Before Recording at a bigger and noisier location I did some research. The crew asked me what equipment I will be bringing to the location and I gave them a list informed by several sources.
In an article named “Sound & Sync” in Sound on Sound magazine J G Harding talks about location recordings, equipment and some post production tips. He suggests that taking a separate portable recorder with a hand-held or boom mic produces much higher quality audio rather than recording sound on camera.
Your camera’s on-board mic might be OK for home movies, but using a separate mic and audio recorder will yield much better results
David Mellor LO1 + LO2
That is why I also decided to record the sound separately.
As good examples of location recording kit he gives The Edirol R44 – a high‑quality four‑track portable recorder, with four mic pre-amps and an on‑board mixer in combination with a standard boom mic like a Rhode NTG2 or a Sony ECM CG50.
The equipment I decided to go with was the Sound Devices 633 portable recorder + the Sennheiser MKH416 Rifle Mic with a cradle and wind jammer (covered with a “dead cat” or an extra wind jamming cover). The reason why I went with that choice is that they were available from our media stores and also Location Sound Recordist Grant Bridgeman recommended this equipment during several guest lectures and workshops.
LO1 + LO2
By suggestions from Lee Gretton – Recording/Mixing/Editing Engineer – I also brought along a separate Zoom H4n Portable recorder with a Clip mic so I can record the interviewer who was asking the questions for each vox pop sequence.
The Headphones I used were the AKG K99 Perception series. LO1 + LO2
All location recordings went really well, the only issues were that there was an airport nearby and there was extensive crowd noises as it was a pretty big event but we dealt with those issues accordingly – kindly asking interviewees to re-record necessary parts of the interviews for continuity sake.
“Some filming situations can feel a little overwhelming – but you still need to be in control. Don’t be afraid to ask your contributor or presenter to do things again if they can, especially to help you get a nice close-up of that object they are discussing” (Bailey,2015).
I ended up with very good location recordings but the only problem was that the clip mic I put on the interviewer couldn’t handle the windy weather and the noise to dialogue ratio was unfortunately in favor of the noise so the audio was unusable. The solution is a voice-over artist in post production. LO4 + LO5