Originally Posted by
philper
I work on the audio post of a lot of doc and indie narrative, much of which was shot/recorded by a single person, often working alone under difficult conditions. In the better cases the solution is two parts: first, they understand what is possible and keep things as simple as they can. This means as good a mic as they can afford properly mounted and windscreened on their camera (for verite) and moved off to a fixed overhead boom (for interviews, if possible). They often have a single good quality wireless channel on their other track (on 2 tr cameras), and they listen with headphones as they shoot and adjust the levels on the fly (their cameras have external level controls). They generally do not get into more complex audio than that when working alone--they don't want to be any further distracted than that (esp if they are also the interviewer). For more complex audio it's great to have help, but only if the person will pay attention and knows what they are doing somewhat. I would not try to train someone on the job--I've gotten a lot of audio that was screwed by inattention and inexperience from situations where the filmmaker might have done better on their own. There is the added burden of being cabled to a sound person, unless you can afford to have wireless links and a backup recorder rolling in case there are dropouts or other transmission problems. (When I do wireless to the camera I politely insist that the shooter wear some lightweight headphones so they can tell if we are in trouble w/ the links). Since the RED is a 4 channel device for verite work I would recommend taking two channels from the sound person (boom/lav mix) and having the cam mic on as well, esp, in wireless link or double system situations.
Part 2 of this concept is that they build in time/budget/attitude that there will need to be some serious "below the waterline" work done on the audio in post to make it all match/work and be acceptable to QC departments. There are always a few moments that can't be entirely rescued, but not too many. This has worked for us/me on many films so far, great and small. You may notice that most of the above verbiage has to do with recording audio on the camera--this is not my fave of course but it seems like most lower budget filmmakers prefer the simplicity of this approach. If you think your film might go theatrical there is a lot to be said for figuring out a workflow that includes double system audio. A colleague of mine recently shot an indie feature on an HVX w/ double system audio--they worked out a pretty efficient system involving a "laptop boy" downloading both P2 and CF cards on the set and syncing them up right there (FCP) onto drives that were then sent to post. While not always practical for many sorts of docs, this seemed like a good method for a dramatic project.
I feel like what I've said is probably too "film 101" for most people here--but I wasn't sure what sort of specific info or experience you were looking for?
Philip Perkins CAS
