Location Audio Simplified

Capturing Your Audio... and Your Audience

Dean Miles

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138129627, 9781138129627
• eBook ISBN: 9781317936794
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

From the basics of using camera, handheld, lavalier, and shotgun microphones to camera calibration and mixer set-ups, Location Audio Simplified unlocks the secrets to clean and clear broadcast quality audio no matter what challenges you face. Author Dean Miles applies his twenty-plus years of experience as a professional location operator to teach the skills, techniques, tips, and secrets needed to produce high-quality production sound on location. Humorous and thoroughly practical, the book covers a wide array of topics, such as:
* location selection
* field mixing

* booming techniques
* using different kinds of microphones (including wireless systems) and booming
* camera calibration, interview techniques, and much more

Learn the secrets of a real-world professional with easy-to-follow, non-technical tips and techniques that you can apply in the field on your own projects immediately. The book follows the companion Location audio Simplified online course, https://vimeo.com/ondemand/locationaudiosimplified, to bring Dean's teaching to life.

Make sure to check out the Location Crew website for more location audio goodness!
www.locationcrew.com

Chapter 1
Introduction to Location Audio

Introduction

Detailing the Professional

What Is Location Audio?

What Makes a Successful Location Audio Operator?

More Than Just Sound

Companion Location Audio Online Course

Introduction

Congratulations!

You’ve picked up my book and are already one step closer to recording better audio in the field. Now just buy the damn thing and let’s get started.

Figure 1.1

The new era of affordable digital video has created a boom in the production industry. Cameras are smaller, cheaper, easier to use, and provide amazing picture quality. However, the audio side of the equation is a different story. Sound tends to be the poor cousin to the visual image, and most manufacturers give it minimal consideration at best. The actual hardware components are of marginal quality, controls are buried in submenus, and connectors are stuck onto camera bodies like an afterthought. The video world is littered with videographers and location audio operators who are being driven crazy trying to produce quality sound in this environment.

Location Audio Simplified will do just what it says: simplify the location audio process.

Whether it’s big-budget documentaries or low-budget corporate videos, the principles of quality audio remain the same. From the basics of using camera, handheld, lavalier, and wireless microphones to camera calibration and mixer setups, Location Audio Simplified helps unlock the secrets to clean, clear, broadcast quality audio no matter what challenges you’re faced with. Nothing will ruin a viewer’s experience faster than incomprehensible dialogue due to incorrect micing techniques or distracting background sound from a poor location choice.

Figure 1.2

Figure 1.3

Figure 1.4

Detailing the Professional

Since 1989, I’ve been working as a professional location audio operator for major television networks, motion pictures, high-end documentaries, and everything in between. Through it all I’ve encountered every sound problem imaginable and have developed my own tried-and-true solutions, techniques, and easy-to-follow tricks and tips.

When I first penned Location Audio Simplified in 2006 I had no idea there were so many location sound operators working and battling with the same sound issues as I was. The emails thanking, questioning, and teaching me have made the arduous task of writing a book worthwhile.

If you’re an up-and-coming location sound pro, you’ll find everything you need to build a foundation for a successful career. If you’re a one-man-band camera operator, you’ll learn how to elevate your sound from average to exceptional.

If poor sound is plaguing your productions, this is the book for you.

What Is Location Audio?

In a nutshell, location audio is the recording of sound outside of the controlled and comfortable confines of a studio. A video location audio operator is a one-person sound department responsible for capturing all the required dialogue, ambience, and sound effects necessary to build a rich soundtrack in postproduction.

Figure 1.5

What Makes a Successful Location Audio Operator?

The skills required for location audio are a mixture of technical skill, experience, common sense, and attitude. A successful operator is confident, professional, adaptable, and most importantly, a team player with a positive outlook. Simply put, if you do a good job and people enjoy working with you, you’ll be busy. Whatever your technical ability, if you’re a pain in the butt to work with your career will be short-lived.

Location audio involves balancing many issues, both technical and practical, and understanding how you affect the pace of the shooting day and even the overall experience of the talent and crew. Your primary responsibility is to capture clean dialogue and appropriate ambience and record it with minimum disruption to the production process. A job well done often means people aren’t even aware you’re doing it. Where they’ll notice your work is in the edit suite.

Making the post audio editor’s job easier goes a long way towards building a good name for yourself.

More Than Just Sound

Setting up lights, helping with props, loading and unloading equipment—you’ll be doing anything that needs to be done. By becoming an invaluable member of a production team, clients will not only respect your skills as an audio operator and value your opinion but will also put your name at the top of their call list.

As your clientele increases, so will your opportunities, challenges, and adventures. You’ll be on your way to a rich and rewarding career in the production industry—not to mention looking extremely cool with all that gear strapped to your body like a SWAT team member.

I hope you find it easy to move forward through this book and find it a valuable tool in learning how to record quality location audio.

In the world of video production, location audio operators are also expected to pitch in and help wherever they can.

Figure 1.6

Companion Location Audio Online Course

To help learn the techniques detailed in this book, I’ve created the “Location Audio Simplified On-Demand” course: 37 classes and over six hours of online instruction bring every technique, theory, concept, and skill in this book to life. Together, the Location Audio Simplified book and the Location Audio Simplified On-Demand course will have you well on your way to a successful career in location sound.

To view the trailer and sign up for the course, go to:

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/locationaudiosimplified.

Chapter 2
Choosing and Preparing a Location

Constant Tug-of-War

Five Steps for Choosing a Location

Preparing a Location for Recording

How Much Ambience Is Too Much?

Making a Location Move

Constant Tug-of-War

Since sound joined moving pictures on location, the audio operator has never had a say regarding location, and has had to fight for every inch of sound improvement—but that’s about to change.

Figure 2.1 Choosing a poor location to record dialogue is just shooting yourself in the foot!

The picture has always been the decision maker when it comes to choosing the location, even when dialogue was being recorded. I’ve heard the comments “Hey, it’s a visual medium,” and “Maybe you shoul...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction to Location Audio
• 2 Choosing and Preparing a Location
• 3 Location Audio Field Mixer
• 4 Field Mixer Operating Techniques
• 5 Shotgun Microphones
• 6 How to Boom
• 7 Lavalier Microphones
• 8 Wireless Systems
• 9 Video Cameras
• 10 DSLR Cameras
• 11 The Field Recorder
• 12 The Interview
• 13 Add-Ons
• Index