Sound Recording

In order to capture my sound in the best quality I have decided to use the best equipment I have available to me from professional filming for this documentary. Although subject matter and the way it is filmed is very important, a lot of people underestimate the amount of production value that can be gained by capturing very high quality audio. The heart of my setup will be my Tascam DR-40 that I bought last year for £150. It can record with its build-in, multi pattern stereo mics at 96kHz WAV as well as adding 2 mono tracks with either and XLR or TRS inputs. This level of quality is totally uncompressed and will hold up extremely well to mastering in post-production. As well as having much better level control over individual tracks, it will also allow me to monitor sound as its recording, something my camera cannot do while recording. This will allow me to monitor levels and make sure it isn't too low or clipping from being too high.

My main microphone for recording part of the interview sound, as well as room noise and environment sounds will be the Audio Technica ATR-875R. This shotgun mic has a very narrow pickup pattern and will allow me to focus sound recording directly on what I'm filming while ignoring background sounds behind the camera. This microphone has a balanced XLR output which will allow me record at higher level with a low noise floor, as well as avoid electrical interference from appliances in the kitchen. This microphone will be mounted in a home-made shock mount to isolate any noise coming from me handling the camera.

For interviews I will be combining this microphone with a ProSound lavalier microphone. This microphone is an omnidirectional mic, which means it picks up sounds from all angles but has a very short fall-off, making it suitable for hiding in jacket to capture speech very effectively. For recording interviews I will set this mic to average around -12dB and the shotgun mic to around -18dB. This is just in case anyone unexpectedly raises their voice and causes the audio on the lav mic to clip, I will have a lover volume recording that should not clip for insurance.

To monitor all this recording I will fall back onto my old favourite, the Phillips SH-2500 over ear headphones. I have had these for about 7 years now and they haven't failed me yet so I have a lot of faith in them doing the job for the project. They have a relatively low impedance and flat response, making them perfect for monitoring and mastering audio. Their long cable also comes in handy when things get more complicated from operating the camera as well as interviewing.