"RED the 35mm Slayer" + Audio budget issues

[Jochen Schmidt-Hambrock]

I,ve worked with those rigs in various surroundings (even recording Voodoo rituals in West Africa for a doc).
They are perfect for capturing the "whole" of a scene.
But they are severely limited if you want to catch dialog in a noisy ambience - because the ambience will be as loud as your dialog = instand ADR session.

Jochen

 

[Billy Summers]

That's what I'm sayin
When are you ever TRYING to get the ambiance as loud as the dialog?
I guess for roomtone...
and doc stuff, sometimes

 

[luis bustamante]

I,ve worked with those rigs in various surroundings (even recording Voodoo rituals in West Africa for a doc).
They are perfect for capturing the "whole" of a scene.
But they are severely limited if you want to catch dialog in a noisy ambience - because the ambience will be as loud as your dialog = instand ADR session.

Jochen

Thanks or the info. That's exactly what I suspected. If this new mike they're offering (Soundfield SPS200) is a good deal I am thinking of using it fixed to the camera (using all 4 audio inputs) to have the sound perspective aligned to the POV of the camera and when needed (and to avoid ADR which I also hate) use a traditional sound setup with an external audio recorder & shotgun mike ADDITIONAL to the surround mike on the camera, that way in post we can mix the individual dialogues from the shotgun with the surround files coming from the soundfield mike, and add foley, SFX and everything else on top of that. Of course, once we have the gear we'll be testing this setup thoroughly before going into actual shooting but what do you think? Does it sounds like a good idea?

Two more quick questions Jochen: What's been your experience with the B format? How good does the soundfield mike design captures the complete soundscape?

cheers

 

[Sanjin Jukic]

For all of you interested in every segment or aspect of audio recording, sound editing, ADR and sound mixing in a film production have a look at the web movies from the Production Diary for King Kong by Peter Jackson (there you can see and learn about other parts of the film production too, all for free). By the way King Kong won 2 Oscars for audio 2005: 1.Best Achievement in Sound and 2.Best Achievement in Sound Editing >> http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0360717/awards.

http://www.kongisking.net/kong2005/proddiary/

 

[Jochen Schmidt-Hambrock]

I,ve never used b-format.

For using the mike on top of the camera: It is a big decision in dubbing to spin the whole soundfield. It could be quite distracting. Even if you pan the camera it might be better to keep the audio perspective locked.

Check out how many times dialog stays in the center speaker even if the people speaking move around.

Jochen

 

[ericyoung]

Tom, all you need to do is buy a Holophone H4 -

http://holophone.com/products_h4.html

like I plan to do and you will have captured perfect sound like your perfect image. ;-)

How would you record 6 channels of sound on a typical camcorder? And if you used the downmixed stereo output, any unwanted off sound on one or more of the channels would be permanently embedded in the mix.

See this as only being practical in controlled studio conditions or rather unusual real locations where you don't have undesirable audio which you want to avoid picking up. Isn't that why we have directional mics rather than using omnis for everything after all?

Still it's a potentially useful tool in certain circumstances.

 

[luis bustamante]

I,ve never used b-format.

For using the mike on top of the camera: It is a big decision in dubbing to spin the whole soundfield. It could be quite distracting. Even if you pan the camera it might be better to keep the audio perspective locked.

Check out how many times dialog stays in the center speaker even if the people speaking move around.

Jochen

thanks for your input, jochen, it's greatly appreciated! All that you say is what I've also been thinking of, alas, when we get our toys we'll test all possibles setups.

cheers