Indoor recording
 

Hi all,
I found myself working in the possibly worst audio environment: a school with large empty rooms, parallel walls, long corridors, nearly no absorbing surfaces and screaming teenagers.
I pick up sounds and voices with a Sennheiser lav when I'm lucky but for the 80% of the time I use a MKH416. The signal goes to a PSC mk4II mixer and from there to a Panasonic DVX 100. Of course the sound i get, although most of the times intellegible, is NOT GOOD. The equipment I'm using is not mine so there's nothing I can atually do to change anything but I'd like to ask you anyway what would you do in my recording situation if you were to buy the stuff you'd need for this job.
Many here say that the Shoeps cmc641 is one of the best Hyper for indoor use. The problem in my case is that many times I cannot get close enough to the speaker and -according to Ty Ford- when using a cmc641 (or any shotgun, I'd say) "you need to be 18 inches or closer". Now, what when you can't get close enough?
Second question: how to set the levels on the DVX 100?
Thanks a lot
pietro

Sorry, the mixer is a PSC M4 mkII.
And I use a boom pole..

Well, there's nothing that will substitute for proper mic placement, but in an indoor setting a hypercardioid will usually give better results than a shotgun for the same placement.

Mebe' you should be using the lav 80% and the shot 20%?

With reverberant rooms you *must* close-mic, whether with lav or boom, no matter what mic is on the end of the boom. There's really no other choice.

Bless you Pietro. You listened and remembered!

There are some situations in which you can't get good sound. In the movies, you budget extra for ADR (Automatic Dialog Replacement).

In the real world you end up with sucky audio.

If you had enough PZM mics to line the walls and run each one through its own channel of an automatic mic mixer.....nah, nevermind

What exactly are you trying to record?

Regards,

Ty Ford

It is something between a reality and a doc. We spend two weeks in a school filming the boys who prepare a show. There are bands, dancers, actors and so on. They scream a lot, sometimes a problem booming and trying to lower the levels.. some other times they talk toghether with no order and it is hard to follow them. The good thing is that being what it is nobody complains about the audio, which sounds very "real".
I asked about the Shoeps because I think I read in their website that it was good for picking up sounds from a greater distance than a normal shotgun, this would be good when you can't get very close to the guy who is speaking. I know that mics are not lenses and that a tele mic does not exist..
Thanks a lot!

Pietro,

As much as I like the Shoeps CMC641, most of the reality shows over here use wireless on principles with maybe a boom mic for other things. Sometimes that's a dozen wireless that are live mixed and also iso-recorded incase something is missed.

If articulate dialog is important, you need to be close.

Yours sounds like a very challenging situation.

Regards,

Ty Ford

Steve, Seth, Ty, thanks a lot for your help.
Mine actually IS a very challenging situation!
Even if we had many wireless lavs I wouldn't use more than two at a time since the sound is recorded in the camcorder's two channels, which I want to give the editor clean (one mic - one channel).
Anyway I'm having fun with this job and I'm getting more and more interested in this audio-for-video thing, so here's another question for you: what would you buy if you had to be the sound person of a light, digital troupe? Lets say a wireless lav (a good one, I'd like to hide it sometimes), a mic with suspension, windshield and boom pole (shotgun or hyper? hopefully in the future I won't be working in schools again but surely still indoor 50% of the times), a field mixer and whatever else needed. Budget around 5-6 Kusd, may be something more.
Hope to hear soon from you
pietro

Ciao Pietro,

Which camera do you now have?

Regards,

Ty Ford

Ciao Ty,
I'm currently using a Panasonic 100, mini DV.