This summer has been a busy one, at least as far as production is concerned. I’ve spent the better part of the past few months preparing, filming, and directing a number of productions, including a few passion projects that I plan to share on the site in the near future. Some of you have been emailing and tweeting me asking when you can expect to see some of these projects, and I will start sharing them soon once they are ready for public release.
The first in this series of recent passion projects is the trailer for my upcoming feature film, This was shot in Super 16mm film style on a Digital Bolex. I also took a picture A very short narrative film called Starlet, I tested the Panasonic Varicam LT in it… Recently (earlier this week) I shot a movie called “Beach Bum” on the URSA Mini 4.6K, which is what inspired this post.
Unlike many of my works, these are entirely or at least partly based on beach bum I really wanted to simplify things and try to shoot in a cinematic style using documentary strategies. To take this to the extreme, I decided to shoot the project entirely myself, without any production support, which ultimately helped me capture the “fly on the wall” mood I was after.
My goal with the last few short films I made was to experiment with different shooting styles and directing techniques in the hope of finding more creative inspiration to incorporate into my upcoming feature film. I’ve been interested in a lot of French cinema lately and wanted to shoot something in the modern vérité style as a creative exercise in exploring that style on a smaller scale production. That means I’ll just be focusing on the camera, the story, and the acting, rather than capturing coverage, managing crews, or even relying on the music in the edit.
With this in mind, I set out to write a film that I could direct, do photography and audio myself, effectively working as one person.
Here are some graded daily reports:
For anyone wondering, I shot this on a URSA Mini 4.6K in a 2.4:1 aspect ratio with the ProRes 422HQ codec. I used some vintage Zeiss SuperSpeed cameras (which are incredible) and I will definitely do a more detailed camera post on this in the future…
While I’ve directed and done DP at the same time many times in the past, I don’t often run audio myself, so going into this shoot I knew it was going to be the biggest challenge… Not only because of the environment (we shot on a beach, very close to the Pacific Ocean), but also because I knew I didn’t have a soundtrack to hide any flaws in the audio. As I mentioned above, I wanted to challenge myself to create a film that didn’t rely on music for any emotional motivation, which of course made it even more important to capture the sound of the original location.
When preparing to shoot, I realized that the vast majority of scenes only require natural sounds. There’s really only one dialogue-heavy scene (we’ll get to that later), so my first priority was figuring out how to best capture the environmental textures and natural sounds of the environment – preferably straight into the camera.
My original plan was to mount a shotgun mic on the camera, connected via XLR to the URSA Mini 4.6K. But after some experimentation, this didn’t seem to work out the way I planned. The shotgun I used (RODE NTG2) was too directional and didn’t seem to have a wide enough range to capture the texture needed for the background texture. Not to mention it’s a big mic and once it’s mounted on a shock mount and windshield it’s too bulky to handle.
In the end, the simplest and most effective solution was to use my Zoom H6.
I used the Zoom’s mid-side mic on the H6 because it ultimately gave me the most flexibility from a sound perspective. This is a very powerful little mic that actually allows you to adjust the width of the sound in post, which gives you a lot of options when editing your track.
As for the Zoom H6 itself, I just used the Noga arm to mount it directly to the camera.
My rig doesn’t look the prettiest, but it gets the job done:
I recorded the audio on Zoom using the backup track (lower DB), which is my failsafe. This allows me to keep the levels high and not worry too much about clipping due to loud sounds. I also used the XLR in the zoom lens directly connected to the URSA Mini. This would allow me to use camera audio if I wanted to for convenience, or at least give me a really nice scratch track.
About 70% of the film was shot this way, and the setup didn’t change until I had to record the main dialogue scenes.
The film only has two characters and most of their dialogue is limited to one scene. I knew right away that this scene was going to be the trickiest part (audio-wise) as I would be shooting guerrilla style without boom operations and would also be operating the camera handheld.
As you might imagine, using a wireless lavalier mic was really my only option. This part of the shoot was an experiment in itself as I used two new wireless microphones for the first time – this Rhodes video link Film Production Kit Wireless Necktie:
Having never used these mics before, I honestly didn’t know what to expect. In the past, I’ve primarily used Sennheiser G3s, but I was surprised to find that these Rode mics (much cheaper, about $400 each), sound just as good. Their structure is more plastic than the G3, and their size is not as small as the G3. But they produce crystal-clear sound that works incredibly well—even on relatively windy beaches.
BTW, I highly recommend these lavs to anyone who needs to run their own audio, but needs a foolproof system to do so. Microphones like the Sennheiser G3 are just as simple, but they’re easier to use. You just turn them on and they sync and work. There are no other controls, and in fact no menu system at all. They’re either on or off, and there are buttons on the side that let you adjust the level/gain controls.
They won’t be the perfect microphone for professional sound recordists who need fine-tuned control over settings on their transmitter/receiver… but for many filmmakers who need a truly high-quality audio solution, it will get away with Dilemma and make it work, I highly recommend these. Back to the project——
When shooting dialogue scenes, I ran 4 channels. Channels 1 and 2 are still connected to the onboard mid-side mic, which I use to capture ambient sounds for later mixing, and channels 3 and 4 each have a lav mic plugged into them.
I didn’t take pictures of the microphones on site, but this is basically how they are set up:
While filming this dialogue scene, I was unable to run the audio back to the URSA Mini due to the camera angle I was in and the fact that at one point I had to stand up and follow along with the actors. So I just turned on the onboard microphone on the URSA Mini to sync later with a scratch track. This setup ended up working really well and when I heard the dialogue recording in the editing room I was very pleased with the quality of the dialogue recording.
On a large-scale shoot, there is absolutely no substitute for a professional sound recordist. That said, there are situations where you just need to run your own audio, and it’s reassuring to know that you can capture very, very good results even with prosumer tools like the Zoom H6 and RodeLink Wireless Lavs .
But at the end of the day, your technique is what matters. Better gear can always help us get better results and sometimes make our lives easier… but no matter what kind of kit you use, bad technique will always produce bad results.
Be sure to check back soon as I will be posting the film on NoamKroll.com along with a behind-the-scenes video from the same shoot.
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