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Audio

So these are just some notes about audio. I want to go through with you guys. The first thing is, ignore the audio first. If you were just starting out with fusion, ignore it. All right? You want to work with your straights? First work with the visual part of it. Because that's, your photographer, you work with the visual side of photography, it is the most difficult part. It is the most frustrating part. I know darn well, if I hear rob in the other room going, I know it's the audio, I know it because it really it is. So it is a little bit frustrating, and it can be finicky, and sometimes out of your control is, well, like, I don't know if you guys just heard trucks passing by that happens. It happens during the vows, planes passover during the vows like so audio can be very frustrating, and you want to work with your strengths first master in filming, then learning the audio where you talked about this. Don't trust your onboard microphone manually control the audio. If you can remembe...

r that, mike, you're determining the mike a phone sensitivity level with the raising and lowering it, so think lower sensitivity in a loud environment, higher sensitivity in a quiet environment, um, audio can greatly enhance the fusion presentation so definitely keep it in mind definitely make it a goal of yours and we'll show you had edited which is actually not that tricky at all on briefly the microphone types and I know you wanted to go into this but one of the vocabulary words for audio is polar pack for microphone specifically about microphones you might hear that term when you buy a microphone mogul yes, the guy be in asia you know whatever then, eh? You know, you know what's the difference between these two will say, well, this one has a polar pattern that does this and this one has a you can look at them like tell me which one is better. Yeah, how your microphone hears essentially you have different directions with us you have your omni directional been a directional cardio oid and I never was going to show you what all these crazy thanks mean in your shotgun make right so basically okay, the microphone is on your camera the one who's building the one we said not to use that is generally an omni directional microphone it's picking up everything okay omni directional many directions okay, those air generally not good mikes for capturing specific people talking or if you're trying to capture one person trying to say something it's going here in a room and you're just trying to capture theme sound of the room itself okay generally when we're dealing with microphones like the road video mike pro is what's called a directional microphone or a unit directional microphone it's a shotgun microphone shotgun you ever picture shotgun? It's pointed in one direction you shoot it it's not going to shoot this way it's going to shoot straight ahead. Okay, so that's sort of the idea let's hope the thing with a shotgun like is the reason that we wanted it's interesting shock on mike's don't accept sound more than they reach out for sound okay mike's actually will stretch out like like think spider man shoes shoes owen it's kind of like that and that's what the polar pattern is that determines if the polar pattern is so the polar pattern on every mike is different, okay? Every brand of microphone, every every model number they're all different in their own way a microphone like that but that's called a basically a low quality shotgun mike it's only going to pick up like what's ever really close to it. Okay, a microphone like this is called a large or long shotgun mike this is called the of the road and t g too it's okay it's not the best microphone in the world it's good for picking up general dialogue okay, but if I'm shooting a movie or from shooting some high quality dialogue I'm gonna rent us a significantly better microphone but this is good if I want to pick up somebody about this distance from vanessa generally it'll be ok but the closer I get the better it's going to sound so this might be good you're doing an interview with your senior even with parents are bride and groom this would be an excellent the's types of mikes are not generally meant to go on camera they're not meant to go here they're meant to be recorded off camera using some sort of device so you could get closer to your subject is it's it's difficult to find long audio cables that maintain quality but this is a unit directional microphone okay is a shocking mike these are all interchangeable in some way out so I'm going to go too far into him cardio and mike's ever see like vocal vocalist sometimes have a mike that's like flat in front of their face and they're holding it like this and cardio and makes her diaphragm mike's have a different polar pattern they sort of capture everything that's like right here okay where these kind of reach out and grab sound so if you're gonna buy a microphone just be careful asked them what the poll asked them tell him I'm going to use a microphone for this what do you recommend and they're gonna tell you which one is the best one for that application good audio technicians have about fifty to one hundred microphones and, you know, audio's a whole industry in itself, so we don't want to get too crazy with it. But you definitely want me using the right tool for what it is that you're actually doing. The road video might pro the one on the right here. This is the one that we have been demonstrating here today. A less expensive model and very commonly used one is the sennheiser m k e for hundred? Yeah, we just want to put this here so you have two options. The road video, mike pro, is definitely one. That is great quality. But if you're not looking to spend two and a half right on a microphone and maybe closer to one and a half, you know, two hundred dollars sennheiser is a better one. I actually use this mic before I bought that one. It's decent. Ok, it's. Good for entry level it's. Good for picking up room sound. And, you know, general things that are happening in front of your camera. So those are the two basic microphone. So let's, talk about some techniques for audio. Okay? We have about ten minutes. Will kind of get into this, and then we're gonna go back and revisit audio again in another time. You really when you walk into a place that you're going to shoot let's say you're doing a senior shooter or a portrait shoot with a family doesn't matter what we're shooting let's say you're outside and you're in a park and the light is great it's all shade you know it looks good and you get this nice light coming through it's defused you know you're really happy with the way the visual looks, but you plan on inter interviewing that that person at some point it's kind of getting close to them with the cameras and get a little bit of audio, okay, if you're in an area where there's trucks wasn't by, you gotta just identify that noted listen, stop and listen to the environment what is it? What are you hearing? Are their planes going overhead? Our cars going by our air conditioning you're in a room? Is the air conditioning going really loud? You know? So these are things you want to identify and then either make a decision to move to a different area or interact with the environment control it, turn off the turn the tv off, turn the music off all these things are going to make your audio much better in the end because there's nothing more frustrating than thinking you have great audio and then going home and realizing you have crap it's very frustrating because once it was nothing you could do with it you have to go back and reshoot it at that point. So if you're planning this is why we always say with fusion just stick to the images first then work your way up toe audio because you're going to find that audio will frustrate you to the point that you'll just want to drop fusion I know a lot of people have done that they go I know I have I really want to get in the video and I went out I tried to shoot it and it's just so frustrating to me what was frustrating dude it's couldn't get this document with the thousand down like, well, you're you're light years ahead of where you should be so the important thing is is just you know, try to identify if you are gonna record audio the common things that might mess you up okay, listen to your environment this is what we talked about before the over under modulating controlling your mic levels manually if you are going to record audio, make sure that you're not peeking make sure that you're not slamming that audio veum here up against the end so the best way to get audio I think we said this before the closer to the source the microphone is the better it's going to be you know what I like to do when I'm shooting a bride I'm just gonna pretend this is a mono pod it's not obviously if I'm shooting a bride like let's see she's reading a cart is opening a car that she got from the groom that morning okay, I want it I want to get her doing it and I want to get her reaction and I want to get her reading it okay, so basically if she's sitting in a chair like vanessa like they don't ever looking at my camera obviously I'm like honey, just go ahead open the card right? So I'm like filming her I'm usually right about this distance because and sometimes all you don't screw the mic and hold it down here and we haven't done in the steadiness techniques yet we're going to get into that, but basically I'm holding my camera study, but I'm trying to get that mic so it's just outside of the frame and you know, I was my brides and know that I'm gonna do this I don't just do this and they go what is that? How you doing? So I really you know, I prefaced that I'm saying, listen, I'm going to be kind of up in your grill for this, but you're gonna thank me later because it's gonna be really important so just get it to avoid make sure your microphone is not too far from this source make sure you have the right type of mike for what it is that you're trying to get and how sensitive levels are voiceovers. This is common, like I've seen some guys diffusion or women diffusion where they want to kind of put in their own voice, not their own voice, but like maybe the subject's voice and edit and we're going to show you how to do this in editing later on. But if you're going to voiceover there's no reason why that might should not be right up against your face because nobody seen you on camera, right? So when you're recording audio like that, it should be right up on the source and make sure you know it's it's capturing the highest quality audio at that distance. So the basic idea for you to visualize this and make sure you get clean audio is you've got your source you want the shortest line from a to b all these things? Do you have your source, which is a person that's talking? You want clean line going straight to the microphone than the line that's going into the camera and into the recorder for having the microphone on the top? We're just working with plugging it in, but the idea is to get this whole line as clean as you possibly yeah, it's really important to note here that from going from your source tear microphone there's a lot of things that can screw you up here. That's fine. Biggest whether it's your environment or it's your equipment a crappy mike is goingto ruin from here to here. Okay, good quality. Mike is going to make this better. Okay, so they're all related a bad wire is going to, you know, get buzzing there might be shorting out maybe intermittent that's gonna screw up this to this. So you have to make sure that all four of these these stages are clean throughout the whole way. That's really, really important. All right, so that was a lot. So we're doing this in steps it's getting gradually and gradually more difficult but we're trying again to give it to you in spoonfuls alright, so audio is probably taste spoonful tablespoonfuls, right? A little bit more and sze totally outside your comfort zone because your image artists you're not sound designer, so it sze an introduction to a whole other field. It is the whole of the field they have like huge conferences just for audio. I mean it's it's a whole industry in itself. So so just remember audio is going to be secondary, so we talked about it on the second questions we're going way have a break coming up in a few minutes so from fashion tv on dh there from singapore and they said if you don't have a windscreen on your microphone how do you protect the audio during a windy situation that is what a great question here's yeah there's some smart people here's the thing with these microphones okay indoors and controlled environments like this there's no wind right? So we're not getting that sound that you get with window ways outdoors you pretty much want to use some sort of a windscreen and there's several different types of windscreens this is just a basic foam windscreen which when you put it over the microphone is going to shield some of the noise this is not going to cancel out heavy wind is that a question don't write I'm getting there if you don't have a windscreen you know your route so let's say you have a groom and you've lapel mic him up ok so what I'm wearing right now is a lapel mike this is a lapel mike all right you hide the wire, you clip it on them somewhere in there is right there's no windscreen on this so it's outside winds hit it it's gonna sound horrible if you don't have a windscreen get one you don't have one and you have to shoot anyway try to make him just block him so his back is to the way you would have hide it behind the boot near I try to talk him behind so because I don't want to see them and be you know it just anything that you can use the shield it is better the best thing to do is get one of these looks like a little piece of lint and I've actually had mothers of the bride go over there and go this's called a dead cat it's called a dead cat they're usually furry windscreens and it's different than a phone windscreen like this is a phone windscreen for me a little I kind of think this's mohr heavy this will really block the window it's like harry hair does your hair walks we deflect the wind on defense shooting outside you definitely want to have one of these on there and keep the mother of the bride so the answer is if you don't have a windscreen block did not get a dead cat here hold this since over shoulder a possum on the side of the road but yeah that's the thing with audio man you really want to be prepared for the situation that you're in because it's really difficult to work with you don't have the right tools all right I have a feeling that that is now being tweeted way wesley atkinson do plug into a soundboard during the ceremony or into the deejay board to catch the toasts and how would you connect that into every question that's more on the cinema and but I will briefly touch on it to see how an idea yes, we will tap into deejay sound boards and p a s public address systems if the opportunity arises again this is cinematography this is what I'm doing my full wedding films fusion pieces generally if you're trying to capture that stuff that's great this is how you do it you get yourself a device like this or like zoom h for end on a few guys I wish I had a picture of it right now it's like a two channel can you pull that up while she's pulling it up? This device is called the role in our forty four it's a four channel mixer meaning you can plug in four different sources okay, so I can plug into a djs board and then plug right into this and the record what comes from that to this? Or I can plug in a microphone cable to this and then you know how you have like beach weddings or forest weddings early barn there's a microphone sitting there I always take their crappy microphone. I put one of my high quality microphones on there and I pulled the cable into it and then I split this signal one going into here and one goes after their speakers this way whoever gets on that mic and talks it's great audio and you're recording it right into here so answer his question yes, to the for the toast and the ceremony, amongst other things, because I do like mike ever mike, everybody. And then we plug in, and then we stay still, mike, the speakers and all that stuff. We record right to a unit like this, and you have to sink it later. That's the hard part. The hard part is sinking it later on. That is yet here on the power point that is the zoom h for end, made by a company called zoom it's, a pretty common device. It's. Not the best one out there, but for three hundred bucks. It's, actually, pretty decent. It actually works fairly well, depending on what you're doing with it.