Audio for nature videos

[Kaya Saman]

Hi,

I hope that this is ok to post here as I'm not sure if this belongs in the "All Things Audio" section?

Anyway I have 2 scenarios that hopefully I'll get some ideas into which direction to go down....

Scenario 1:

For this scenario I've been following 2 videos for ideas and I'm a little lost!


The first by Morten Hilmer (Danish wildlife photographer/film maker and vlogger:

My Sound Recording Setup for Wildlife Photography - YouTube

and the second by Petri Koivisto from Finlamd:

How I Record Sound for My Nature Films - YouTube

As there are many different ways of doing this I really want to figure out a solid direction to get started.

One of my ideas was to use a Sound Devices MixPre 3 or 6 linked to a stereo X/Y pair; Morten does this on a T-bar mount while Petri seems to use the Audio Technica BP4025 stereo mic

I'm not sure what mics would be a good choice for this as my experience is in music studio recording and not live sound or field recording.

I kinda had a look at a Neumann KM 184 Matched Pair - which is great if your doing overheads for drums but not sure about field recording?

In terms of directional mic, will any shotgun mic work well? Again the Sennheiser MKE 600 is discussed, but what about something like a Neumann KMR 81 or 82 i?

Incidentally I have the Sennheiser MKE 400 but haven't used it much, only really for voice overs in terms of narration.

How would say a large or small diaphragm FET based mic work out in this type of scenario or are there more suited mics?

Also does polar pattern matter too for this type of application? I guess it depends on preference and what you are trying to do.....


Scenario 2:

A little more complex as for this I wanted to mix and match a group of up to 4 speakers with ambient sounds.

It would be a single shooter "run and gun" style scenario where you are following 3 - 4 people all hooked up to wileress lav mics in a forest or somewhere.

Looking at options from DJI, Rhode, Sennheiser etc.... they all have a standard Rx unit with 3.5mm output that can be linked to 2x wireless Tx mics

(I have the DJI Mic 2 (single) that I use in Bluetooth mode and it is pretty good for speech)

If using a camera like the Canon R5C which only has a single 3.5mm stereo input, what would be the best way of doing this?

It seems a little tricky but my current thought was something along the lines of a field-recorder that can take up to 4x jack inputs or 2x jack and 1x 3.5mm aux stereo input

The MixPre's I think you can get like a sling bag for them which would make them a little clunky for this, while using something like a Zoom H5/6Studio you could belt or pocket clip it (there's a picture on the website showing something like this) then use the 2x lav module for it and then get any external dual lav Tx/Rx combo of choice.

As a total beginner here with this, how would you then go to rig this all up? As in, taking the Zoom H5/6Studio option... sure it's just a 3.5mm to 1/4" mono jack for the remaining 2x mics but then you need timecode.
By default the Canon has a DIN connector while the Zoom needs bluetooth using an Atomos module or can use a Tentacle SyncE module linked to an audio track... that's fine as you have 2x tracks remaining in the device

I guess you'd need another SyncE for the Canon too then? so how and where would you place these things?

Would you just stick them in your pockets or use a cage like something from SmallRig and either screw or zip ties these things somewhere?

If you wanted to add ambient sounds too, would you then just go ahead and Jam Sync the time code to the MixPre discussed earlier and leave that positioned statically somewhere?


Maybe I'm over complicating things here but from what I can see this is kind of the best way that I could think of to do this....?

How useful would timecode be in a situation where you need speed of setup? Neither Morten nor Petri talked about audio/video sync so I'm a little lost here!!


Any suggestions would be really appreciated :-)

[Roger Van Duyn]

The biggest problem I have with audio for wildlife videos comes from the presence of traffic noise, aircraft (jets, helicopters etc.) flying overhead, and sounds people in the area are making, talking, playing music, vehicle noise (even electric bikes can have noisy rattles etc). The second problem comes from the proximity effect, other sounds being closer than the sound you want.

What I do is mute or even delete all the sounds in my recording except for the brief time the exact sound I want is being made. Then, in editing I lay another track of ambient sound to take its place.

For example, in a recent video I made of a pair of young owls that some friends and I had been keeping track of for several weeks, I used audio from the same marsh maybe fifty yards away I had recorded before sunrise. The location was the Circle B Bar Reserve near my home in Lakeland Florida. A busy road (Winter Lake Road) runs just outside the gate of the reserve on the north side. The county landfill is only about two miles away, so there's a lot of traffic, including a lot of garbage trucks, that starts around 7 am. In addition, US Hwy 98 is to the west of the reserve, a little farther away, but the sound carries and the heavy traffic will fill a video with a dull roar most of the time. Finally, Lakeland has a busy airport now, with a very busy Amazon facility with lots of jets flying in and taking off, many right over the nature preserve. That along with the Medivac Helicopters flying patients to area hospitals flying directly overhead can spoil many a shot. All this adds undesired sound to the recording. A lot of undesired sounds.

So, the problem isn't so much getting the sound I want, as it is eliminating all the sound I don't want. To get the sound I want, I simply use a very directional shotgun mike mounted on an arm (with a shock mount to minimize rattles) off the camera ( to minimize noise from the camera and my own breathing). Then I boost the sound I want as needed in post, using noise reduction too, because there will still be traffic noise.

Unless you are way out in the wild, alone, don't be expecting quality sound whatever equipment you may use. Plus, how much stuff do you want to carry around out on the trails? In hot, humid Florida, carrying more water is more useful that carrying more gear. Here's a link to the owl video I mentioned, after video and audio editing. https://youtu.be/0ueg_4GBciw?si=2Q6-WcORJ7fs2Mfy

[Roger Van Duyn]

One thing I forgot to mention, the more gear you take the longer it takes to set it all up. The action you want to record will likely be over in a matter of seconds much of the time. This is a case where less truly is more. You will be more likely to get your shot before the action is over the less you are trying to set up. Most all of those alligator crossings in the videos on my channel were over in less than ten seconds. Birds tend to give you even less time, as do bobcats and other predators. A long telephoto lens can enable you to get the visuals, but to record sound you need to be much closer, and animals are very hard to sneak up on most of the time. In the owl video I was more than a hundred feet away. To make the owls vocalization audible, I had to boost the sound, which boosted the other noise while the owl was making its little peeps. When I left snippets of my conversation with another photographer that was also getting her shots, you can hear the dull roar of the distant traffic on the road that I could not remove any further. When I filmed people before I retired, I mic'd them up with wireless lavaliers or mounted a standalone microphone just out of frame. You can't do that with animals. If the microphone isn't a matter of inches from the source, you won't get quality results for a client, whether filming the wedding vows, a corporate presentation, or testimony in or for the courtroom. I used to have to do all of these, and I had a huge Pelican rolling case with two other cases stacked on top to wheel into a job site. That approach isn't practical when I might have to hike several miles on a muddy or overgrown trail filming wildlife.

[Kaya Saman]

Hi again Roger, and thank you for the pointers!

That actually is something that I was thinking about and funnily enough while watching your owl video there was a blackbird twittering in the garden.

I went out to check and even thought of getting a quick photo using my 600mm f/4 but it wasn't worth it... taking what you were saying into account I listened. Ok I'm in the middle of a crowded city and near an airport so far from ideal but yeah... plane noise, talking, traffic noise and that's before even getting to the bird :-(

Of course I would be in woodland areas but then even the video I posted of the guy in Finland said a similar thing along the lines of you too in that traffic noise is a problem. Finland is a large and fairly quiet country so that tells you a lot!

Also I totally agree about the pointers of time. That's why I was asking.... I guess this is the difference between watching and waiting for action in which you can setup first then sit and wait or spontaneously shooting action as you soon as you arrive or see something

Sure you have a thing called an EQ with shelving filters but when noise is broadband it can't be completely eliminated. Again what was discussed in the Finish video about sound masking to flush out "interference" by using wind direction etc...

Hmm......

Really liking the owl video though :-) nice smooth zooming in and really clear footage!!

[Kaya Saman]

Interestingly this answered my Scenario 2 case:

Canon R5C with 32-bit float audio? Mount the Zoom F3 to your rig. - YouTube

I'm gona read up about Sync'ing "Scratch Audio" now which I guess is mainly done by waveforms and audio cues?

I guess if you used 2x field recorders - one static and one mobile then you could just TC sync them somehow, though again checking the Tentacle SyncE, it seems you need a Mac to run their software for doing the timecode sync in the first place?
Maybe there's a better solution out there??

I'm not sure how TC data gets written to the file but either as an unused audio track or perhaps some kind of meta data like subtitles kind of thing?

Again more reading needed :-)

[Kaya Saman]

Good info here on sync'ing a "Scratch Track"

The FASTEST Way to SYNC Audio In DaVinci Resolve 19 - YouTube

Hopefully it will be as simple as "sync by waveform" as I'm guessing there will be no TC embedded....

[Roger Van Duyn]

Synching the scratch track with audio recorded to other devices is the approach I always took filming people when I had my business. It works very well because you are synching to a microphone positioned close to the sound source. The subjects were always wearing or holding a microphone, or one was hidden a couple of feet away out of frame or out of sight. Microphone proximity is probably THE most important factor in getting excellent sound. It is far more impactful than the equipment you use, no matter how much you spend on it. A cheap microphone mounted close will outperform an expensive microphone that is not mounted close. Always.

As for filming wildlife, there are very few instances where that could work at all, with the possible exception of hiding a wireless microphone near a bird feeder or something like that. There are a variety of lenses for camera, including zooms and telephotos that can, in a sense, get you closer to your subject. Without a long lens, it's difficult to get a close view of wildlife. But, there's NO SUCH THING AS AN EFFECTIVE TELEPHOTO OR ZOOM MICROPHONE to get you closer to the subject to get sound. Unless you set up some sort of wireless microphone near a watering hole or something and wait for wildlife to show up. You may wind up waiting a very long time for anything worth recording to show up at all.

Save yourself some frustration, and a lot of money. Now there is such a thing as parabola microphone setups used at sporting events. I doubt that would work all that well with wildlife, and it would take all your time at attention trying to keep the thing pointed at your subject. In my opinion, an approach not worth taking. Even National Geographic, Nature, Animal Planet etc. dub in stock audio to create a soundtrack. Heck, they even use stock footage when their film crews are unsuccessful at getting the shots they want to use for their productions.

The best, practical approach I've found for wildlife is a shotgun microphone, with dead cat style wind muff, mounted to your camera rig, but not directly to the camera because it will pick up too much unwanted sound from operating the camera. Then dub in some ambient sound you've recorded at a better time. To paraphrase Scotty from Star Trek, "You canna change the laws of physics!"

Hope this helps.

[Paul R Johnson]

One of my very early jobs was as an assistant for a UK broadcaster that was well known for wildlife productions. While some was video, we were changing from 16mm sepmag. My job was what would be known now as Foley. So much archive footage was totally mute, so when the huge eagle took off from it's clifftop nest, it was me flapping a huge pair of leathermotorcycle gauntlets (think WW2 dispatch motorcyclists)

Occasionally, I still see the shots I created edited into new programmes.

The trouble with recording the real sound of wildlife is that it does not sound real at all. I can remember one of the Directors really cross because they'd manage to record shots of penguins shuffling across the ice, and discovered it was almost silent bar grunting type noises from penguins annoyed at being bumped out of the way. Big cats sounded like pets most of the time, and their prey was virtually silent for obvious reasons - we were very busy!

[Kaya Saman]

@Roger - exactly what I am thinking too!

I mean in a music studio setting mic placement and type of microphone was important. How were we gona capture the vocalist or particular instrument.

Sometimes we'd have up to 3x mics of different types hooked up to an acoustic guitar... that means something like a pencil for the high freqs and fret, a large diaphragm condenser near the hole though you had to be careful of the "boom" low frequency effect....
then either a room mic for natural reverb or even a small diaphragm condenser a little further away.

I think what I really will need to do is experiment and see what works and what doesn't here.

Good catch with the on-camera mount too as yeah... mechanical shutter sound or film sound etc... would play havoc with a sensitive mic and high gain!!


@Paul - yeah! When I did my second degree in audio engineering some 20 years ago now we did exactly this. One of the projects was a post production setup using Pro Tools with a sample film clip and we had to add SFX so we were given a massive library which I think might have been something the BBC use? If my memory serves me well??

Anyway, it was a WWI or WWII film were you kind of needed to add gun shots and air raid sirens and tank noises etc... as well as ADR over dubbing etc...

It's not surprising that a library sound pallet would be used as it makes things so much easier and faster but I guess less immersive for a lone person.
- even the Finish guy above does this were he archives different scenarios to use later on if needed.

Looking at some of the BBC's footage say of Komodo dragons, there's no way that they roar like the are perceived to in the film. Even the T-Rex in Jurassic Park according to scientists doesn't roar like that either haha...

Just found this and exactly like I thought, they're mostly quiet or just hiss as per many other reptiles:

What noise does a Komodo Dragon make? - YouTube

I guess going back to Attenborough's black and white days in the 1950s or 60s should give a good example of what things "actually" sounded like

[Roger Van Duyn]

One little trick I use is to underlay a track of crickets chirping at dawn to help mask remaining traffic noise. I play with the volume controls in my editor to get it just loud enough to hide the traffic noise, but not loud enough to distract from the sound of the subject in the clip.

[Allan Black]

In Sydney years ago before the arrival of the big industrial video screens, I used to produce quadrophonic sound tracks for corporate multi screen 35mm slide programs for IBM and Ford etc. After the narration was recorded and the music track from special discs was complete, specially selected sound effects in the right place could add class to the show.

I remember one show with beach scenes and the sound of the rolling surf in quad really added atmosphere and made it.

For TCN Channel 9, here’s a promotional 5 screen, 8x35mm slide projector rear projection a/v setup, with a video screen in the centre. The quad soundtrack and projector and video player code track was played off this 8 track Scully. All this took 4hrs to set up, run and test for 2 shows daily for an audience of about 500 each show, for a week. Ch.9 also provided a 3 course daily lunch and Moët champagne for each member of their audience of advertising agency people.

At first we used to attend and run the shows but it was exhausting and I had more work to do. So we trained a crew from each client, which came in handy when we had to fly all our gear and play their shows in other capital cities.

[Boyd Ostroff]

That's pretty cool. Back in the mid 1980's, we had a slide projector with a built-in cassette deck. The audio was recorded on one track and the other track had some kind of clicks or tones that automatically changed the slides. So, you could create presentations where the slides changed on musical cues. Actually, I think it was something that was originally from the 1970's which we picked up at state surplus. :-)

[Andrew Smith]

Roger, mixing in the chirping of crickets to cover traffic noise is just genius. It's also hilarious!

Andrew