mono or stereo location dialogue

Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 9:06 pm

Interested to hear points of view on recording location dialogue in stereo as opposed to waving a boompole around in mono. Especially in situations that are not too noisy.

Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 11:57 pm

There is no such thing as stereo dialog. There are multiple sources, ie, boom and lav or a lav on each actor in the scene, but I've never met the person who could speak in stereo. Wink

Multiple sources are fine, as long as they are clearly marked and described in the sound logs. Some of your best sound will come from waving a boom pole if its done correctly. Keep your cans glued to your head, and get a closed ear design to keep out surrounding sound. You just want to hear whats going to the recorder. listen for refridgerators, floursecent lighting balasts, generator hum, camera noise. When you hear these things, alert the director so they can make a choice between looping and fixing the problem on set. Do a sync test with the camera person before the shoot.
Good luck.

Posted: Fri Apr 07, 2006 12:14 am

Unless only one person is talking to himself, dialogue is in closer to
stereo, than mono, in the real world. I realize that film dialogue is usually
recorded in mono, but it does not have to be.

Posted: Fri Apr 07, 2006 1:52 am

If you MUST do stereo dialog. Rolling Eyes

The only option is the Sennheiser MKH418 (Shotgun Stereo)
Its only about $1800.00

Im trying to picture someone holding an MS pair around while the actor is moving around!!!! Laughing

Posted: Fri Apr 07, 2006 2:12 am

There are lots of mic options, depending on the specific acoustical
environment and how you want it to sound, lots of stereo arrays to choose from apart from MS, and by recording in stereo you don't have such a dire need to move the mics around, if at all.

Posted: Fri Apr 07, 2006 9:00 am

aracu,
I will take great mono dialog over M/S dialog any day! It's hard enough to capture good Production dialog. It's also another pain to try to decode it and process it during a Re-Recording Mix. Some people like it (m/s) for documentaries. That' s fine , but make sure you ask your Re-Recording Mixer what he/ she prefers. It's really their choice!

Posted: Fri Apr 07, 2006 9:29 am

I would stick with mono personally, stero is fine for capturing ambience and room tone, But really stero vocals dont make a lot of sense, I agree with Dr sound, I would ask the guy or gal who is doinng the production , re recording afterwards and find out what they want.

Also you will have no phase issues with mono, Dialog is one of the most important things, So its good to do it right and not expierment too much, it saves ADR costs later

Posted: Fri Apr 07, 2006 9:51 am

Why use a stereo recorder on location if the dialog will not be in stereo?

You are not recording in stereo, you are recording two tracks. At it's most basic, channel two will have a lower recording level than channel one. Sudden loud noises (yelling, stunts, etc.) will not peak and/or distort on channel two, giving the dialog editor a clean recording of the loud sounds.

Other options include:

Having the boom on track one and lavs on track two.

One lav or boom on each track.

Perhaps you will record the actors on one track and the crowd walla on the other.

In the early days of film sound there was no audio post production, EVERYTHING was recorded live to mono 33 1/3 disks. The talent was on the set in the sound stage, the musicians off to one side, the sound FX crew on the other. The location sound engineer had the power to yell "CUT!" if the sound was not to his liking. Members of the crew could be fired for making noise during a take.

Multi-track (four or more) tracks are being used on the set these days. Multiple recorders are often used, a Nagra plus a digital recorder like the FR-2. You're not recording location sound in surround, you are providing more material to the dialog editors; a lav on each actor with two booms; the permutations are myriad. With rare exceptions the on-screen dialog will always be in mono.

Just for fun check out www.dogme95.dk. With the exception of editing the takes together the concept is no post production of any kind - no audio post (this includes music) no color correction, no re-framing.

Posted: Fri Apr 07, 2006 11:28 am

deleated

Posted: Fri Apr 07, 2006 11:32 am

Let me be more clear. If one person is talking, thats one source. If two people are talking that is two mono sources, not stereo. The point of stereo is to create space. It places mono sources in space with the use of room reflections and panning. What we are looking for(we= rerecording mixers) is a hot, flat, dry recording that is smooth and holds perspective. Leave the stereo to the mix house. If you are really hot to record stereo, get your mixer some stereo backgrounds from location. Backgrounds being multiple mono sources combined with room reflections or outdoor reflections to create a stereo field.

Posted: Fri Apr 07, 2006 11:32 am

I love your suggestion of recording at two different volume levels on two tracks to capture the loudest sounds without them distorting! I agree
that in very many situations it would be more practical to record dialogue in mono with a boom or lav mic. I am not so sure that dialogue should never or only very rarely be recorded in stereo.

Posted: Fri Apr 07, 2006 11:42 am

You might be confusing using multiple mics in a scene with the idea of stereo. Multiple sources are great, they give the mixer choices in post. If there is too much cloth on the lav, than the boom is there to save the day. Great!

Posted: Fri Apr 07, 2006 8:59 pm

Recording dialog in stereo is lunacy. Of course Neumann has a MS stereo shotgun microphone, about on a par cost wise like the Sennheiser. It's fine if you want that stereo ambience along with their individual lav microphone tracks. But when you hear/see a person in a feature film walking from one side of the frame to the other while talking, that's the dialog film mixer doing that, not a stereo thing.

The 2 different levels of the same thing on 2 different tracks was originally implemented as a noise reduction headroom extension scheme by 3M and was called "Dyna-Track" recording. For a 2 track recording you needed the special 4 track machine with Dyna-Track. It worked but was electronically switched internally back and forth which was audible but very low.

Dyna-Broad
Ms. Remy Ann David

Posted: Sat Apr 08, 2006 8:08 am

Its o.k. to make a stereo non- shotgun or lav mic recording of dialogue with sound, such as footsteps, rather than recording in mono and adding convolution reverb, panning and foley footsteps in post. It’s not better or worse. Whether it sounds good or bad depends on how well its accomplished. One of the methods is more conventional than the other, which makes it seem more acceptable. Most filmmaking values are culturally conditioned ones. Why else do so many mega budget Hollywood films made by so many different directors seem to be made by the same director, not only promoting similar production values, but similar ethical values, similar dramatical structures, similar degree of abstraction etc. In a piece of music composed of many separate vocal lines, the conventions dictating how to record it correctly would be quite different.

Posted: Sat Apr 08, 2006 3:54 pm

RemyRAD wrote:

Recording dialog in stereo is lunacy.

yep

it's not about culturally conditioned filmmaking values
it's not about all the films having the same director
and
it's not about the conventions in recording music

mono compatibility could be an issue
both vision and audio editing needs more scope than a fixed stereo/head view of the world
Effects and Folly ... yes

applying a compressor to a stereo audio file where the dialog is the focus is going to be very hard to keep consistant throughout the movie
and
a dialog replacement in stereo will make life hard for the audio editor to get things to blend in with the main track

recording in stereo doesn't make things better ... just because it's in stereo

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