when it comes to video production many newcomers prioritize heavily on the video or image quality component and that is why they spend a lot of time and money thinking about what the best camera is for their production it is very seldom that you find people who equally pay close attention to audio now let's face it any camera that has built in mics don't capture audio well unlike professional recorders and i've struggled with that reality for a long time ever since owning my very first dslr this also led me to produce a short film that didn't
have any dialogues in them because it was convenient to shoot it that way but also the story actually didn't need dialogues now if i didn't pay attention to my audio to many of my videos in short films then this lesson would sound like this can you hear the difference sounds bad right so a lot of unnecessary sound is actually captured along with my voice unlike this where you can hear me properly and understand what i'm saying to you the difference is night and day so for this lesson let us try to look into some of
the basic things about audio in video production not all microphones are created equal each type of microphone is defined mostly by its pickup pattern and in what recording situation is that pickup pattern used now let us try to enumerate the essential pickup patterns and see which type of microphones they are applied to now probably the simplest pattern to understand omnidirectional microphone records audio from every direction this type of microphone is useful when recording audio that you can't control very well like ambient sound a press conference or a moving person and because of that it is
highly flexible but is also the noisiest among the different microphones a good example of an omnidirectional microphone is lavalier microphones the cardioid pickup pattern is a highly flexible pickup pattern which is good for all-purpose use essentially the pattern is in a shape of a heart thus the name cardioid ensuring that the sound pickup is on the front while negating any sound from the back however it is important to understand that cardioid microphones because they are highly sensitive will still pick up noise in a not so well controlled environment it's for this reason that these microphones
are most popular in recording studios because their sensitivity allows them to record detailed audio without the hassle of environmental noise now common microphones with this type of pickup pattern are condenser mics and dynamic mics the hypercardioid pickup pattern is considered as a directional pickup pattern which is good for isolating audio now not to be confused with the standard cardioid pickup pattern hypercardioid microphones have a more narrow focus of sensitivity making them way more directional in turn they negate noise even more than cardioid microphones so this type of pickup pattern is mostly found in shotgun microphones
and some other lavalier mics now super cardioid microphones are common in film production as they isolate audio more but still allowing for a slight margin of error when positioning the mic so this pickup pattern much like hypercardioid is mostly found in shotgun microphones but they have a narrower focus of sensitivity compared to hypercardioid mics they are typically mounted on a boom pole or on top of camera now it is also important to note that even though the highly sensitive pickup is at the front supercardioid mics and also hypercardioid still capture audio at the rear therefore
silence should still be observed during production the low bar pattern is considered the most directional pickup pattern available this is made possible by adding interference tubes to either a hypercardioid or supercardioid shotgun microphone thus making low bar mics longer than standard shotgun microphones now due to this modification these mics ignore background noise far more than any microphone pickup pattern now low bar shotgun mics are often used in professional filmmaking when the shoot takes place in an outside environment where noise is very much prevalent since the functionality is specific these types of microphones are often ignored
in a studio setting while this type of microphone cancels background noise very well it does so too efficiently and i mean too efficiently where accuracy is needed when pointing the mic to the talking subject if the mic ever so slightly misses the intended subject then you might not be able to pick up the audio properly so for something a little bit more flexible super cardioid is a better choice so as the name suggests a bidirectional microphone picks up audio equally from the front and the back of the mic which results in a figure eight polar
pattern now these are typically used in radio interviews or even for podcasting when using only one microphone now they are not popular in a film production setting but these microphones can be found as backup mics for talk shows most common bi-directional microphones are the ribbon mics now i would like to address something about boom microphones now this is often a misconception that i've encountered many times people tend to use the term boom mics to refer to shotgun microphones however this is not entirely correct the shotgun microphone is the actual mic while a boom microphone refers
to a microphone which happens to usually be just a shotgun microphone that is attached to a boom hole the boom pole would allow the mic to be placed near the subject without the operator having to go near typically used in filmmaking the combination of a boom pole and a shotgun mic allows the filmmakers to record good audio without the risk of putting the microphone and the operator in the shot so those are the different microphone pickup patterns and the types of microphones they are applied to always remember that the mics are not created the same
and that one is not better than the other there is only the appropriate microphone for a particular situation now when it comes to recording audio for video the advantage of scenic cameras is that they are modular and you can install a separate recorder and microphone which then records together with the video you are capturing some dslrs and mirrorless cameras have microphone jacks in them which allow you to also plug in an external microphone which overrides the camera's built-in mic but if you ask me i prefer to go the traditional route which is recording audio separately
in the early days of sound in filmmaking cameras were not capable of recording audio the technology wasn't really there yet so this forced the production to have a separate recording device in order to capture dialogues now in order for them to sync the audio to the video they would employ the use of a clapper so the camera records the act of clapping and the audio picks up on that sound then during post production the editors would easily look at the beginning of a footage and sound file and find that moment where the clapper was used
then the video and audio would have synced with today's technology since cameras can capture video and audio together it is easier to sync a video file's audio to your recorder's audio since they would have similar sound waves to look at also adobe premiere and davinci resolve have features that automatically sync your audio and video with the click of a mouse which makes the whole process a lot easier there are a few reasons why recording audio separately is my preference for one having a separate audio file means you can edit your sound through a dedicated audio
editing software these platforms provide you with more options and adjustments for editing your audio file in contrast to a video editing software next is the availability of different microphones for different situations which makes you more adaptable to the type of video you're producing and the shooting conditions you are in and then lastly and probably the most important reason for me is that having a separate recorder allows you to strategically place your microphone closer to the subject rather than having the mic be dependent on wherever the camera is so if the camera is far away from
the subject and your microphone is attached to the camera then your microphone might end up useless as it is also far away from the subject so how can we achieve recording our audio and video separately well ideally you would need to have a camera that can capture good quality video and for your sound you need to have a dedicated voice recorder so in this setup i have my camera directly pointed towards me and hidden from the frame is my voice recorder now what i like about my voice recorder is that it has its own built-in
condenser microphones which then captures my voice properly as long as it's directly pointed towards me and since it has a cardioid pickup pattern it doesn't capture much unnecessary background noise and furthermore it has xlr inputs for when i want to use an external microphone like a shotgun microphone and it can also be attached on a tripod so that it can be strategically positioned anywhere within the shooting area so if you have a team wherein one person operates the camera another person operates the voice recorder then you have someone holding the clapper and then you have
a director who can oversee the entire production then the basic communication flow of starting a shot would go like this the director will say raw sound and then the sound operator will activate the recorder start recording and then he will say rolling next the director will say roll camera and then the camera operator will activate the camera start recording and then we'll say rolling and after that the director will say and three two one action then the clapper will indicate the beginning of the clip now your subject or your actor will give about three seconds
of gap and then he or she begins the scene now the reason for the gap between the clap and the start of the scene is simply for the comfort of your own editing you wouldn't want the mistake of having your scene be overlapped by your three to one actions or the clapper itself so make sure to provide an allowance before the start of the scene and after the end of the scene for which the director will say cut however when i'm doing this alone i simply just press record on my voice recorder press record on
my camera place myself inside the shot and then literally just clap my hands and then i'm good to go now let's put this in your context do you actually need all of these devices now well not really at least not yet so i do understand that we have limitations and the thing is i was merely showing you how my process works and how we can transform that process based on what you may currently have so how can we achieve this type of setup for you now for the most part you may be using the camera
of your smartphone which is actually fine for your audio however you may need a separate smartphone for that so you can try downloading a separate voice recording app within that smartphone and the thing is smartphones ideally have good microphones since they are made to accept calls and with that comes noise cancelling features that negates background noise as much as possible so you can have a shooting setup with two smartphones one for video recording and the other one for audio recording so you can try that out if not then you can try dubbing your voice later
on so after you've recorded video on your phone you can try recording your voice with a voice recording app but this method requires a lot of patience as you need to really look at your video and follow how your mouth moves while recording now dealing with audio in video production is no laughing matter as a matter of fact there are still a lot of complex details about sound that we didn't even talk about in this lesson things like equalization noise reduction limiters and many more audio is indeed a very complex thing to talk about and
that is why there are careers built around people who are experts in the field of sound such as sound engineers as for me whose memory is dependent on visual cues i find it difficult to deal with sound and audio editing it seems simple but there are details that need further understanding i'm trying to learn but it's a very challenging thing to digest and but i'm willing to build myself holistically in in media production and this is what i hope to encourage you learn more about sound in a media based community where video dominates we need
people who understand that sound is also as important so that's it for this lesson i hope you learned a thing or two about audio in video production thank you and good day
