise for a specific situation. But without a firm foundation of the basics you’ll be forever running around trying to discern who’s opinion is the right one. Good schools teach students to think for themselves.

I don’t mean to be harsh but that’s the reality of it.

[Josh Bass]

I also assumed these advisors were just people he had asked about methodology, not necessarily people hired on and committed to the project. I could be wrong about all of this.

[Pete Cofrancesco]

He hasn’t said but it’s safe to assume no one is being paid, instead they’ve agreed to work on each other’s project for free. For example, he films a music video of their rock band, in return they help him with the audio for his movie.

[Ryan Elder]

Yeah that's kind of how it is, I filmed some stuff for them and they were up for returning the favor.

I could record all the Foley and sound effects dry and then manipulate in post, it's just I am worried about not being able to get a match with the dialogue that was recorded on location. In the past I wasn't able to get the most satisfactory matches, compared to recording all the Foley and sound effects in the same location afterwards.

I know what you mean when you say real locations do not have the best acoustics, but the dialogue is already recorded in those real locations, so aren't I stuck trying to match the acoustics with the sound effects and Foley anyway?

For example, one of my scenes coming out is a courtroom scene, and I want to record all the dialogue during shooting. Even if the courtroom does not have the greatest acoustics, I can't do all the Foley and sound effects, with a different reverb and acoustics added onto it, because then it will sound different than the courtroom acoustics. So aren't I forced to suffer with the same location acoustics, since all the dialogue is recorded from them? I'm just afraid that if I add better reverb and better acoustics, sure it will sound better, but it won't match the more crappy location acoustics of the dialogue, and that's what I'm afraid of.

[Josh Bass]

Nope, see that’s what those pros spend months doing is adding reverb and delay fx, eqing, etc. to those dry fx and tweaking until they match the courtroom (in your example) acoustics.

You have to understand there’s nothing “magical” about that environment...that wood (or whatever materials the room is made of) is going to dampen certain frequencies and emphasize others. The distance from the subject from the walls and the size of that room and its dimensions are going affect how the sound waves bounce around and how quickly theyre absorbed (reverb and delay characteristics). Once you know all that crap, you can add reverb and delay fx with those settings that match the real acoustics, eq, etc. and make any dry sound sound like it was recorded in that environment.

That is how its done. Its a tremendous amount of work, again but thats why theres usually dedicated department just devoted to the sound mix instead of one guy doing everything. It gives you ultra precise control on the mix compared to the substandard results of having baked in reverb/delay that cant be removed from those effects if you record them the way youre trying to. You will have a fixed amount of reverb/delay in anything you record the way you describe. You may decide in the mix you want it dryer or wetter and youll be more or less unable to do anything about that with sounds recorded the way you describe (difficult/impossible to remove reverb once its in there, adding reverb on top of more reverb gives weird unnatural results). I cant make it clearer than that. Anyone else correct anything I have wrong; I am not a sound pro.

[Ryan Elder]

Okay but the part I don't understand is, you said that the Foley and sound effects should match the room. So why not record that in the same room, as oppose to trying to match the room later. You give the what where and how to do things it seems, but not the why I feel, or I am just understand the why, that's all. Why make it dryer, or wetter, when you have to match the location anyway?

And yes, I wouldn't have a whole team doing the post production mixing, it would probably be all me.

Okay this might help me understand it. You say it's good to record everything dry so you have ultimate precise control. But the dialogue is not recorded dry, in post. So why isn't that, if you want precise control? If the filmmakers can accept not having precise control over the dialogue, then why are they so picky about the sound effects and Foley of everything else, if the dialogue is not as precise even?

There is just a contradiction in the belief that recording dry yields the best results, and that contradiction is, you still have to match it to the not so perfectly acoustic dialogue, so how does recording dry work, with that contradiction, which was never explained I thought.

[Paul R Johnson]

Foley is NEVER recorded live on location, it's a post production creation technique. It makes the sounds the picture requires that were not recorded.

If you record in any space, your brain draws conclusions from the sound. The same words recorded can tell the listener if they were spoken in an empty room, a room furnished, a room furnished with Windows in the countryside, or a furnished room in a busy city. Your brain can hear you are in a cathedral, a small church, a sports hall, an ice rink, a football stadium, in a helicopter, or standing in the basket of a hot air balloon. These things can be simulated in the studio from dry, clean audio. If your audio is contaminated with the clues from the real location these options are not open. You can usually make spaces bigger, but making them smaller can become very, very expensive and often impossible.

Film makers do care about dialogue, that's why so much of what you have heard or seen in cinema was re-recorded in replacement sessions. You can even do this kind of thing in audio software many people use, like Cubase! You take your location sound. The talent repeats their lines as close as they can, and then the software uses your location clip as a master and warps the new clip to fit it. Perfectly possible to do, if the producers care enough to fund the time and people.

Pretty much I view recording on location as an uncontrolled environment. Too many times you simply don't hear the errors on location and only discover them back at base. I see no contradictions?

[Brian Drysdale]

Dialogue does get replaced in post if the original isn't of high enough quality. It's probably done more than you think, sometimes it's recorded on location with the mic much closer than can be done during the actual take, while the actor is in the mood. It's then replaced in post, other times its recorded during post production.

The scheduling of ADR with the actors may depend on their contracts and availability. I've heard of it being done with the production team being in LA, while the actor is somewhere else in the world.

Sound recordists pride themselves on how much original dialogue is in the final mix,

You can record effects at the location, but usually time pressures usually mean revisiting the location after the shoot is finished. On some films I made, this was often done at night or on a Sunday morning, when there were few other noises around. However, the effects were pretty closely miked, so was probably a lot closer than a boom mic might be for many shots. Also, they might be recorded at a different location because the sound of an object (e,g. a door) was more interesting than the original

On the last short I made, apart from a few lines of dialogue, most of the sound track was created in post.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay that makes sense. And if I were to record sound a different location, I always make sure to get the mic in close. It's just I know how to do practical sound effects more than computer effects.

As for dialogue, I suppose everything would sound better if it were recorded in a studio later, to manipulate anyway I like, it's just a lot of actors in my experience don't seem to like to do ADR and the emotional performance was not as good.

[Brian Drysdale]

The controls and filters in a DAW are basically the same as found on a sound mixing desk. As in the analogue world, you need to experiment and play with them, listening to the results.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, when it comes to recording location audio, I don't bring a DAW, I bring a field recorder, unless you are talking about mixing with a DAW afterwards?