Ambiences for Film
February 7, 2012
As a starting point I figured its worth explaining why I’ve chosen the mics and configuration that I have for the Papua New Guinea trip – specifically about capturing elements for the ambiences for the film. As I worked through my reasoning, this post slowly became a generalised discourse on my approach to ambiences for film, so I changed the title & now it hopefully serves two purposes…
First, as a caveat, I have huge respect for the incredible research that goes into single point 5.1 mics like the DPA5100 or the Sanken WMS-5 or the Holophone and Soundfield mics and appreciate there are many applications where these kinds of mics are perfect, but…. while the considerable cost is one issue, it is the use, on location and then working with the resulting recordings, where my aims & process differ from the single-point-microphone concept…
This article on the development of the DPA 5.1 mic explains my stance exactly: “It is also important to distinguish between produced surround and acoustic surround. Produced surround is where a sometimes high number of mono (and I add, stereo, LCR, quad and 5.0) channels are surround panned in the sound field. Most modern mixers and workstations are able to deliver this functionality to create a virtual reality. Acoustic surround, on the other hand, aims to increase the feeling of presence in a specific acoustic sound environment by capturing the characteristics of the acoustics using surround microphone techniques.”
That statement “capturing the characteristics of the acoustics” is where single point 5.1 mics excel. But as a film sound designer the end results of my work primarily requires produced surround – the recording of any ambience is just the first of many steps in creating the ‘right’ ambience for a scene in a film. And the best way to capture material in a location for this use is, imho not necessarily a single point mic – sometimes it might be (and it sure would be more convenient than lugging a bag of seperate mics and stands and Rycotes across borders) but other than placement there is no flexibility with a single point microphone – this isn’t about criticizing, they definitely serve a purpose, but it’s worth thinking about the two aspects I mentioned in passing: the recording, and the use for the recordings….