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

[Ryan Elder]

Oh well I talked to one of them more tonight and he said his reasons for wanting to place mics all over a scene and get surround sound during production is because it will sound much better than in post, and he said it gives you more coverage, compared to just recording the actors voices close up only, with no other coverage. He says it's risky, not having that extra coverage in case something goes wrong in post.

He also says to create a surround sound mix in post from mono tracks is a lot more work, and by doing it during shooting, we would be saving ourselves lot of post time. So those are his reasons. He also says that I should record all of my background sounds during shooting as well, but I said that I want to have a clean dialogue track in case, I wanted to edit around the background sounds and therefore, keep the background sounds separate. He says that he can totally tell when background sounds have been added in after the fact though, and that audiences are not stupid on that He also says audiences can tell the difference between a natural surround sound track that was captured during shooting, compared to one created in post from mono tracks. Do you think that's true though?

[Richard Crowley]

It might sound "true enough" for a zero-budget, limited-schedule amateur production.
But the people who do that for a living wouldn't dream of such a workflow.

[Seth Bloombaum]

Originally Posted by Ryan Wray

Oh well I talked to one of them more tonight and he said his reasons...

If you want to work with him, go do it. You might review his previous work. Has he done any projects like the one you’re considering? How do they sound? How did he accomplish that? Does he have references from people who seem credible? Have his films hit the festivals you’re interested in?

Originally Posted by Richard Crowley

It might sound "true enough" for a zero-budget, limited-schedule amateur production.
But the people who do that for a living wouldn't dream of such a workflow.

Richard sums it up nicely; you’ve asked these questions repeatedly and have received consistent answers from a group of very experienced people. You’ll find these same answers in Jay Rose’s excellent books.

I guess you don’t want to accept the ideas and best practices shared freely in this thread. We all want you to succeed. You don’t have to do things my way, or anybody else’s way, but, these practices have stood the test of time and are still with us as primary workflows in dialog recording for film and video. 90(?) years of sound for film and 50+ of sound for video means something. Many approaches have been tried. All working pros have made many mistakes in their work, the good ones have learned from them and kept going.

It’s true that a sound person in front of you can do some recording on your project, and forum contributors can’t. It seems like you don’t have a lot of choices for sound recordists in your community. That’s a tough situation to figure out, you have my sympathy. But nobody here is helping you to rationalize your potential recordist’s very unconventional approach. It’s still wrong.

If it hasn’t been said clearly enough, here it is: Distantly recorded sound is bad sound. Dialog recordings where the sound perspective (distance, direction, placement) changes during a shot don’t track with the language of film, and viewers/listeners may perceive miscues in which it doesn’t sound like the other clips/shows/films they’ve spent a lifetime listening to.

Use of surround playback for ambiences is more than most do, except for scenes that are meant to have an immersive sound experience in films that can afford the approach. Battlefields, for example. Other scenes with an emphasis on effects for immersion.

Use of surround playback for dialog violates one of the primary aesthetics of sound for film: Dialog is direct and mono, and comes from the center of a L/R stereo mix or the center speaker of a surround mix.

Professional recordists (almost) never record ambiences during dialog takes because not having control in post of dialog level independently of background sound leads to them not being hired for the next production. They tend to be pretty conservative about sticking to best practices approaches. Location sound mixers usually have to advocate for production time for them to collect such ambience recordings.

There will be exceptions for ambiences/Atmos that can only be reasonably captured at a particular time. That *doesn’t* include typical dialog scenes.

But most productions go to the SFX library and/or foley, or send out an SFX recordist without a camera crew, for reasons of efficiency and money.

I do wish you luck on your next film.

[Richard Crowley]

"Distantly recorded sound is bad sound."

Write that on the chalk-board 100 times.

[Ryan Elder]

That's true, he just wanted distant recorded sound as background ambience. But I feel that recording sound close is better, and I never needed it to be recorded distantly, accept for very peculiar scenes, such as someone shouting from way for away or something like that. I won't work with them, as they seem to think that this is the way to do it, from recording bands, but I prefer the boom mic close up, and don't mind creating surround sound in post, and don't feel that it's too much work, that I should do get it during shooting, like they do.

Plus I feel there way is much more risky, cause if an actor walks out of the path of one mic, into another, you might hear it in a very obvious way, and it might not sound like he/she are naturally moving throughout the room. It's just way too risky, and I'm not going to do it there way... They say it gets you more coverage, but it's risky and problematic coverage, it seems.

[Roger Gunkel]

If you friend's way was correct, every sound recordist in the business would be out of work! 'Audiences can tell the difference between a natural sound track and one created in post'. I'm sure he is quite correct on that point, which is why a naturally recorded sound track on a blockbuster movie would have the audience walking out in droves and the film company going out of business!! Audiences don't want a natural sound track, they want something where their focus is drawn to what the director wants them to see and hear, not the sound of someone mowing their lawn off set!

You will be better off recording the sound on your own than using these know all know nothing friends who have recorded a couple of bands- whoopee doo- big deal. You won't find any better advice anywhere from dyed in the wool professionals than you have had on this forum, so ignore it at you peril!

Roger

[Pete Cofrancesco]

If you want your friends to “help” you for free let them do it their way. Let us know how it turns out.

[Ryan Elder]

Yep you guys are right, I won't go by their advice. I was also wondering, when it comes to surround sound, should the music also have six channels of music in the surround sound mix, or no?

[Richard Crowley]

There is someone named "Ryan Elder" over on Creative Cow / Audio Professionals who is asking almost exactly the same questions as you are here. If that is not you with an alias name, then go over there and read the responses already posted to your questions.

tl;dr NO

[Pete Cofrancesco]

Originally Posted by Richard Crowley

There is someone named "Ryan Elder" over on Creative Cow / Audio Professionals who is asking almost exactly the same questions as you are here. If that is not you with an alias name, then go over there and read the responses already posted to your questions.

tl;dr NO

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/30/877574#877574

Lol, but his name is Ryan right?

Looks like he got the same answer there too.

I recognize Ty Ford, he used to post here and very knowledgeable about audio.

[Roger Gunkel]

Ryan, have you considered that you might be taking on too much with you project? Your knowledge of the most basic aspects of audio recording seems to be limited to say the least. You seem to be doubting the advice of some of the best people in the business on two forums because your no knowledge friends are telling you differently.

So there is a parade of soldiers marching in perfect step down the road, all that is except for one soldier who is marching right left whilst every other soldier is marching left right. An officer asks him why he is out of step with the rest of the men. His friend in the crowd hears the officer and says " You are incorrect, my friend is the only one in step and all the others have got it wrong"!!!

Good luck with your project :-)

Roger

[David Peterson]

Originally Posted by Ryan Wray

I was told by a couple of others in the audio business that instead of using one boom mic to record all of the dialogue that I should have multiple mics around the scene, to create a surround sound mix, live while shooting, cause it's better to spend the extra money on mics to do it while shooting then to create surround sound in post, which won't sound as natural.

Anybody suggesting that for dialogue scenes I bet has no real experience on professional film sets.

And *IF* you do plan to go down this path anyway, then you had better have the budget to afford a three person (or even bigger) sound department

[David Peterson]

Originally Posted by Ryan Wray

Oh okay, well with lav mics you cannot do a surround sound mix in production during shooting though, like they are suggesting, so why did lavs outphase plant mics, if you cannot get surround with them then?

Because "usually" (depending on factors to do with costume / blocking / etc) the lavs will give much better dialogue than plant mics will, unless you're lucky with the circumstances. As quite simply lavs will be much much closer than plant mics will be (unless... the cards fall just right with blocking etc so you can hide the mics in just the right spots. But you'd need: 1st a very skilled sound team, & 2nd a sound team which is larger than just one person and is probably three people or more).

[David Peterson]

Originally Posted by Seth Bloombaum

I work with a lot of students. My advice is to understand and gain skills with the tools and methods that are acknowledged as typical or best practices approaches before jumping in to anything else.

Here is a ranked list of expected faithfulness of a dialog recording when properly used:
1) Hypercardiod or short shotgun on a boom (which one depends on the recording environment)
2) Wired lavs
3) Wireless lavs
4) Plant mics

Agreed.

Except even wired lavs are not really used much. Due to being somewhat impractical (you're severely limiting their movement), and being a rather small cost saving in the overall grand scheme of things.

Originally Posted by Ryan Wray

Okay thanks. Yeah they want to get the surround sound mix during shooting, so they don't have to do it in post. They just say during shooting it will sound more natural, rather than manipulating the surround in post.

They're idiots.
Or lazy.
Or both.

Originally Posted by Ryan Wray

But I do not know where to put all these plant mics without creating severe blocking limitations, as well as having an awkwardly staged set, in order to hide the plant mics.

Exactly. This is why plant mics are a limited use niche tool, and are not your primary way to get audio in usual circumstances.

Originally Posted by Ryan Wray

They also say that having plant mics for surround sound will give me a natural room ambiance sound, that you just can't get in post, but when shooting in real locations, I actually like to cut down on room ambiance, cause most locations we shoot in, are not ideal for the taking full advantage ambiance, if that makes sense?

Are you shooting in a crystal clear perfect sound stage? No.
(and even in that situation, it is unlikely plant mics would be the *optimal* main choice)

[David Peterson]

Originally Posted by Ryan Wray

Oh well they just have been recording audio for a lot longer than I have, and unlike me, who learned on my own, they actually went to school for it. However, they spend all of their careers recording music bands though, and the bands I guess prefer to play all their instruments simultaneously, rather than record each sound at a time, so maybe that is why the idea of putting every little sound together in post feels incorrect to them maybe?

They're so very different what you're talking about.

Would you assume an Aussie Rules player knows anything about NFL just because both involve running around kicking a ball and stuff? No, that would be totally silly.

Six months of experience on a professional film set in a sound department would soundly thrash six years of experience recording bands.

They're coming from this from the completely wrong perspective, recording a band is not the same as recording a film.

At the point in time I feel you'd be better off in the long run 100% ignoring them, as whatever advice they're giving you they might get right by luck is completely negating by all the horrible B.S. they'd be telling you.