Documentary Audio Archives – J R Martin Media Inc

Getting good Audio

Often overlooked or neglected is how important the audio part of the story is to the final video or film product. It is extremely important to get dialog, and ambient sounds that are sharp and clear. Distorted audio is equivalent to an out of focus picture.

Over modulated audio in an interview cannot be fixed in post. Audio with all sorts of noise and crackling cannot be used. There is no prospect of doing ADR for a spontaneous interview with someone on the street. The lighting and cinematography might be brilliant, but if we don’t have clear sound, and/or we can’t understand what someone is saying the footage is damaged.

Getting clean audio even when no one is speaking is important for use in editing. Shoot all “B” roll with good audio. Without the audio the shot looses a dimension that will be needed even if someone ultimately is speaking over the shot. Room tone and location ambience should also be recorded for possible use by the editor.

One important basic approach when recording, is to make sure that the signal (what you’re recording) to noise (everything else) ratio is such that the signal is strong and the noise week; a high signal to noise ratio.

On a windy day or noisy room the shotgun microphone would be put into a wind screen cover to cut down any wind noise. A shotgun is a directional microphone and has a very narrow range of reception. It is a versatile addition to a documentary audio package.

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Tags: Documentary Audio

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DOCUMENTARY INTERVIEWS

Many interviews for documentary projects are shot under less than ideal conditions in offices, at events, factories, on the street and in dangerous or hostile environments. Lighting is essential in getting a properly exposed segment.

Shooting Interior Interviews

Indoor lighting can vary in a some ways from daylight and tungsten in homes to daylight and fluorescent in office situations. There may be mixed lighting sources with varying color temperatures. A light kit with a few lights can help with supplemental lighting but often it’s more about working with available light. White balancing is important.

An office often has a window and a person’s desk in front of it. There are a number of possible choices. If there are blinds or drapes see if they can be drawn and use a simple 3 or 4 light set up with at least a key, fill and backlight light setup.

What if there is no way to block the light from the window? Is a better environment available like a conference room? One alternative is to consider how to shoot the interview using available light. Can we use the light coming from the window as a key light? For example it might be possible to shoot the interview from an angle or from the side of the desk where you use the light coming from the window as the key and then use a reflector to bounce light in from the other side. Your subject is facing the camera and both are parallel to the window. Remember to white balance for daylight.

Whenever possible think about lighting a subject with a key, fill and back-light whether it is available light, lighting instruments, reflectors or a combination of light sources. A key to fill ratio of between 2 to 1 and 4 to 1 is ideal for most video interviews and other documentary situations. Appropriate subjective lighting may be used to get a certain look or feel for an interview, however, most of the time, in documentary situations, we’re looking to capture the flavor of the environment; we try to reinforce the existing lighting so that we can get a decent exposure without adding our own interpretation.

Example of an interior interview may be seen in the preview of The Baldwin Park Story. In this situation we had a number of options including an office, conference room or meeting room area. We chose a neutral background that we could light to give some minimal contrast with a lighting ratio of about 2.5 to 1.

Actuality Interviewing and Listening by James R Martin

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