I'm having trouble storyboarding a movie because of covid restrictions.

[Pete Cofrancesco]

This is a technical issue that should get addressed when picking a location or when you're getting ready to film, not when story boarding. Changing the movie's aspect ratio or framing because you don't know how to deal with low ceilings is like Brian said the tail wagging the dog.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh it doesn't have anything to do with low ceilings, I just want to get the mic in close for the sound quality to be better in the wide shots, and hence why I wanted to frame the wide shots, without much headroom in order to get in closer for quality.

[Brian Drysdale]

If you can't get close enough with a shot gun mic on a boom, either use radio mic with a lav or ADR your dialogue or a rifle mic on the end of the boom, Although, with the latter, you need to be good on the boom, I've got a Sennheiser MKH 816 in my storeroom, the earlier models used to be standard kit for film sound recordists. If you ever see "Badlands" projected in the the wrong aspect ratio, you;ll see a 805 or 815 on the end of a boom coming into bottom frame.
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A wide shot with MCU head room will probably look bad, that's unless you're using TV style framing on your MCU, which can tend to have a lot more headroom than used in cinematic drama.

[Pete Cofrancesco]

Ryan why do the basic techniques of recording dialogue have to be explained to you? Most dialogue occurs in the CU or MCU. On the rare occasion it’s in the wide you use one of the methods Brian mentioned. It seems for every part of the process you come up with these weird approaches that don’t make sense followed by an explanation “well I just wanted to make sure...” If you had more experience on proper film you would know what needs to be done.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, but I want good dialogue for the wide as well. Especially for a couple of scenes so far, where I wasn't planning on getting any MCUs. Some scenes have multiple actors in and the plan was too two wides. One of of half the actors, then a reverse of the other half, so two wides. But that's it, since I won't time for MCUs of each actor, plus some of the characters are not more major characters so individual MCUs are not called for, for each person who speaks. Now some movies do this though, so I thought it was do-able therefore, if it's been done before.

[Brian Drysdale]

It's been done loads of times, but they've got the option of using more than a single shotgun mic on a boom.

[Pete Cofrancesco]

A professional who does this for a living who has a wealth of experience would know the proper approach for any given situation. You on the other hand spend your day on internet forums discussing half bake ideas based on your limited amateur experiences, coming up with solutions to previous attempts that weren't executed properly. These discussions revolve around you trying to over plan and over compensate for all your short comings whether they be lack of experience or proper equipment/location/etc needed for a professional movie.

[Ryan Elder]

Originally Posted by Brian Drysdale

It's been done loads of times, but they've got the option of using more than a single shotgun mic on a boom.

But there are a lot of movies that have been made with just boom mics though, haven't there been, especially before lavs were used? So how did they do it?

[Paul R Johnson]

They had people who knew what they were doing, proper sound stages that DON'T sound like cathedrals, or the open air on non-stormy days. However, the most important thing is the first one people. Skilled people, pro-active people, people that are worth the money they charge. Much better to not start fires than have detailed plans for fighting them.

[Ryan Elder]

Okay that makes sense. I can try to find a sound recorder/mixer who can pull it off then.

But this is why I thought a wide aspect ratio might be better, because then I can have say six actors in a wide shot, without having to have as much headroom then, if that makes sense. Or I thought it would be convenient anyway.

[Brian Drysdale]

Originally Posted by Ryan Elder

But there are a lot of movies that have been made with just boom mics though, haven't there been, especially before lavs were used? So how did they do it?

Often they had Fisher booms and they filmed in studios with proper acoustics,

Fisher Boom Introduction - YouTube

The average single person news crew goes out with more sound kit than you have.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, I had the fisher boom one one of my shoots before, from an audio person but I didn't know it was called a fisher boom. Thank for showing me. Watching the video now.

However, I was told before that booms don't work for wide shots, because there is too much headroom. So if they used fisherbooms before, how did they manage to get around the too much headroom problem, unless I am missing it?

[Brian Drysdale]

Because they were shooting in a studio where there's less reverberation and if you listen on some films, they're not that tightly miked. They may also have hidden the mics inside the set, I've done this on some corporates and it works extremely well on wide shots.

They could also use one or more Sennheiser MKH 805/805/816 mic on booms because they had top boom operators, You don't need to be that close with these mics. Here's a discussion on using them https://jwsoundgroup.net/index.php?/...big-shotguns/:

They had more gear and experience than you.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay. I have the NTG-3 mic shotgun mic, and the AT4053b. Should I use the NTG-3 for most of my indoor shots then, if you don't have to be as close with shotguns then? Or do you have to be closer with the NTG-3 as opposed to an 816?

I also tried attaching a couple of storyboard examples, to give an example of what I mean with mic headroom decisions, but I cannot figure out how to attach jpegs on here though if it's possible too?

[Brian Drysdale]

You've got the gear, why don't you test it?

You can be further away with a 816 or other similar mics than with any shotgun mic. However, they need to be used with care and accuracy.

You don't need to post storyboards, I'm sure everyone knows what a wide shot looks like.

Another alternative is ADR, it's pretty easy these days. You can get the actors to deliver their lines again after you have the good take. That method was used on a very low budget feature I worked on and you weren't aware of any dialogue issues.