Here’s a tip for recording dialog that those of a more visual stripe may find both surprising and useful. Roles are blurring. As media distribution has accelerated and the cost of production equipment has come down, many check-writers have expected labor costs to follow suit, and technicians of various stripes have had to become competent at non-traditional tasks. In the realm of audio for video, this has brought some over-simplification of what is in fact a craft every bit as complex and challenging as cinematography. I’ll leave the in-depth instruction to the seasoned recordists, but here’s a tip from the sound world that may just kick your one-man-band dialog recording up a notch or two. In the film and video industries, the iconic status of the shotgun mic, wrapped in bedraggled feline, has led many shooters to think of it as an accepted all-around microphone. For many, learning of the directional pickup pattern of this instrument is quite enough to convince them that it is the right tool to live at the end of their boom ninety percent of the time. As it turns out, the shotgun mic is one of the most specialized microphones of recording history, and its design makes it optimal for only a slim range of applications. Interference Tube Design How does a shotgun work? The basic principle is that of the interference tube. Omni-directional microphones have a diaphragm that is open to the world on one side, but almost fully sealed on the other side....
Published By: CineD - Friday, 10 August, 2018