Better Interview Audio | How to Mic Up 2 People With Booms and Lavs

welcome back to sound 101 i'm andrew from dd microphones and back with us is production sound mixer marlin thanks for having me back man this time double the trouble we have more guests more gear more equipment he is going to teach us all about how to do a two-person interview set up and all the little tips and tricks that he knows personally so let's get started so just like that graphic said this is all about that two-person interview you may get on a set that has more than one camera and more than one talent in theory this is a three camera setup lit for all three angles so that is the challenge you're set take it away all right awesome so the first thing we're going to want to do is set our booms make sure that they're angled correctly and we're going to do this specifically angling them so that we can avoid phasing okay we'll start here this seems about the right height maybe we could drop it down a little we'll check with our camera department i want to make sure that i've got this in the right place so just in case solomon decides to lean forward we're still getting that audio when it's not going a little bit too overhead so you're using the super cardioid pickup pattern to your benefit in the sit-down interview setup absolutely the super cardio is definitely a lot more forgiving than a shotgun microphone would be which is much more directional uh super cardioid say solomon decides to just kind of little do a little twist something it's going to still be able to capture my source audio much better than a more directional mic okay what about this secondary boom clearly i just threw this one up but what do we need to do with this guy now with this one over here let's first drop this down i'm gonna swing behind the light and always always always keep a hand on the pole as well making sure that it doesn't hit our talent so now i'm able to balance this out another thing i have to check for are shadows something we talked about on the previous episode and i want to make sure that we avoid them here and always always make sure you throw your sandbag on you've got enough weight and that they're set correctly we could probably raise this up just a little bit and we should be good to go so cool you've got these now all set up the microphone used for solomon is at more than 90 degrees in all honesty to katie and katie's microphone is more than 90 degrees to solomon right so that's where you try to get the best pickup patterns without the least amount of crosstalk right absolutely that's why in some cases not all but in some a more directional microphone might come in handy to avoid phasing with the secondary mic however in this particular instance we've got a big echoey room our supercardioid mics are going to work great also i want to best utilize the environment that i'm in we're like i said we're in a big open uh space with lots of space now hold up before we go further we really need to address the elephant in the room and that is there's a lack of sound blankets on this set and that is because we were gifted in this room with a lot of really nice soft stuff like a couch chairs plants a big giant goofy rug it's wonderful stuff because it absorbed a lot of echo that could have really kind of ruined our day now if you are like me and sometimes forget how to set up sound blankets we have a video right up here so now that we've got these all set up you are already wearing a microphone katie but solomon you are unmicked so why don't we get you a lava on you marlon take it away so we always want to make sure this is more for redundancy than anything because most of the time your boom is going to sound best but there are some instances where it won't so let's get a lab real quick we're going to come over to the cart or bring it over there we go instant cart it's almost like it was prepped for the shoot solomon can i ask you to join us over here real quick thank you and always ask your talent watch your head as you're coming out from under the boom because you will look at your head happens every time it's embarrassing more for us than for you so solomon's wearing a normal sports coat button down shirts we've got a neat little trick that if you want to go for more of a cinematic look you basically you don't want to be able to see a lot this is becoming more and more apparent even on documentary crews where the producers will tell people you know what we don't want to see any lobs on this whole show we want to hide everything it doesn't matter if it's a classic sit-down news style interview sometimes love's just got to get hidden this is a great technique martin's about to show so uh solomon would you mind unbuttoning your jacket and untucking your shirt for me because we're gonna drop this lav bullet down his shirt i'd also recommend never bringing this onto a plane that's gonna give you more hassle with the tsa than you're going to want we're going to drop this down this is a great tool everyone should have in their kit or the equivalent of a mic drop or something if you're in a real pinch neat little trick is to take one of your dead batteries and grab some transport or moleskin and wrap the connector of the mic around the battery as well as the connector with the tape and you're good to go i'm going to ask solomon would you mind if i unbutton your shirt right here absolutely thank you always always always communicate with your talents what you're about to do we have to invade their personal space so it gets awkward real quick we're going to push the capsule actually through the hole first give you more than enough slack than you'll need and then push the button back in and then this is another piece of your kit that i think everyone should have or some kind of equivalent which is joe sticky stuff i know in europe they have butyl they call it english this technically called butyl can help with deadening uh sound of jewelry or in our particular case it's going to hold the capsule in place behind our button and what's interesting about butyl is the harder you press the stickier it is if you just lightly press it will barely stick it is a pressure sensitive adhesive so we've got just a little bit of the beetle i'm gonna take it right at the capsule leave enough space for the castle to actually remain open wrap that around nice and now we're going to take our excess wire pull that down now that we've done all of our work hide that right behind the button give it a nice little press sometimes the the button will seem a little bit off so i might actually even use a little bit extra joe sticky to kind of balance it out so the button doesn't fuel lopsidedly and the great thing about it it's nearly transparent so a buttonhole mount like this really works great if you have a mid shot or a three button shot okay so solemnly feel free to tuck your shirt back in if you like we're just gonna have this go a little bit off to the side with a lot of sports coats we could either go behind traditionally where we might put it on the back of the on the back of the pants anywhere like that a lot of sports coats and a lot of suits will actually have a ticket pocket on the inside of the jacket so we can actually take that excess wire run this up drop that pack right there and put all your excess exactly you also want to make sure that you still tape off a little bit just so you avoid any kind of clothing rustle anything like that now we've avoided the personal space we've avoided all this he's comfortable he doesn't have anything as on his back while he's sitting down so feel free to sit back down and you're all set so we've got a love on katie we have a love now and solomon we have two booms is there anything we need to worry about when it comes to the mixer itself well with the mixer itself obviously we have to worry about gain staging because like i said you want to play it off of whatever sounds best and a lot of the junkets that i do and a lot of the jobs that i do you don't always have this kind of more casual setting where they're sitting down on a couch they're often facing each other just right across from each other so that sometimes they can actually take the reporter out of there completely okay you can ask you can ask your questions you could have it as an iso but you have the option of actually taking it out and then having subtitles or anything put in so what marlon is talking about here is the fact that what you want to do is get into post and have everything isolated as much as possible we're doing that already with our microphone so they don't bleed into each other it's also important to record isolated tracks of each microphone if you are recording directly into your camera what that means is you're gonna put one of the people like the interviewer on the left and the interview e on the right do not blend these two signals together because some people aren't going to want one in post now marlon take it away we make sure that we have like i said every redundancy in place in this case we have our labs we have our booms we're going to use in our mix whatever sounds best but the client always has the options available to them so that's why the redundancies that we always put in place are so important make sure just as well keep everyone comfortable that's i can't stress that enough especially if you're doing multiple interviews throughout the day long long days people are going to get tired and so do what you can to keep them comfortable absolutely now that we have set everything up a lot of you out there really want us now to compare the boom and the loft back and forth so you can hear what the difference is for this space let's give this a listen um the company has been good it's been delayed um a little bit just because of the holidays and now in progress and studying for the state exam oh yes absolutely and how about your business how is your business been going well we really began launching about a year ago it's really exciting we have about 150 different jelly types and over 12 uh different peanut butter types specifically peanut butter then we also have a lot of other butters um sunflower and a whole a whole variety and there you go that is our episode we went through all the little tips and tricks about how a two-person interview is not just the same thing it's a one-person interview and how you really got to take a lot more into consideration when you're doing it i do want to thank my guests over here marlon of course katie and solomon you guys were fantastic and good sports all day about our whole shoot thank you guys for coming thank you it was a pleasure we actually want to do something now for you guys for watching it at home we actually want to give away a dd connect interview kit now that you know a little bit about interview skills you got to get some gear so we're going to give one away to the best comment down below tell us what videos that you want us to do next we only do videos you guys want and we need your feedback we also need you to hit that subscribe button and that bell for notifications so you can find out when we make brand new videos just like this one i'm in from dd microphones thank you for watching [Music] you

Channel: Deity Microphones

Views: 87,287

Keywords: deity microphones, sound mixing, sound for filmmaking, better interview audio, how to mic up 2 people with booms and lavs, prevent audio bleed, affordable interview setup, microphone pickup patterns, Using redundancy lavs, redundancy lavs, get great interview audio, off-axis rejection, d3 pro, how to use a D3 Pro on a boom, how to use a d3 pro, position your mics correctly, how to position the boom pole, interview audio, clean interview audio, hide a lav behind a button

Id: eQFMnN0kCM4

Length: 12min 4sec (724 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 11 2020