Sound advice

[ThomYorke]

Pun intended.

Some advice on how to get some REALLY excellent sound for your film (and this may sound elementary) for those starting out:

either buy or hire a microphone (it MUST be directional)
and then plug this baby into a portable MiniDisc recorder

Get some MiniDiscs

Now, when shooting, get a mate to just work the mike with the MiniDisc and teach him how to use it properly.

Then, in the editing stage, simply synch the audio (use something like a clapper) and it will be ABBASOLUTELY amazing.

The quality of your film will subliminally improve, I guarantee it

[sdchown]

I tried various experiments to this effect and here is what I found.

Mini disk is not as good as DAT for the following reason. DAT was designed to be used to record from a microphone. Minidisk wasn't. It is great when using a digital input - but has too much hiss to be of any real good for film. Believe me, any hiss is too much.

A second hand portable DAT recorder wont cost you much more than a Minidisk recorder anyway. I got mine for about 170 pounds.

Good Luck !

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Regards
Stephen Chown
Old Ones Productions

[This message has been edited by sdchown (edited July 21, 2000).]

[ThomYorke]

True, but in the event that hiss DOES develop, you can easily eliminate it through the use of a sound program like Cool Edit Pro. That's another benefit of recording the audio independently of the footage - you can play around with it more effectively later on, before synching it.