In Thursday’s class, Paul took us through advanced sound and camera ft. the audio mixer kit and the Sony Z7. While I like to think I’m pretty savvy when it comes to technology, I was totally overwhelmed by this session because a) neither myself or my group members were familiar with these pieces of equipment; b) we were shooting on Tuesday; and c) it was so bulky and heavy for us to take all the way to Warrandyte via public transport.

We had to think logistically about what equipment would make the most sense for our project and our capabilities. We deemed that the Z7 was simply too unfamiliar and we didn’t want to risk using a piece of foreign equipment where it counts. If we had been using this equipment from the start of the semester then we’d undoubtedly be more confident, but it was just a bit too far of a stretch. Also, as we intend to get a number of handheld shots, this camera was a bit too heavy for our uses. With that in mind we decided we would be more comfortable using Sony MC50.

Sound recording devices was our next predicament. Our options were:

• Record and monitor the sound with a zoom H4n, connected to a shot gun mic and boom pole
• Record onto the zoom and use the audio mixer to monitor sound, connected to a shot gun mic with a boom pole.

After class we decided to test these two measures whilst filming with the MC50, upload the sound and practice synching with the visual. While Paul was adamant that we use the audio mixers to best monitor our sounds, we were apprehensive about this device as we did not have a thorough understanding of its operation. Upon testing it, I was nearly deafened and gave myself a neck spasm (buttons were pressed the mixer let off this horribly loud tone – I was the lucky one to be wearing the headphones) and our sound pickup was terrible… I understand that if we had used it properly then this wouldn’t have been the case, but that was exactly the problem – we didn’t know how to use it properly. I was much more familiar with the H4N, and although I’m not even the sound operator in our shoot, I knew that it would be a much wiser to go with option one.

With that in mind, we recorded a brief ‘interview’ on the camera and with our chosen sound recording set up. I wanted to make sure we could successfully and easily sync these in Premiere as after the shoot we would have masses of files to deal with. We eventually figured out the syncing process and I created a clip comparing the built-in camera mic to the external source sound recorded on the H4N. It was necessary that I evened out the volumes of each recording device as the camera sound was very loud in comparison to the zoom (must’ve been on a low gain). Here’s the result – props to Michael for being our impromptu host:

From this, you can note the drastic difference in sound quality between the camera (first clip – lots of background noise, echoey dialogue) and the sound recorded separately and synced in post (second clip – much clearer, crisper sound and significantly less background noise). We were satisfied with the sound acquired on the H4N and thus felt this would be adequate for our production. For this particular assignment, we are less concerned about sound and image quality and more focused on translating our script to the screen. Don’t get me wrong, I know it’s sound and image quality is important, but for the purpose of our production we were happy to settle for second best so we could really focus on story, composition and continuity.

Later on down the track I would love to do a shoot with all the equipment Paul presented to us to maximise sound and vision quality, but for this particular shoot, it was just not meant to be.