TV simultaneous recording and microphone skills

With the improvement of the quality of TV program production, the sound recording requirements of the program are getting higher and higher. The first ring to ensure the quality of the program sound recording is the previous sound recording, commonly known as the simultaneous sound recording. Due to the current composition of the TV crew, there is no customary person responsible for the sound, so the sound recording quality and quality of the same period largely depends on the degree of understanding of the use of the microphone and the degree of sound recording by the editor and camera.
In daily work, this phenomenon is often encountered. For a period of time, a large number of pre-production crews need to use wireless microphones; for a while, a large number of strong-pointing microphones are needed; now, the demand for boom microphones is constantly increasing. The use of microphones is increasingly diversified, complicated, and upscale, but the previous recording levels have not improved significantly. In response to this situation, I would like to briefly introduce the use of the microphone and the basic procedures for simultaneous recording for your reference.
The simultaneous recording of the sound, at this stage, whether it is a news interview, or a TV feature film, a documentary (the simultaneous recording of the TV series has a dedicated sound engineer, the microphone usage and working procedures involved are beyond the scope of this article), the vast majority are Recorded on the tape, so it is necessary to introduce the use of the "key" related to the sound on the camera, in the case of the newly used Panasonic digital camera AJ-D910WAe.
1. Automatic level AUTO: Set the gain amplifier circuit. When the limiter is turned on, the automatic gain control (AGC) circuit starts to operate, and the recording quality of the sound is guaranteed by the AGC circuit, and no extra work is required by personnel. This mode is suitable for recording continuous sound.
Manual level MAN: The operator can adjust the gain according to the size of the sound. When the limiter is turned on, the clipping starts at the 3dB level at the peak 0ppm (+18dBu relative to the 0dBu operating level). This method has high requirements for personnel and good sound recording quality.
2. AUDIO IN: Select the input method. FRONT file, select the camera head random microphone; R EAR file, select the two cassette ports CH 1 and CH 2 at the back of the camera, there are M IC / LINE two files in the REAR range, select the microphone / line input. In actual interviews, there is often a situation where the level meter shows a small sound, and the sound is distorted when listening. This is because the mouth level is too large, and the MIC file can be replaced by the LINE file to solve the problem. .
3. Microphone power supply REAR MIC POWER : When REAR MIC POWER is selected to ON, it can supply power to the two card ports on the back of the camera. C-74, iron triangle and other condenser microphones can be used without battery.
4. Peak level meter: The volume meter of the digital video camera is the peak meter. The maximum value is 0ppm (the unit display is dB). In principle, it cannot be exceeded. The optimal range of recording should be -8 ~ -12dB.
5. Menu MIC/AUDIO Options: You can select the power supply of the random microphone, the pre-gain of the microphone, whether to pre-emphasize, the limiter switch, the high-pass filter switch and the audio test signal. When the high-pass filter is turned on, the low-frequency noise can be removed, and the recording sound in the outdoor is particularly effective, and the frequency response range is 200 Hz to 10 kHz.

The judgment standard of the sound recording of the camera is: the volume meter display is moderately super-sound, the sound is clear and bright, the distortion is small, and the ambient sound does not interfere with the main sound. After learning the sound button on the camera, let's talk about the microphone. Recording the simultaneous sound first depends on the program needs and the environment of the venue to determine which microphone to use. The following is a list of the types of microphones that are often used during simultaneous recording, and where applicable, the model of the microphone selects the type that the station is currently using.
The strong pointing microphone must maintain a certain distance from the interviewee during the interview, which is more suitable for random capture interviews in noisy environments. For example, in a random interview on the street, due to the super-cardioid directionality, the sensitivity of the interviewed voice of the microphone is ensured, and the ambient noise is effectively avoided.
The use of wireless microphones facilitates the host and interview activities, especially in situations where there are many people and there is no way to arrange an interview environment. The freedom of the host and the interviewee has increased. Handheld wireless microphones can be used for moderator recording, and can also be used for interview recording (host recording refers to single person recording, interview refers to two or more people recording); lavalier wireless microphone has smaller shape and lower sensitivity, suitable for The host recording in a noisy environment requires two or more lavalier wireless microphones for interview recording, but the camera can only use two microphones without the mixer. The lavalier wireless microphone frees the hands of the host, especially suitable for on-site merchandise, introduction of things and action-rich moderators.
The dynamic microphone is suitable for the sound pickup of the host. Because of its low sensitivity, it must be close to the mouth, so that the ambient sound does not have much influence on it, and it can pick up the sound effectively and cleanly, and the dynamic microphone is used because it has no power supply. Convenient and can be used in bad weather. When the host used it to interview, because it was too close to the interviewee, it would make people uncomfortable and affect the interview, and the composition of the picture would not look good.
The pressure belt microphone is suitable for the recording of the talk show. It is required to be placed on a hard desktop. It can pick up the sound of many people sitting at the table. It picks up the sound source above the desktop and is effective for the inherent noise of the environment. Suppression, and the microphone is more concealed because it is flat, and does not affect the picture.
Instead of a microphone type, the boom microphone uses a telescoping special pole to hold the microphone close to the sound source without the microphone appearing in the lens. The boom microphone is commonly known as the microphone, the boom microphone stand, the windshield and the windproof fur. The boom microphone is the most used recording method in film and television shooting. Its advantage is that it can pick up sounds at multiple angles without disturbing the screen shooting and character performance, but at the same time it requires special recording personnel and related essentials. Recording equipment such as ENG mixers, headphones, various microphones, etc. During the shooting, the sound engineer adjusts the mixer and boom microphone according to the condition of the headphones to monitor the sound, in order to pick up the high signal-to-noise ratio and low distortion sound. If the sound is monitored in different periods, moving the boom microphone is blind and meaningless. This does not really record the sound source and its environment.
Interview recordings should follow certain working procedures: (1) Determine whether to record automatically or manually according to environmental conditions;
(2) Before the official opening, please ask the host to speak in normal voice and adjust the level of the recorder or the distance of the microphone;
(3) Play back and listen to it immediately after recording, and find the problem to be re-recorded or re-recorded in time. According to the working procedure, the recording quality of the sound can be guaranteed to avoid problems.
In summary, the quality of the simultaneous recording depends on the correct use of the sound keys on the camera and the reasonable use of the microphone, and it depends on the person. At this stage, the editors' various needs for microphones reflect the increased emphasis on sound quality. This is a welcome change and an inevitable result of the development of the television industry. Audio practitioners should work harder to cultivate their internal strengths, improve the technical level of using equipment, meet and meet the requirements of development, and believe that through the joint efforts of everyone, the quality of TV sound will be greatly improved.
From the recording process, TV drama recording is mainly divided into simultaneous recording and post-dubbing. In drama dramas, early recordings are sometimes used. This article mainly discusses the post-audio production in the simultaneous recording process.
According to the usual classification, film and television sounds can be divided into vocals, natural sounds and music. Vocals mainly refer to language and breath sounds. Under normal circumstances, these sounds have been recorded at the shooting scene. The main treatment of vocals in post-production is to adjust the level, edit points, and repair the lines. This process is generally called repair points. This process accounts for at least half of the post-work time. Except for some skills and experience, the final result depends entirely on the quality of the previous recording. If the recording is done well during the same period, the work that needs to be done in level adjustment is actually very small. Sometimes it may only be necessary to make some special field-to-field adjustments, such as because the emotions need to be low or hot. The relationship between the field and the volume of the field is often not easy to grasp at the scene. The main consideration of the field is the signal-to-noise ratio. Moreover, the connection between the final field and the field cannot be determined during live recording. If the level is not well grasped during the simultaneous recording, it is a disaster for post-production, although in terms of signal-to-noise ratio, the records themselves are not a problem. The endless adjustment of levels is a waste of meaningless time and time even for digital audio workstations. Moreover, too many adjustments make it difficult for the sound engineer to grasp the overall level. The reason why it is described above is to remind the sound engineers, especially the first-time recording engineers, that the level of recording adjustment is important. Because the sound engineers who grew up in the digital age are reliant on digital products. This tendency even permeates other members of the crew, who may be used to saying something like "this voice is okay, later can be repaired" and the like.
There are some basic tips for proper adjustment of the language level. Most people, including professionals, believe that adjustments to a sentence or a line are an overall adjustment. The specific operation is to make a decibel adjustment to the selected material as a whole, increase or decrease; or another operation mode, and drag the two level points up and down. The exact mode of operation depends on the equipment used, but these adjustments are for the overall level. In fact, sometimes this overall adjustment loses the entire recording level and may affect the signal loudness at the time of broadcast. In most cases, the size of the sound when converting the lens is not suitable. You may only need to adjust a few words. You may need to make a small slope. This adjustment makes the lens or scene transition natural and ensures sufficient loudness. This is very important in the appearance of each channel sound like the sound of the sound, not to mention the method of guaranteeing loudness at the expense of signal distortion.
If the video editor has both rich experience in editing the simultaneous TV drama and is very dedicated, a successful simultaneous recording will not do much in the finishing of the editing point. Unfortunately, the sound engineer now spends a lot of time on repair points, and it is very convenient if the work is done during editing. The reason for this situation is that on the one hand, because most editors lack the basic qualities of sound, the sound editing points are not done well because they don’t try their best, but they lack the basic rhythm of the language, and the edited dialogue lacks expressiveness. It can't even be smooth. Sometimes there are many inconsistent ports on the editing points, and even half a word is lost (maybe this is related to poor sound monitoring in some editing environments). On the other hand, many editors have a misconception that all problems related to sound should be made by the sound engineer, including the words that are lost when editing. Sound post-production often encounters an annoying situation, and some paragraphs want to sound ideal, meaning that a paragraph needs to be re-edited, and this is almost impossible. The work tape handed to the sound engineer is in fact almost the completion of the picture, the so-called modification unless there is a problem in the trial. Sometimes the sound engineer had to do a painful and meaningless job: forced to modify the lines to deal with the editor's mistakes. For the overall effect, a material with a slightly problematic sound is used, which is a normal situation in the editing. The sound engineer should find a way to replace it with another good material sound, provided that the two sounds can be replaced or passed through the technology. Can be replaced after processing. In the normal work of refining lines or being forced to repair lines, the sound engineer's sensitivity to language is very important, because a play can't be imagined even if the rhythm of the language is not consistent. In the process of repairing the lines, the adjustment and deletion of the individual words in the lines can sometimes effectively change the rhythm of the dialogue, make up for the actor's mistakes in the lines or emotional discomfort. Of course, these adjustments should not affect the mouth shape. If these problems are found and resolved during editing, there are more ways to deal with them, such as the reaction lens to achieve many adjustments to the dialogue rhythm.
From the recording process, in the post-audio production, the most common situation is that the panoramic and close-range sounds are not connected, and the sounds are not connected. For the former, the sound engineer should be more courageous. The change of the scene should produce changes in the space and tone other than the volume. Don't ignore the sound scene because of the small screen and non-high-fidelity sound of the TV. Of course, you should also pay attention to the ambiguity caused by the proximity effect caused by the microphone position being too close in the previous recording or the position of the microphone is too far. If there is such a situation, some balance processing is needed, but this can only be a remedy. There is a special case that every drama will encounter a problem: when shooting the crowd scene, there are more people in the panorama, but when the scene is taken close, the extras are released, and at most, it can be seen in several pictures. The result of this is that the sound space is not connected, especially when shooting indoors. This may involve some issues in production, such as the cost of the extras, vehicle arrangements, on-site management, etc. The recording engineer sometimes needs to insist on recording during the same period. In addition to the above, the excessive shift of the direction angle is also likely to cause such a situation. The processing method can only increase the background sound of the weaker ambient sound, make it connect, and then make a sound cross at the interface, because the background sound is hard to trace, unless the whole sound is used to bring the sleeve, provided that The lines of the two material actors must be consistent.
In modern TV dramas, almost every part has a telephone voice. There are generally three cases: there is only one party in the picture, the other party appears as a phone call outside the phone; the two sides of the call are cut; the pair is cut but sometimes the sound in the earpiece is used. For the first case, it is important that the time value of the lines in the previous recording is matched with the picture. If it does not match, the language needs to be adjusted. At the same time, the editor should provide the sound engineer with a complete background vocal cord instead of cutting the background sound when there is a phone call. In the latter two cases, the sound engineer can only make simple phone sound adjustments according to the cut sound provided by the editor. This involves the handling of the phone's voice in an earpiece. In general, the sound engineer (including the audience) is accustomed to the dry phone sound, which is achieved by the so-called telephone equalizer (cutting the low frequency, raising the medium and high frequency). A method has been used for many years, so that the fake becomes real. In fact, with the development of communication technology, the voice of the phone is no longer a feeling of the past. People who have used old-fashioned telephones need to remember two people's two voice messages at the time. The sound in the telephone receiver is so different from the original voice. Now, the sound in the better telephone receiver is not much different from the sound of the direct recording, and the telephone voice made in the film and television drama is still so exaggerated. The most regrettable thing is that people are used to it, just as people (and even some viewers and producers nowadays) are used to the late dubbing. The concept of simultaneous recording of TV dramas has been around for 20 years since the promotion. I hope that people will not insist on exaggerated phone calls for too long. In fact, the volume control is appropriate, and the low frequency is attenuated.
During the simultaneous recording, some scenes wired microphones are used in conjunction with wireless microphones, sometimes recorded separately, and the spatial and timbre of the sounds recorded by these two types of microphones are different. When the distance between the two types of microphones and the sound source is too far apart, there will be a two-tone phenomenon due to the difference between the speed of sound propagation in the air and the speed of electromagnetic wave propagation, which requires careful adjustment on the audio workstation.
One of the things to note about natural sound processing is that the actual demand for natural sound volume in a TV series is lower than most sound engineers. The modern recording engineer's simultaneous recording education emphasizes the truth and emphasizes the role of natural sound, which is undoubtedly correct. But emphasizing does not mean that it is over-exaggerated. The excessively exaggerated environmental sound is not conducive to TV dramas where the family is watching the environment. Many sound engineers are concerned that the sound level meter is not enough. In fact, for a sustained ambient sound, the lower table value is actually sufficiently loud. In particular, the traffic sound used for the transition, etc., should not be too large. Of course, the day and night scenes should be different. When the ambient sound is with the lines, if you want to change the proportion in the later stage, you can only increase the ambient sound, but not the opposite. Therefore, the pre-recording should try to increase the proportion of lines, especially in today's increasingly noisy environment. This view is not absolute. Some scenes need to emphasize natural sound, such as chasing and fighting in the police film. Subjective processing is sometimes done on natural sounds, because the emotions or specific states of the characters in the play exaggerate or reduce the natural sound. When shooting on the spot, there is a tendency to refer to a lens without a person as an empty lens, such as shooting a passing vehicle or other vocal objects (such as a telephone, a tape recorder, a television, etc.), and the photographer's scene changes are relatively free when shooting. It is sometimes difficult for sound engineers and assistants to adjust the recording level and microphone position in time according to the scene. In the post production, the natural sound scene should be considered. Natural sound has no linguistic information, and to some extent, the meticulous handling of it is especially important. Although the natural sound along with the lines has been recorded during the same period of recording, sometimes it is necessary to make adjustments later, such as the friction between the unwanted chair and the ground, the sound of the plastic bag that is always too large, etc. Of course, the premise is that it does not affect the lines. There are also some sounds that need to be added, such as the action of cutting the fruit, knocking on the keyboard, etc. when the actor is not close to the scene. The forgotten sound of the same period has the actor factor, the sounder's factor, and some special situations, such as when shooting close-ups. Shooting equipment such as reflectors limits the movement of actors. All kinds of situations can be negotiated in the early stage, but in the post-production, they can only be repaired by using the sound in the same field.
All the colleagues who participated in the TV drama shooting know that the door to the scene will almost never be closed. Video, frequency and light lines have to pass through. The rapid transition and the tight production cycle make it impossible to deal with these things. It can only be left to post-production. There are many situations that can only be found directly from the database, so we heard Everything is the same as switching the door sound, phone ringing, etc. In fact, during the same period of recording, you can collect all kinds of door and door sounds on the spot, especially the main scenes, and you should record the sound of the door with different materials and different emotions, so the sound will be very delicate. Of course, the most authentic and natural is definitely the normal door when shooting. The reason for using the normal word is that the scene of some scenes only looks like a door. For fixed-line phone ringtones, there are not many types to choose from, but for mobile phones that almost everyone in modern movies, you can't easily handle them. You can choose according to the personality of the characters (including the sound of SMS), no special circumstances, The ringtone of each character's mobile phone should be fixed as much as possible, otherwise the audience will be confused.
Some natural sounds must be done later, such as wind, rain, thunder and so on. Use the fire truck to shoot the rain show. If the pre-processing is good, you only need to find a background rain sound to make a transition. This can avoid re-matching the lines. Of course, if you have not recorded it in the early stage, only the post-match is available.