Location Audio Simplified: Book written by Dean Miles
This book helped me a lot to learn the basics of everything to do with sound on location. Many things that was explained were things in which we don’t really look into it with the care that is needed. However, from a professional point of view, it is something that is crucial in being able to provide the best sound quality as well as the best judgment when recording what needs to be recorded.
In this book, I picked out a couple of points on the preparation of a film shoot which will help me immensely when I go out for my film shoot.
1) Choosing and preparing the location:
– Shot types: Knowing all the shot types for every shot to be taken is very important as each of them will provide their own challenge. The different shot types that I will be capturing will probably include a close up, medium shot and wide shot. For the time being, the voice over shot as well as the interview shot will not be needed for this project.
– Determining if the sound will match the image: Knowing this is crucial! Dean Miles in this book says that, ”It is important that the editors only hear and see what was shot.” A microphone can pick up sounds and noises that a lot of the times we come to notice while editing, this is a mistake in which I have committed before and it’s a mistake which many people do it. Taking the time to observe the location and be on the look out for the sounds that are not supposed to be there is something that can ruin an entire shot take and if continued unawareness, can ruin the entirety of the shoot. This preparation to recording a film will be essential on my list as I go out to record!
– Assess the location and identify potential problems that could cause disruptions: This is something which adds to the awareness of sound around the location that I need to consider and look out for. Assessing the surroundings for sounds that may come into my recording while in the middle of a shot is critical as it will ruin the entire shot and cause delays in the production. Dogs barking, telephone ringing and car alarms are common factors which will cause disruptions. Making sure that I can control as much of these disruptions as possible is something which I will do as part of my preparation out in the field.
– Assess the quality and consistency of the general ambiance of the location: As boom operators and sound in general, we don’t know how long each edit clip will be, and stability in terms of ambiance noise is crucial! This is something which I have personally been tripped up by in my last shoot. I recorded the entire shoot and in post realized that my background sounds were different volumes and not stable at all. When I came to edit and mix, it was a complete nightmare to try and fit the different edits in correctly and have the background noise change as subtle as possible for every edit transition. In my next shoot, this will be something which I will take close and careful attention to. A unstable ambiance will have to be taken up to the director directly and try to find different solutions in terms of location or maybe time to shoot.