Re: Super-clean audio - how do they do it?

Another thing not mentioned here is to use the inverse square principal to your ADVANTAGE.

If you're using a boom mounted mic that's 4 feet away from the subject - and have an air vent that's 8 feet away (double the distance), there's just a 2 to 1 relationship between them, so the background sound will be just 4 times less than the speech you want to cleanly record.

A chest mounted lav (or better yet, a hair mounted micro lav) that's 6" to a foot from the mouth is going to increase the voice/background differential from 4 to 1 to a whopping 32 to 1 for the lav, or an even better 64 to 1 for the hair mounted lav.

And since you're moving the pickup closer, you can choose a LESS sensitive lav that will actually suppress MORE background sound relative to a highly sensitive mic in the same position. And really good lavs will also allow you to use low cut filters to diminish stuff like AC duct rumble even more.

It's not rocket science, it's just high school physics - but it's still unavoidable.


FCP since NAB 1999
creator: muti-track movies
www.starteditingnow.com