Recording birds and people (1 Viewer)

Andrew Whitehouse · Nov 13, 2006

This is a slightly unusual request but I'm trying to put together a project that will involve recording people interacting with bird sounds e.g. people using playback and then birds responding, people whistling for birds and birds responding, people discussing the bird they are hearing.

So, what I want to know is what the best set up is likely to be for capturing both birds and people clearly. Price is not particularly an object because it's for a grant application and, so long as I can say 'this is the best set up for the job' then it should be okay. I don't need to analyse the bird sounds but am more interested in having a clear recording of both bird sound and human sound. I'm also interested in making video recordings of the same interactions, so would like to know if any mics suggested will be compatible with digital video cameras.

ermine · Nov 13, 2006

Andrew Whitehouse said:
This is a slightly unusual request but I'm trying to put together a project that will involve recording people interacting with bird sounds e.g. people using playback and then birds responding, people whistling for birds and birds responding, people discussing the bird they are hearing.

Blimey. I hope you have considered the issues regarding playback and making birds perform for the hell of it. And that this isn't going to take place in the UK. Maybe I am being trolled - fair enough - I will embrace the troll...

In the event this is straight, no one mic in one position will do all you want. Birds are small and far away, humans are big and loud and closer to your mics. Your perspective will be dreadful IMO. You would probably want to record the general soundfield with something like a cardioid xy pair of MKH30s or an MS pair - MKH30/40 or a 30/50. Use a Rycote modular system for wind protection. IF you are producing for a broadcast environment favour the MS for field recordings for a bunch of boring technical reasons, and request the capability to monitor MS recordings properly from your recorder (Nagra BB+ or SD722 would be all right here)

For the dialogue you'll have to mike up the individuals - a lavalier mic into a minidisc or cheapie CF recorder for each group of people. You'll then synch all that up in post-production. There's no way what people will say will be intelligible and in balance with the overall perspective of bird sounds. You'll probably end up dubbing the bird sounds anyway. Or have a separate sound man with a parabolic dish if you know where the birds will call from (ie he can see them - you can't get a dish onto a bird that has started calling in time to be useful). You can then patch this into the mix in post. If the people are experienced actors you can probably loop the dialogue after the shoot, if it's Joe Public then you have to go with the lavalier mics and try and get some wind protection on the mics. You'll struggle in winds above 5-6mph.

If you're only doing a few sessions of this you are far better off hiring the gear from a facilities company. If you are doing a lot of it (WHY?!!!!) then after a few weeks of uses there is a case to be made for buying the gear.

You will make life a lot easier for yourself by hiring a sound man experienced with recording nature sounds, or at least with tv/film location recording. Or if that's not possible involving your local college recording guys. There are an awful lot of gotchas to what you're trying to do which will wear the patience of you and your actors thin. Actors both human and avian... Getting expertise would be very well worth paying for to get results in a fraction of the time it would take to learn from scratch. So you can then leave our feathered friends alone, for Pete's sake.... If there's one resource you need, it is that skilled person - he can then spec up and rent/supply the gear that you need, and drive it to get you the best results. Try someone like wildeye from the links on here

http://www.wildlife-sound.org/links/index.html

As far as the mics being suitable for digital video cameras, you are dead in the water trying to go that way. Your audio requirements push the envelope so much you'll need to mix this and sync the audio track in post so the audio will never see the camera until you're editing. The camera audio will be dead useful to synchronise sound and vision, but its quality can be rotten as it won't end up in the final mixdown.

Andrew Whitehouse · Nov 14, 2006

ermine said:
Blimey. I hope you have considered the issues regarding playback and making birds perform for the hell of it. And that this isn't going to take place in the UK. Maybe I am being trolled - fair enough - I will embrace the troll...

In the event this is straight, no one mic in one position will do all you want. Birds are small and far away, humans are big and loud and closer to your mics. Your perspective will be dreadful IMO. You would probably want to record the general soundfield with something like a cardioid xy pair of MKH30s or an MS pair - MKH30/40 or a 30/50. Use a Rycote modular system for wind protection. IF you are producing for a broadcast environment favour the MS for field recordings for a bunch of boring technical reasons, and request the capability to monitor MS recordings properly from your recorder (Nagra BB+ or SD722 would be all right here)

For the dialogue you'll have to mike up the individuals - a lavalier mic into a minidisc or cheapie CF recorder for each group of people. You'll then synch all that up in post-production. There's no way what people will say will be intelligible and in balance with the overall perspective of bird sounds. You'll probably end up dubbing the bird sounds anyway. Or have a separate sound man with a parabolic dish if you know where the birds will call from (ie he can see them - you can't get a dish onto a bird that has started calling in time to be useful). You can then patch this into the mix in post. If the people are experienced actors you can probably loop the dialogue after the shoot, if it's Joe Public then you have to go with the lavalier mics and try and get some wind protection on the mics. You'll struggle in winds above 5-6mph.

If you're only doing a few sessions of this you are far better off hiring the gear from a facilities company. If you are doing a lot of it (WHY?!!!!) then after a few weeks of uses there is a case to be made for buying the gear.

You will make life a lot easier for yourself by hiring a sound man experienced with recording nature sounds, or at least with tv/film location recording. Or if that's not possible involving your local college recording guys. There are an awful lot of gotchas to what you're trying to do which will wear the patience of you and your actors thin. Actors both human and avian... Getting expertise would be very well worth paying for to get results in a fraction of the time it would take to learn from scratch. So you can then leave our feathered friends alone, for Pete's sake.... If there's one resource you need, it is that skilled person - he can then spec up and rent/supply the gear that you need, and drive it to get you the best results. Try someone like wildeye from the links on here

http://www.wildlife-sound.org/links/index.html

As far as the mics being suitable for digital video cameras, you are dead in the water trying to go that way. Your audio requirements push the envelope so much you'll need to mix this and sync the audio track in post so the audio will never see the camera until you're editing. The camera audio will be dead useful to synchronise sound and vision, but its quality can be rotten as it won't end up in the final mixdown.

Hi Ermine,

And thanks for embracing the troll! A few points first. Any playback is not going to be done in the UK and won't be used in order to make the bird 'perform'. I'm interested in the use of playback as a kind of interaction between birds and people. If it doesn't work in 'bringing in' the bird, it's no big deal and so I won't be doing it to excess. I'm not interested in looking at this in terms of particular bird species either, more as a general technique.

I'm not surprised about the difficulties of doing the kind of recording I'm interested in and thanks for emphasising this so well! What I would say is that it's not essential for it to be broadcast quality. A good analogy in some ways would be to say that if I were recording a conversation between people, the only important thing would be to make out all the words and who's saying them. Anything else would be a bonus. So I want to be able to hear both bird and human sound but I don't need both to be crystal clear and evenly balanced (good if they are, but a bonus).

As I said in my earlier post, I'm interested in recording people whistling to attract birds as well as using playback. I'm wondering if this might be a bit easier to record because the sound being made by the person is going to be fairly 'bird like'. So would standard bird recording methods work reasonably well in that case, perhaps using a parabolic dish?

I might look into hiring a specialist on a few occasions - thanks for the tip (and for all the other advice).

ermine · Nov 14, 2006

glad this won't take place in the uk

A parabolic dish will work a treat on birds but not on people - you can easily mike up the people. You could try experimenting shooting the lot with a low cost binaural system eg Soundman OKMII but I think you will struggle to get the birds forward enough in the mix. These mikes are noisy for nature recording, but would be okay for whistling etc close miked.

I would be sorely tempted to record the people, using a good wide setup eg the MKH30/40 or an XY cardioid pair such as crossed ME64s or a single point stereo mic like the AT 822 or AT825 XY. The latter are rather nice for camera use but will only really work on dialogue in MCU or closer. And then patch in the birds in post-production, if necessary taking my cue from the faint sounds of the real ones

Record lots of 'room tone' on location ie background sound whith the people present but quiet. Record some of the birds on location with a dish and you will have enough tracks to mix down to give th effect you desire.

The trouble is your perspective is hard. You have loud, close, relatively static people and soft, mobile and distant birds. You don't even know where these are going to appear on set - they're a director's nightmare! You will have no trouble hearing both together aurally on location but the computer tracking and racking the sound system you are using on location is the most powerful in the world - your grey matter working with your hearing to make sense of the world around you.

To record your group of people you need something with a wide stereo coverage of 90-120 degrees, as you'll be reasonably close to them to get the signal to noise ratio up. To get your birds you need something seriously focused unless you can get within a few feet of them. Try it - record a bunch of birders as you wander around a reserve. If you hear them clearly you won't hear much of the birds. When we are listening for something we subjectively hear it much louder than it really is.

A parabolic dish is far too focused to record the people and the unnatural frequency response works okay on birds but will make the people sound tinny unless you EQ like mad. Levels will vary shockingly as the people wander round in the boresight of the dish. That's why you need the combination of wide perspective for the close work on the people and extreme narrow perspective for the distant birds. Both MS and XY are single point techniques relying on amplitude rather than phase differences for stereo so you will have an easier time panning in the (mono) birds into this soundfield

I'll be interested to hear how you get on, what worked for you and the results if they'll end up on the web eventually!

Andrew Whitehouse · Nov 15, 2006

Thanks enormously for this Ermine. If I get funding, I won't be starting on this till next year but I'll be interested to see how I get on too! It looks like there'll be quite a steep learning curve.

Jos Stratford · Nov 15, 2006

ermine said:
glad this won't take place in the uk

Probably be in Scotland, hence the promise for not to be in the UK

Andrew Whitehouse · Nov 15, 2006

Jos Stratford said:
Probably be in Scotland, hence the promise for not to be in the UK

Actually it might not even be in Europe. Somewhere horrible probably, you wouldn't like it

.

griffin · Nov 16, 2006

Jeezus !

They will give post-doc research grants in anthropology for just about anything these days !

My tip : get an audio recorder that can record time code to sync with the video cam - a Fostex FR2 or Tascam HD-P2 can both do this. That way you don't have to rely on a mic that is "anchored" to the video recorder. I agree with everything above - several mics needed to do it properly.

Happy to show you my set up sometime - might be ringing at Botanical gardens sometime soon !

Linz

Andrew Whitehouse · Nov 16, 2006

griffin said:
Jeezus !

They will give post-doc research grants in anthropology for just about anything these days !

My tip : get an audio recorder that can record time code to sync with the video cam - a Fostex FR2 or Tascam HD-P2 can both do this. That way you don't have to rely on a mic that is "anchored" to the video recorder. I agree with everything above - several mics needed to do it properly.

Happy to show you my set up sometime - might be ringing at Botanical gardens sometime soon !

Linz

Hi Linz,

Well they haven't given us money yet so we'll see about that!

I'd be interested in seeing your set up - I think it's going to be a steep learning curve for me on sound recording so I could probably do with seeing an old hand at work

.

griffin · Nov 16, 2006

Andrew Whitehouse said:
Hi Linz,

Well they haven't given us money yet so we'll see about that!

I'd be interested in seeing your set up - I think it's going to be a steep learning curve for me on sound recording so I could probably do with seeing an old hand at work .

hey, less o' the old !

Linz

Recording birds and people (1 Viewer)

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Andrew Whitehouse

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ermine

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Andrew Whitehouse

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