experiences with Dual Mic setup.

[Ken Lamug]

I will be getting two Mic's Oktava MK012 hyper(interior/exterior scenes) and NTG2 Rode (exterior scenes).

I was wondering if there are any advantages of using both Mic's on separate channels. One as a Shotgun and one as a boom (both feeding into the camera). Most of the scenes will be hand held and moving around with the actors and will only really have 2 crew members, one holding the cam and one as a boom/sound guy.

Or is it better to simply use one or the other and save to both channels? Has anyone tried this setup and what is your suggestion?

I have not received the products yet so I am not able to really test at this time.

Thank you.

[David Tamés]

If you're going to be shooting handheld, especially when there's lots of action, it's always better to use two microphones. That way, the boom person stays on whoever is talking, the camera can point to something else, and when the boom mic is off camera recording an off camera speaker and the person on camera starts to talk, you now have the camera mic as a backup in the event the boom mic does not get into position right away.

It presents a nightmare in the sound editing, but the extra work is worth it. In some situations I've even used two mics on two booms when actors were moving around alot. Better to have a choice of two positions in post. More work, better sound.

For solo-lobo shooting, I'll sometimes put two mics on the camera, a shotgun and an omni. If someone is to the side of the camera and talking, I have the omni to mix in to make the off-axis sound of the shotgun sound less colored. Shotguns sound terrible off-axis. Mixing in some sound from an omni on the mic helps the off axis dialog. All this mixing, of course, is going on in post. I simply record to two channels and deal with the selection and/or mixing later.

I prefer to record discrete channels on the set. If I need more channels, I keep a Microtrack 24/96 Compact Flash recorder in my sound kit, works well when I need a third or fourth channel. A second camera can also be used as a third and fourth channel. Again, makes for more work in the mix, but better than looping any day.

Better yet, I plan to purchase an M-S Microphone to repalce my makeshift shotgun-omni arrrangement. This gives me a figure eight capturing the Left and Right, and the Shotgun capturing the center. All in one unit. In the mix you can extract the dialog from the Left, Center, or Right. You can also decode the M-S (Middle-Side) and extract stereo. But that's not how I use it. I've done some tests and the results are fabulous. Of course, this only works if you're close and intimate with your subjects. But that's how I prefer to shoot verite.