I have an opportunity to have two boom ops on set for a shoot next week. The shoot day will include two locations, one outdoor and one indoor. The mics available are Sennheiser ME-66 and ME-67 shotguns and two Oktava MK-012 hypercardiod mics. The plan is to use the Sennheisers outdoors and the Oktava indoors.

Is using two boom ops a good idea? I'm kinda worried about inconsistent audio and even booms and boom shadows interferring with camera sight lines.

Any comments, use cases, etc. from the crowd?

Thanks!

Even one inexperienced boom op can be a disaster. Make sure the the booms are on separate tracks,. If the booms can't get in close enough, it would matter anyway, cause the tracks will be useless. Have all the talent wired as well. They're will be a sound mixer I would assume.

You should definitely have the talent mic'd on-body as well as boomed.

Two is one, and one is none. Redundant audio recording is the way to go.

What kind of mixer/recorder setup are you using?

Shadows and such? You have a crew.....direct them.

Is the talent seated or moving? Just because you have boom operators does not mean they should be touching the boom. If the talent is not in motion use fishing pole holders (the video kind) on c-stands.

Steve

Hi Bob,

The "no shotguns inside" rule is an oversimplification. There are plenty of outside locations (any with hard reflective surfaces and unwanted off axis mid and low frequency sound sources) that make a shotgun a bad choice.

More on that here: Ty Ford Mic Tutorial - YouTube

So your oktavas may be just fine outside if you can keep the wind of of them.

How many talent doing what?

Regards,

Ty Ford