creating film atmosphere (mix)

[Richard Gooderick]

I hope that I am not misquoting Chris Watson.
His main concept for sound design is three layers of sound. Background, middle ground and foreground.
What's refreshing about him is that he encourages you to think about what you are doing.
All the technical stuff is how you do it.

[George Zabetas]

out of curiosuty richard. on the FR2LE what mics are you using? are they hot enough for those low ambient nature sounds (wind thru leaves, water trickling etc.).
do you normalize in post to get the gain higher (for low sounds)?

thanks

[Richard Gooderick]

Hi George
Bad news I am afraid. I got carried away with the whole sound thing = loads of money.
I bought a Sanken CS3e - fantastic shotgun mic. Works outdoors and indoors.
Then took some advice from a dealer and bought a Rode NTG2 (I think). Bad advice and a waste of money. Does what the Sanken does but not as well. It's a much cheaper mic of course so this is not a criticism.
I bought it because the Sanken was too directional for many uses.
After a course with Chris Watson I bought a DPA 4061 stereo set. These are fantastic mics and very versatile. Useful for recording interviews, ambient sound, stereo soundtracks, all kinds or instruments (eg sax, violin, guitar), vocals (ie singing), boundary mic, rain etc etc
If I was forced to buy only one mic (I'm cheating because there are two in the set) it would be the DPAs.
Oh, and I got really carried away and bought a Sound Devices 302 mixer. Because I expected to be using the recorder and mics singlehanded when I was shooting as well. The SD302 has excellent limiters for instance, which helps when you are shorthanded.
I recorded a lot with the mics and the FR2LE before I got the SD 302 and it was fine. Just more pernickety. Didn't need any amplification. The SD 302 is insurance. The only time I ever had a problem was recording a double bass in a bedsit from about 6 feet. The low frequency sounds were awesome and I got very strange results. But nothing that a sound engineer couldn't sort out. Fostex helpline told me that this recording situation was really challenging for anyone.
I do some tweaking in post if necessary eg compressor and equaliser. But mainly to tart the sound up rather than to correct any deficiencies.
I hope this helps.

[George Zabetas]

thanks for the detailed response richard.
i know what you mean about getting carried away, i feel the same way on alot of the tools i have accumulated. and you cant always cost justify them but you just gotta have them.
the dpa4061 i have also heard great things. DPA in general is top notch.
have you used it with the fostex? so you would prefer the tiny stealth mic for all uses? i am thinking why not too, if the quality is there. and its not that pricy for the quality.

[Richard Gooderick]

That was my reaction too. Surely those small mics can't do the same job as a big one. But they do. They work great with the Fostex.
If you are interested there's a film about frogs on my website. All the soundtrack was done with the DPAs and the Fostex.

[George Zabetas]

OMG I love the unit !!! I just got in the mail. The mail delivery point is a block away from me so i took my bike there to pick it up. I was like a little kid at Christmas.

Took me a while to figure that there was the little black knob for headphones next to the mic inputs. i was worried to not hear any sounds.
Once i got it all set up I was blown away. Granted i have only used consumer stuff. A Microtrack II, a Tascam US-122 on a laptop.

These pres as squeaky clean and i didnt even hear headphone hiss. i was prepared to live with hissy phones as the forums said that. Maybe I got luck with my headphones. Some cheapie ones.

Brought a sound clip into Vegas and looked at levels. Wow. I had the gain at full (too loud for my taste). Brought the gain to 3/4 of the way and with the mic a whole 2 feet from my mouth i am getting over -12db peaks of dialog. Closer to -6dB i would say.
I used to live with -20dB.
This is what the pros are talkin about.

No hiss, great gain.
I cant even imagine what the sound devices or nagra recorders sound like.

richard, will keep in touch as may have some questions on the unit.
by the way i am using the guitar centers (from my USA days) octava mc012s.