In-car/vehicle dialog audio
 

Hi, I just did a test on some in-car dialog recording for an indie project. At first it seemed like the car was pretty quiet but the Mic's just seem to pickup all the road noise and wind noise. I was able to minimize this in post. When played on my TV the noise is very low and dialog was acceptable but on my headphone on the PC the noise seems amplified so I am worried.

I've tested with both the NTG2 Mic and Oktava MK012. I am now considering going Lapel/Lavaliere Mic. I was looking at an AT831B since I need to get two.
Is this the right move or is there a better option?

The lavalier mikes will get closer to the voice source but may also pick up a lot of vehicle noise as they tend to be warm mikes and being down on the lower neck will be closer to engine and transmission sound.

I have seen mikes stuck up on the windscreen pillar in the top corner with a thick dag of blue tack (poster putty). (One got left there in shot in "The Three Burials of Melchiades Estrada".)

On older vehicles like Toyota Lancruisers, you may find a sweet spot on the windscreen itself as these were mounted to the body with rubber.

Later build small sedans have the glass bonded to the vehicle as part of the loadbearing structure so may be more acoustically conductive of mechanical noise.

I think I read on Indieclub of lav mikes being placed on the visor of baseball caps out of sight and working well.

Another solution suggested to me years ago was to blue tack a lav mike onto a piece of mirror glass with about 1mm clearance between the end of the mike and the mirror with the mike facing directly toward the mirror to create a pressure zone mike,.

Then this mirror is bluetacked to the plastic front dash or instrument panel of the vehicle. The sweet spot has to be hunted for. The new generation of videoconferencing pressure zone mikes might work.

Four cylinder cars can be very drummy. Also suggested was stuffing as much loose material like blankets or old clothing into the floorwells, up under the dash, under the seats and on the backseat over the wheelwells and up the sides of rear doors to dampen transmission and road noise.

I'm no sound engineer so don't take much notice of my ramblings.

You might try something like the akg c 747. It's a tiny shotgun so it may allow better placement than the rode. I've never used the 831 in a car but it's sounds nice and full. It may be cheaper and simpler in the long run to do adr. If you have a 65 dart adr is the way to go. 2005 Honda you can probably get away with location audio. Good Luck.

thanks it seems like better placement might be the way to go... or ADR. The car is a mercury another version of the crown victoria. It is quite old and has one of the windows with an airleak which we tried to patch up.

It is tough!

I found this older thread because I was looking for pointers on how to record dialog inside a car. In my case, the car won't be moving (the engine won't even be running). The actors will be in the front seats.

Any suggestions on what types of mics to use, and where to put/hide them would be very helpful.

My apologies if this has been covered in the past; I searched for "car" and was overwhelmed with threads containing the words "cardiod", "carry", etc., and I found this one hidden between all those.

Thanks in advance for your help!

- Martin

I would suggest checking out the Sanken CUB-01. It can be attached to the ceiling or viser...or somewhere out of frame on the dashboard. Looks like they also have a brand new boundary mic coming out that is a smaller version.

http://www.sanken-mic.com/en/product....cfm/2.1005000

From personal experience I've found that a lavalier with a nice cardiod pattern clipped to your subject will work just fine (TRAM, Sony ECM, Sennheiser MK2, etc.). As suggested the visor is also another good mounting spot but the standard lavalier location is better.