mic setup for this wide shot? at DVinfo.net

Dennis Stevens · December 21st, 2006, 12:24 PM

Hi-
Here's the scenario. 2 actors, one sitting, the other standing and walking around the room. A fair amount of dialog during a wide shot where we see both characters.

The sitting character is off to the side, so I found a shotgun mic captured his dialogue fine. The standing/walking character is moving around, and the camera is wide. Her dialog is a little low. But the shot was too wide for a mic on a boom.

I was thinking I should have put a wireless mic on the standing character with the wireless on one channel put the shotgun mic on the other channel.

Of course, I don't really know anything about mixing sound, so I'm not sure if that would really work. Wouldn't I need to somehow mix the two channels?

Steve House · December 21st, 2006, 01:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dennis Stevens

Hi-
Here's the scenario. 2 actors, one sitting, the other standing and walking around the room. A fair amount of dialog during a wide shot where we see both characters.

The sitting character is off to the side, so I found a shotgun mic captured his dialogue fine. The standing/walking character is moving around, and the camera is wide. Her dialog is a little low. But the shot was too wide for a mic on a boom.

I was thinking I should have put a wireless mic on the standing character with the wireless on one channel put the shotgun mic on the other channel.

Of course, I don't really know anything about mixing sound, so I'm not sure if that would really work. Wouldn't I need to somehow mix the two channels?

Should work fine. You'd mix them, yes, but probably not until post as you intercut the two dialog streams. You'd have one track with the shotgun and you'd either mute or edit out the other character's voice from it and the second track would be the lav'd character, also with the other character's voice that the mic might have picked up cut out. The fact that the two channels are often considered Left and Right doesn't mean anything - dialog is mono anyway and usually ends up equally on both channels in the final mix. By the way, this is called 'checkerboarding' and is often done in dialog editing, with each character having their own audio track containing just that character's portion of the dialog.

Ralph Keyser · December 21st, 2006, 03:15 PM

Your plan for the wide should be fine. Use Steve's suggestion and go to separate channels and leave the decision for post. When they go in for close-ups, you should be able to cover this with a boom, so encourage (suggest? whatever you can do) them to run the whole scene instead of just lines. It's pretty unusual to do an entire scene with important dialog in only a wide shot.

Dennis Stevens · December 21st, 2006, 03:32 PM

Thanks. Yeah, the scene goes to closeups pretty quickly, but there's a couple lines that for stylistic reasons, I wanted to stay wide.

December 21st, 2006, 12:24 PM	#1
Dennis Stevens Major Player Join Date: May 2006 Location: Boston, Massachusetts Posts: 425	mic setup for this wide shot? Hi- Here's the scenario. 2 actors, one sitting, the other standing and walking around the room. A fair amount of dialog during a wide shot where we see both characters. The sitting character is off to the side, so I found a shotgun mic captured his dialogue fine. The standing/walking character is moving around, and the camera is wide. Her dialog is a little low. But the shot was too wide for a mic on a boom. I was thinking I should have put a wireless mic on the standing character with the wireless on one channel put the shotgun mic on the other channel. Of course, I don't really know anything about mixing sound, so I'm not sure if that would really work. Wouldn't I need to somehow mix the two channels?

December 21st, 2006, 03:15 PM	#3
Ralph Keyser Major Player Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Albuquerque, New Mexico USA Posts: 287	Your plan for the wide should be fine. Use Steve's suggestion and go to separate channels and leave the decision for post. When they go in for close-ups, you should be able to cover this with a boom, so encourage (suggest? whatever you can do) them to run the whole scene instead of just lines. It's pretty unusual to do an entire scene with important dialog in only a wide shot.

December 21st, 2006, 03:32 PM	#4
Dennis Stevens Major Player Join Date: May 2006 Location: Boston, Massachusetts Posts: 425	Thanks. Yeah, the scene goes to closeups pretty quickly, but there's a couple lines that for stylistic reasons, I wanted to stay wide.