Speaker 1: You can't make a great film without great audio, so if you're a broke filmmaker or even a one-man band shooter, here's how you get clean cinematic audio without breaking the bank. I'm going to be talking about my favorite sound recording hacks, the gear you do and don't need, and the universal rules for getting clean dialogue. One quick tip is if you're not able to use a boom or lapel mic, sometimes you can just hide the mic right in the middle of your shot. The great thing about this technique is you're only limited by your creativity. This kind of thing is even easier when doing, say, an over-the-shoulder shot with two actors. You could have your listening actor hold out their phone or whatever they're using for their microphone and then just hide it behind their shoulder or just dip it below the frame. This is the first principle I want to drill into your head. Mic placement is crucial. Simply getting the mic close to your subject is going to do way more for getting that crisp, clean cinematic sound quality than buying the most expensive sound gear. What if you're using a boom mic but can't get it close enough to the subject without entering the frame? Well, you could just get a tighter shot or you could lock the camera on a tripod, record a 10-second plate, which is just a clean shot with nobody in the frame, then get that boom mic right up next to the actor for amazingly crisp sound and simply mask out the mic in post by covering that part of the frame with the clean plate that you recorded earlier. Feather out the edges and nobody will ever be the wiser. By the way, if you're a fan of Standard Story Company, you know I normally talk about improving the storytelling in films and I don't get too technical. But without clean, strong audio, even a great story won't work. And if you want to create a cinematic experience, sound is actually more important than your cinematography. If you don't believe me, take a look at this. Disgusting, right? Now say you're recording an interior kitchen scene like this one. First thing to do before you start rolling your cameras here is to put your keys in the fridge because you might not notice it, but the compressor, the engine in your fridge is loud and in a scene like this, it's really going to ruin your dialogue. So after putting your keys in the fridge, you have to turn off or unplug the fridge if you want clean audio. Same goes for air conditioners or heaters. Turn them off during your takes. Oh yeah, and the reason that we put our keys in the fridge is so that you can't even leave the set without remembering to grab them and turn the fridge back on, which I've definitely never forgotten to do before. Now this fridge tip demonstrates the second principle of this video, which is you got to make your set as sound friendly as possible. That means politely telling people to shut up, setting down blankets or rugs to absorb echo in big empty rooms, and finding out what time a day your location is going to be the quietest and loudest. For example, this property has a gardener who comes by every Thursday afternoon, which I have definitely learned the hard way. In fact, believe it or not, the process of getting great audio can start as early as pre-production or the writing stage because you might have to sacrifice the visual spectacle of some scenes by setting them in quieter or more easy-to-control locations if you really want to get that perfect sound. Part of the reason I'm making this video is that I just shot a short film for this channel releasing very soon and chose one of the worst locations for sound I've ever picked. It's like a giant room, completely empty, right next to a really busy street. If I didn't have a great sound mixer on set who I really trusted, I'd have been completely done for, but luckily with his expertise we were able to get really solid audio despite these circumstances. And that's why, even if you're strapped for cash, I'd still recommend asking around, putting up gig postings on Craigslist, Facebook, wherever, because you might be able to find a novice sound mixer who's willing to work for super affordable rates to build up their portfolio and experience. And if you find one of those people, grab them because their skills are going to be worth their weight in gold. Okay, let's talk gear. What you need, what you don't, and how to use it. I'm going to be switching over to 7-inch recorders since I had to take all my gear down for this next part, but the first thing we got to talk about is sound recorders. Now if you're working with a strapped budget and you're wanting an easier shoot, recording straight into your camera is usually going to be the best option. That way you don't need to go buy a sound recorder or deal with syncing up your sound separately from your audio. But if you can swing at an external sound recorder like this guy, the Tascam DR-70D, will give you a lot more options and higher quality sound. And the preamps inside a sound recorder like this are going to be a lot higher quality than what you'll get if you plug your mic directly into the DSLR. So a sound recorder just gives you that extra bit of freedom and post to raise the volume a lot more. And it even records a backup audio track simultaneously to your main track, so if an actor suddenly yells, it won't clip the audio and distort it. But it's another piece of kit you got to lug around, it's another expense, and if you're just starting out, just keep it simple and record straight into the camera. That's what I'd do. Next you got the boom or the shotgun mic. Now my shotgun mic is a Sennheiser MKE-600. I love it, I've had it forever. And if you're just starting out, the specific shotgun mic that you get is not going to matter much because it will be light years ahead of working with the camera mic. Now these mics are great for capturing what's directly in front of them, much like an actual shotgun, and avoiding these sounds that are from the side or the back of the microphone. So great for picking up dialogue, sound effects, and keeping your audio clean. Mine is on a Rode pistol grip mount, which isolates the vibrations and things like that. Also gives you some options for mounting it somewhere, changing the angle. Real handy. If you get a shotgun mic, you should also be getting a boom pole. These things are super cheap, but they're crucial. Get one. Now when you've got it all set up, it'll look something like this. Make sure you've got it all tucked away because any rattling of the wire is going to make a lot of noise that you're not going to want to hear. The angle of the mic is crucial since it's so directional. You got to make sure that you're pointing it directly at the mouth, but if you want to play it safe, you're booming down on your subject, aim it more towards their chest. That way you won't miss if you're angled up here, something like that. You'll catch more of the sound that's coming out. If there's any wind, you're also going to want to put one of these, a dead cat, on it. That'll just block any wind noise that'll hit the mic. So you want this thing just out of frame, as close to the subject as you can. And if you don't have somebody to operate the boom pole, then you can always just set this thing on a light stand or a c-stand. They even sell ones that boom out overhead. It can be your boom operator for free all day. All right, let's talk about wireless mics like this. Now it used to be you'd need expensive wireless mic kits from Sennheiser to get good audio in your films, but today simple wireless mic kits like this DJI mic can be a godsend for solo filmmakers at less than half the price. But the DJI mic, as cool as it is, you know you basically get two transmitters, so you can mic up two actors, one receiver that goes into your camera or even your iPhone, and everything's just automatic. It's really simple to use. They're great. It's got this charging case, like a big AirPods case, but still going to run you $330, which isn't super cheap. Fortunately, there's other options out there. This company Seven Rims actually sent me these guys, but these are only going to run you about $180, so it's almost half the price. So just to do a quick comparison here, I've got the Seven Rims mics going in right here, the DJI mic going in right here. So, Seven Rims mic, DJI mic, Seven Rims, DJI. I think it sounds pretty similar. Now you're not going to get the cool charging case that DJI mic gives with the Seven Rims, but if you're trying to save some money, a great option. Now what you're going to want to do for narrative projects is combine these wireless transmitters with a lapel or lav mic like this one. This is one of the cheaper ones on Amazon, probably $30 or something like that. I'll show you how you wire this up. Alright, now I'm on a lav mic setup, but I've plugged it into the Seven Rims transmitter here, and you just put that in your pocket, run the cord up your shirt, get a little athletic tape to hold it to your chest, just blow the collar, and then you're good to go. You can shoot whatever. Your mic's going to be concealed. It's going to sound really nice. One thing to note is that you can get a lot of rustling and interference with lav mics, especially with the cord, with cloth rubbing up on them. So I would recommend checking out this video with a bunch of tips on how to wire and set up these mics so that you don't have those problems. So also get creative with these units. Sometimes you can hide the actual transmitter in your shot, or you can play in your wardrobe to be really thick and easy to hide one of these things inside. You can also connect one of these transmitters to your shotgun mic, which will give you even more options. And then there's the most underused microphone of all, which is the phone. If you can't afford a microphone, you can always use your phone. And if you get creative with it, you can incorporate it into your scene. A lot of people are just holding their phones while they're talking anyways in real life, right? So if your character's just holding their phone and they're having their dialogue scene, then hey, it doesn't look that unnatural anymore. Of course, you can also just put it in your jacket pocket if you don't want it to be seen, or if you don't want it to be a big part of the scene. Now this isn't going to sound great, but it's a lot better than nothing. And then if all else fails, you have the last resort, the on-camera mic, whether that's the built-in one or one that you attach to it, like this Takstar SGC-598 or whatever. Thing is, even if you attach one of these on there, this is the last resort. And this kind of audio is really more useful as a scratch track to sync up your good audio to, or just to capture some ambience. See, the problem with these mics, it just comes back to that number one rule again, which is mic placement. It's never going to be close enough unless you start filming all of your stuff like this. And if you start filming all like this, then you know what? It might sound okay. Let's talk real quick about money and sound gear. Audio gear, production sound crew members, they're often not cheap. However, many filmmakers will be out there spending $2,500 on new DSLR, $1,000 for a lens or two, and then they'll cough up like $200 for a Rode VideoMic and call it a day. To me, that's absurd. And their projects are going to be hamstrung by their audio quality. And a more practical approach would be to divide your camera and audio budget more equally, because audiences are going to forgive shaky, blurry, noisy footage a lot more easily than they're going to forgive bad audio quality. And lastly, audio equipment holds its value much better than cameras do. I've had this $300 sound recorder for seven years, and I paid the exact same price it retails for today back then. Technology and sound gear advances much more slowly and incrementally than camera technology, so in general, audio gear is a safe investment for the long term, because odds are it'll be just as useful and valuable today as it will be five or ten years from now. So there's really no good reason not to invest in your audio kit if you're investing in your camera gear already. So at the end of the day, no matter what your budget is, it all comes down to how much focus are you going to put on your audio. If you pay attention and plan, you're going to record clean audio for every shot in your film, because there's always a creative solution to the problem, even when you're on a tiny budget. And fortunately, unlike with video issues, sound can be vastly enhanced and improved for free in post-production. So stay tuned, because I'm going to be making a follow-up video to this soon about sound design and why it is absolutely critical for bringing your films to life. And subscribe for my new short film. It's coming soon. It's a weird comedy. It's the first film I've made in two years thanks to COVID, so you're not going to want to miss it. Thanks for watching.