Quick disclaimer on this article: There are many different boom operation techniques. While some are better than others, there is no one way that trumps the others. There are many different ways to boom op, but what matters is the end result, not so much how you got there. So I offer the following advice as a collection of the knowledge that I have gained through experience. I do not claim this to be the be-all and end-all manifesto of boom operation! Nor do I claim to be a good boom op! I’ve just worked with a lot of good ones

Enjoy!


The Boom Operator: one of the most crucial parts of a sound team, if not the most crucial. Also, one of the most misunderstood positions. He is a ninja. No, seriously, he is.

Let’s talk cinema style audio for a bit. On a film set, the boom operator is the “voice” of the sound team. He’s the one that communicates most set-related concerns to the proper crew. If he’s having trouble with placement, he’ll talk to the cam op or DP. If body pack or Comtek batteries are low, he’s the one that changes them. If talent is having trouble with their wire, the boom op is generally the one to fix it. The mixer usually stays off to the side. Because of this, the boom op needs to be a very personable character. He needs to know how to get what he needs without pissing people off. He needs to be able to get along with whomever is thrown his way.

Once we start talking ENG, the mixer not only mixes, but does everything the boom op does. He’s a one man band. He needs to be able to move very quickly, anticipating every need before it happens, staying one step ahead of the crew, lest he hear the dreaded phrase “Waiting on sound!”

Now, you could be the most personable person in the world, not stepping on anyone’s toes and getting all the work you need to get done finished without negatively altering anyone’s mood, and still be a terrible boom op. Let’s talk technical.

A boom op needs to realize how incredibly sensitive his gear is. It’s a game of inches. You need to be able to think one step ahead of the talent. You need to be quick, light on your toes, and stealthy. You need to be everywhere and nowhere, all at the same time. You need to be moving faster than the talent, staying dangerously close to the frame line, so much so that cam ops are breaking into a nervous sweat. You need to perform near stunt moves, moving over and around obstacles on set during moving shots, being aware of your surroundings while sticking your mic on a spot the size of a quarter. You need to do all of this without making a single noise. This is why the boom op is a ninja.

As a boom operator, you have to be willing to do crazy things to get that perfect sound. You will, at times, find yourself in strange positions, in harms way, or in otherwise less-than-comfortable situations. You have to be on point at all times, knowing that if you mess up, you’ve compromised the entire shot.

Ok, if I haven’t scared you away yet, lets go over some basics of boom operation.


1. Understand the reason you are using a boom mic. This will help you understand what sound you are listening for and why.

Wireless technology has come a long ways. If you have money for the high end systems, and have your wiring technique down, you can pretty much wire everyone and have fairly decent confidence that you’ll get well isolated, low noise audio from each of the talent. So, why wouldn’t you do this? When you wire talent, you lose the room. It doesn’t sound natural, rather it sounds sterile, and post production has to fix it. Post is perfectly capable of doing so, but wouldn’t you rather the natural feel of a room versus the artificial recreation of a room that might sound kind of similar to your room but isn’t quite the same?

The boom operator has control over what you are hearing in the mic. You can get closer to the talent, further from the talent, you can rotate the mic, so on and so forth, to shape the sound that you are getting. If you have talent that’s supposed to be in a very echoic room, or if you are trying to show distance, you can pull the mic a bit further away from the talent to bring less of the talent and more of the room into the mic. If you want very little room and a very direct voice, such as you might hear in a close-up, bring the mic as close to the talent as the frame line will allow.

With a good boom mic, even rotating it an inch can change the sound. Listen to the sound you’re getting to make sure you’re getting mostly dialogue, and little room noise. If you’re getting reflection from a wall, articulate the mic so that the wall is at the side of the mic instead of in front of it.

Now, of course there will be epic wide shots, very noisy environments, and multi-cam shoots that won’t allow you to boom and will force the use of wires, but your goal should be to use the boom as much as possible.


2. Aim the microphone at the solarplexis.

Not in the general direction of the talent, not at the talent’s head, mouth, face, etc…

(The solarplexis is basically the sternum area.)

The human voice has many components and emanates from different parts of the body. The deep part of the voice comes from the chest and throat. The mids and some highs come from the mouth and nose, and the high highs come from the skull. Aiming at the solarplexis grabs all of these.

Aiming at the solarplexis also gives you a bigger target. If you aim at the mouth, you have to move the boom with every head movement in order to keep the same frequency response. If you aim at the solarplexis, you have a much larger target, allowing the talent a much larger range of motion without having to move the boom as much, all while maintaining a consistent frequency response and overall sound.


3. Booming from below opens you up to a world of problems. Literally.

Think about it. If you point the mic down, you deal with a few things on the ground such as footsteps, props, and whatever faint reflections that might be there. All things you can control. You can use foot foam to quiet steps, you can use blankets and carpet on the floor to quiet reflections. You can use fake keys and jewelry to quiet prop noises.

Now, think about aiming your mic up. If you’re outside, you have airplanes, wind, birds, traffic bouncing around, etc… None of which you can control. If you’re inside, you have reverb bouncing around in the ceiling, A/C if you were denied having it turned off, light noises (especially if you’re using HMIs), and whatever else might be up there. Much of this you can’t control.

Let’s revisit aiming at the solarplexis. When we mic from above, we’re intersecting all of those nice frequencies. When we mic from below, you get a low end bias. You’re closer to the diaphragm and chest, where the low end comes from. Remember the mic is very directional, especially at higher frequencies. Therefore, if you’re aiming at the solarplexis from right near the solarplexis, you’re going to only get the solarplexis, and not the frequencies that come from higher in the body. As a result, the voice sounds “tubbier” – the low end frequencies really stand out. Something you want to try to avoid if possible.


4. The frame line is your friend. Give it a nice big hug.

In most circumstances, you are going to want to ride the frame line as close as possible. I know, I just talked about pulling back for more reverb, etc… All that is good to know, but you also have to realize that microphones pick up more reverb than your ears do. So, in most cases, you’re going to want to be as close to the frame line allows, often riding it dangerously close. An experienced boom operator can ride that line so close he’ll make people sweat, but he’ll rarely break the frame.


5. I’m being followed by a boom shadow, booooom shadow, boom shadow.

Lame Cat Stevens references aside, boom shadows aren’t fun to deal with. A boom op should be present for blocking and rehearsals. He will be able to find where the lighting will fall during blocking, and can request flags from the DP if needed (politely please! You want to remain friends with the DP! He won’t always put up a flag, but he might if the lighting scheme allows.) Also, the boom op will work with the cam op during blocking and rehearsal to find out where the frame lines and shadows fall. The cam op is the boom op’s best friend on set. Just be sure not to interrupt any important conversations between Cam Op / Director / DP / etc… You’re still trying to be a ninja!

Please, don’t be that guy who doesn’t show up for rehearsal, and then proceeds to ask what’s going on. Do your homework. Know what’s happening before it’s happening.

On the other side of things though – especially if you’re working with hard wires – don’t lay your cables first thing – they’ll get trampled and covered with stingers (power cables) and will make your life difficult. If you have a hard wired boom, lay the wire down as late into the process as possible.


6. Fancy Footwork.

One of the biggest mistakes that novice boom ops is not moving enough. I’ve seen some boom ops who I though had their feet cemented to the floor. Not good. A boom op needs to be agile – quick and fluid (which is why I’m not a boom op). In order to stay on axis, you need to move a lot. You need to move your arms, your body, your feet – anything it takes to get that perfect audio. When you watch a pro boom op do his thing, he is often moving so fast that it looks nearly violent!

The trick to all of this is to be able to do it all silently. When you walk, walk heel to toe. Wear shoes that don’t squeak. Wear a shirt and pants that don’t rustle. If you have trouble with foot noise, try some foot foam on yourself!

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Take a look at this video:

When the camera pulled back, you could see the boom op. Notice how he was holding the boom pole – he has his fingers on it, but not his palms. This allows him to move the boom around faster, as well as minimizes handling noise. Also notice how fast he is on the transitions. He knows the dialogue already so he knows what to expect. This allows him to capture every line flawlessly.

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So as you can see, being a boom operator is no joking matter. It’s serious stuff. I guarantee if you follow these steps, you will be well on your way to some quality boomage. Of course, no article can make you an expert. That comes with experience. So get out there and make some movies!

Check it out here!

Here’s the library demo:

It has been a busy season! Things are finally starting to calm down a bit around here, so the blogging should be a bit more consistent!

About 9 months ago, the HartFX team headed over to Gatorland to try to get some gator sounds. We were able to get some jaw snaps, hissing, and some decent ambience – and we managed to feed a Rode Blimp to a hungry gator (most definitely not on purpose…). The sounds we ended up with weren’t really anything exciting though – a bit of a let down (considering the work that went into getting them). While we were there the first time, the lead “Gator Trainer” told us to come back in March – during mating season – if we wanted to grab some really crazy sounds. So we did.

I’ve been to Gatorland a few times, so I knew exactly where I wanted to go – straight to the breeding marsh. The breeding marsh is home to several hundred gators, all of which are fairly large – ranging from 6 feet to 12 feet long. This is where the gators are encouraged to mate and breed. That is why I’m there – it’s mating season – which means the gators will be bellowing. Bellowing is where a gator raises it’s head and tail out of the water, fills it’s lungs with air, and then forces the air out in a way that causes a violent vibration. This vibration creates a horrifying sound – two sounds actually. The first one is around 9 – 10 hertz, and causes the alligator’s back to shake. This infrasonic frequency causes the water all around the gator to do a little dance. That sound transitions into a very audible sound from the gator’s throat.

Here is a recording of one of the bigger gators bellowing. It’s an insane sound, and every gator sounds a little different. (Recorded with a Neumann KMr81i into a Sound Devices 702T at 192/24).

Here is a second recording. It is similar to the first one, but the gator made a different vocalization at the end

I have created a contest around the next sound! If anyone can guess the correct microphone / recorder that this next sound was recorded with, I will give them a free collection of the alligator sounds! I’ll keep the contest open for the next week or so, and if nobody has guessed it correctly by then, I will reveal the answer! Leave your guesses in the comment section below!

So this is a recording of the ambience of the breeding marsh. As I mentioned before, the breeding marsh is full of giant gators. All around it are thousands of birds that nest there every year (usually Herons, Egrets, Cormorants, Anhingas, Ibis, and Storks.) The birds tend to nest there because the gators keep away the birds’ natural predators (mostly raccoons, snakes, and bobcats – all of which make good gator snacks!). It just so happens that gator mating season lines up pretty nicely with the time of year when all the baby birds are hatching. All of this going on at once causes quite a symphony of sounds! Some might call it a cacophony, but I think it’s a bit soothing What do you think?

I had previously posted these sounds on Facebook and Twitter, and I have gotten quite an overwhelming response from people who would like to purchase the sounds, so I am looking at building a small gator library. I am currently planning some more trips to record a bit more material. The library will be small because of how difficult it is to get decent recordings, but I think the individual recordings will be quite valuable to any sound designer out there. More info on that soon, so stay tuned!

Bonus Bellow:

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Side note: Out of curiosity and my need to always be learning new things, I’ve started playing around with Adobe Audition (CS5.5) as a sample editor. While I don’t quite like it’s multitrack features (I’ll give it some time to grow on me), and the way it handles files (destructively – doesn’t make copies – can’t find an option to do that yet, so I’ve been doing it manually) – it’s editing features are interesting. So these files were edited in Audition, and I plan on editing the entire library in Audition. Should be a learning experience!

You may remember last year when we went out to an event called “The Night of Fire” to record jet cars, but I forgot a cable? Well, we went back this year and grabbed some wicked recordings!

The “Night of Fire” is an absolutely wonderful night where a bunch of Jet Car Drivers from across the country come together to show off what they’ve been working on – jet powered dragsters!

First off, putting a jet engine inside a car is a crazy feat of engineering. These things are crazy powerful! The smaller cars had 6000+ horsepower, and the big rig (yes, a semi truck cab), has 18,000hp! Enough to propel the 4 ton beast to 209mph at the 1/4 mile. That’s insane.

Now, the sounds they make? Even cooler! When else do you get to gather around that close to a jet engine? At air shows they keep you far away from the runways. Here, I was less than 75 feet from the engines. There were people closer – I can get within 25 feet if I get a press pass for next year.

These guys are insanely loud too. I was positioned just in front of the staging area, so I didn’t get the brunt of the SPL until just after the cars launched and passed me. It was that type of loud where your chest hurts and teeth rattle. I brought an MKH60 with me and had the pad engaged, so I could handle up to about 145db. Even with that, I had to put my 744T in line mode (essentially a 60db pad) to get proper levels (didn’t have any inline pads).

There were 7 jet cars in total – all were slightly different. There were two funny cars, two standard chassis dragsters, a semi truck, and two complete custom cars (The Chattanooga Choo Choo and the Cannonball Express) No wheel standers this year, which was a bummer, but it was still a great show!

They did two heats, so 13 runs total (one car only did a single run). I recorded the first heat from the staging area, and the second one from just past the 1/4 mile marker. My buddy Mark came along too, and he had a second rig to capture other perspectives.

Here’s a video (sound from the MKH60) of the Semi Truck putting on a show and then launching:

Here is the recording of the Chattanooga Choo Choo passing by the 1/4 mile marker at 261mph:

Here is the recording of the Interceptor Police Car Funny Car passing by at 290mph

So much fun to record this stuff! Everything was done at 192/24 into a 744T.

Special thanks to Mark for his help!!

Check out the challenge’s rules:

We’re going in an advertising direction this time around. The picture above is a capture from the video you’ll be working with for this challenge. It’s an old, in-theatre, trailer advertising a screening of horror movies. You’re task this time around will be to create the audio for this trailer keeping the horror and advertising aspects in mind, as well as matching the sound to the period of the piece.
The rules for this challenge:
Make sure to read and understand the General Rules and Legal Disclaimers as described on this page. Participation in the Challenge implies you have done so and agree to the terms listed therein.
You must replace all of the audio for the piece. It should have a voice-over/narration track. You may recreate the existing narration, or write your own. It can be in any language you prefer.
No music may be used in the piece.
Approach this as a piece of advertising, but play up the horror aspects (yes, it can be “campy” horror if you like).
The overall quality of the sound should match the time period of the piece: 1950′s.
Your entry, the contest video with your final design mix, must be uploaded to the Vimeo group by Thursday, December 8th (5 PM U.S. Eastern Time).

You can find a link to the video and the rest of the info over at Designing Sound.

I recently noticed, while making copious amounts of collated, double sided, stapled photocopies (fancy machine!) in the office, that the new printer we have sounds really cool. So, as soon as I had a free evening, I grabbed a few mics, a recorder, and a few reams of paper, and started recording. Disclaimer: I did actually have a ton of copies that had to be made, so I didn’t waste any paper… I also did the recording at night, so I wouldn’t keep the copier tied up for forever and have people wondering why I have wires running in and out of the machine…

I decided that I wanted to mic the machine from various different mechanical points: the paper feeder, colator, duplexer, feeder, and a few other open spaces where I could safely place mics (lots of moving metal parts!). I had 3 small mics to use – my Countryman Isomax 2 Lav, and two Sanken Cubs – and I brought a Sennheiser MKH50 and Sanken CS-3e as well. Everything was recorded at 24/192 into the Deva Fusion.

I played around with the exact placement a little bit, dialed in the levels, and started recording. It sounded awesome!

Here is what I got:

So then I layered a bunch of the tracks, pitch shifted, time shifted, etc… then mixed it all together and came up with this:

Now if only I could get my head in there to do some binaural stuff

This past week, Hurricane Irene brushed up against the coast of Florida. There were a few small spin-off storms and whatnot, but it pretty much missed Florida altogether. I still wanted to head to the coast to try to record something though, so I packed up and jumped into the car with my recording buddy, Josh (Twitter: @JoshuaGladu), and we headed over to Cocoa Beach to see what it was like out there.

We drove through some pretty nasty storms on the way out, but to our surprise, it wasn’t even raining in Cocoa Beach when we got there. The sky even cleared up enough to see the sunset.

I knew the waves were going to be pretty big, and I was excited about recording those. I wasn’t quite sure what the wind would sound like, but I thought it might make some cool whistling sounds, and I made sure to come prepared to use extra wind protection for my mics! A quick tip – if you are using a Rycote WS4 or smaller system, or comparable Sennheiser system, the RØDE Dead Wombat fits perfectly over your existing “dead cat”, allowing double wind protection! Keep in mind it will muffle the sound a bit more, but I was able to use this in 50mph+ wind gusts with no problem.

I made sure to weatherproof everything I brought – the 702T went in a ziplock zipper bag, with the only opening being zipped snug around the cables. I then put the 702T in my Petrol with a rain cover on it. It could rain sideways and I’d be fine! Not taking any chances… Before I put on the wind protection (as described above), I covered the zeppelin in a layer of plastic wrap (saran wrap or similar). As long as you have snug-fitting wind protection over the plastic wrap, it won’t make any crinkling noises. I know I lost a slight bit of the high end response from everything covering the mic, but I’d rather do that than risk damage to expensive equipement.

So anyways, Josh and I went out to the beach to check out the surf. It was pretty furious out there (especially for this part of Florida), but we wanted a better perspective, closer to the big waves braking further out in the surf. We saw the pier about a mile up the beach and decided to head up there.

I was surprised at how many people were still at the pier (not your normal pier – it has bars and a restaurant, etc… on it). I guess I’m not the only one that likes watching mother nature . Anyways, we geared up and headed up the pier. We noted a few spots we wanted to record from, but most of them still had too many people still to get a clean recording, so we headed out to the end of the pier. There is a bar at the end, but I figured the surf would be loud enough out there to drown out the sound of most of them. I was wrong… Drunk people are loud! (And what’s with everyone always thinking my microphone is a camera? “Hey, can you put me on the news!?”) So we went back to the car and grabbed a pair of boom poles so we could get the mics further from the people and closer to the action. Bingo! It worked. A few storms rolled through as well, driving a bunch of the people away. Sounded much better, plus, I could pick up more of the low end of the waves crashing now that I got a better perspective.

Here’s what it sounded like: (CSS-5 into a 702T @ 24/96)

I like how you can hear some distant wind and waves in there. Makes for a nice, rumbly fill behind the waves crashing. You can also hear the waves hitting multiple pilons in a sort of rhythmic pattern as they go by.

We also stopped by this little staircase that led down into the water. I suppose it would be somewhat useful to someone had it not been 100 feet from shore… but it was useful to me today! I walked down as low on the staircase as I could without getting pounded by the waves and extended my boom pole out under the pier. Since we were closer to shore, there was a lot of noticeable undertow. The undertow was so strong that it was actually forming waves that were travelling and crashing backwards! Never seen that before… They sound cool though, sort of adding a trickling effect under the rest of the waves. I also like the complexity of the crashes because of all the pier supports.

Soon after this moment I had a small mishap… Everything was dripping wet at this point. Remember all that weatherproofing I did before? Well, apparently I forgot to check the condition of the O-rings on my XLR connectors, and one of the connectors on the boom pole started leaking, leaving me with a lovely static crackle. Ugh… the one think I didn’t thing of. Next time, I’ll be sure to tape up any external connections to make sure water doesn’t get in. No permanent damage done, but I needed to switch out cables before I could continue recording.

Overall, we had a blast on the trip – the wind felt great, and the whole pier was rocking from all of the massive waves hitting it. I wish there was a little more weather to record – winds weren’t much over 30mph, and there was barely any rain. Next time…

A few days ago, the HartFX crew took a trip down to Gatorland. If you haven’t been to Gatorland, you need to go sometime. It’s totally awesome! Huge gators everywhere, plus a ton of other animals too. Very cool place, and the management there is just as awesome! We hooked up with Tim Williams, the “Dean of Gator Wrestlin’ “ (that’s what his card says!), who is just about the nicest guy you could meet. He toured us all around the facility before hours (very nice of him!) and told us all about the gators. Tim started wrestlin’ gators over 30 years ago! He now trains the other wrestlers at the park. The guy knows a lot about gators!

So our first stop on the tour was Chester’s Pen. Chester is nicknamed “The Dog Eater” because he used to terrorize neighborhoods in the area. When they caught him, the park adopted him so they didn’t have to put him down. Anyways, Chester is a 13.5 footer who lives in his own pen because he doesn’t get along with the other guys. He doesn’t much get along with anyone, really, which is apparently why Tim brought us in.

Tim explained to us what types of sounds we might hear. Gators don’t have any vocal chords, so any sounds they make are from forcing air through their throats and lungs, etc… They often hiss at you, which is a warning to stay away. They will also snap their jaws at you, which is a territorial thing. They can also grunt, growl, and bellow. So we prepped our levels the best we could – we set the gain to a lower level (but not too low!), just in case.

Quick side about the gear: I was armed with a Sennheiser MKH60 in a Rode Blimp and a Sanken CSS-5 in a second Rode Blimp. I had a Sound Devices 744T running at 24/192. (I wasn’t running a mixer, I just hot swapped the mics when I wanted to switch). Johnny was also running a 744T with the same settings, but had a Sanken CS-3e locked and loaded, holstered (see what I did there?) in a Rycote S-Series blimp. Mariah was designated photographer and gear jockey. She was backing us up with two boom poles (A K-Tek K102CCR, and a K202CCR – great poles!) and whichever mic I wasn’t using at the time.

Tim opened the door, but an airplane went over (because, why wouldn’t it?), so we held for a minute. While we were waiting for the plane to pass, I asked Tim if there was anything we should know for safety’s sake – any signs we might look for to know whether or not we were in danger – this was, after all, a massive eating machine… Tim’s answer? “If you hear me say ‘haul-’ then run. If you hear ‘-ass,’ you’re already too late…” Very comforting…

The airplane passed and we went into the pen. Tim shoved me close to Chester (my hand was probable 2 – 3 feet from him) and then started taunting him. That felt safe… Chester looked a bit annoyed, but didn’t make any sound. So Tim grabbed a giant wooden pole and started poking Chester in the head. That felt even more safe… Chester finally opened his jaws really wide and started hissing. Sounded very strage! Here’s some of that:

He also snapped his jaws at us. Here’s one of those:

Must have been to early in the morning, or too cold, because he just went to the bottom of his pool after that. He didn’t feel much like growling at us

We decided to move on and headed over to the Breeding Marsh. The marsh is a large lagoon area with a ton of medium to giant gators in it. They have free roam over the whole area, and their are boardwalks and observation towers all around it. Very cool place to visit. So we arrive at this gate that says “Hungry Gators, Do Not Enter”, completely ignore it, and move on in. We walked up to the edge of the water, and Tim starts calling the gators over by name. Wait, what? Yes, he called them by name, and they responded to their names (Harvey, Homer and Otis – I don’t remember the others’ names. So I say, “Oh hey, that’s cool, they respond to their names. So these guys are relatively tame then?” Tim responds, “Oh no, they’ll eat you in a heartbeat.” Thanks Tim, very reassuring.

Now we have 4 giant (10+ foot) gators all within a few feet of us, very aware that we are here. Again, Tim grabs the mics and shoves them closer to the gators. This time, my mic is only about a foot away from this guy’s mouth. He opens his mouth a little bit with Tim’s taunting, but no sound yet. So Tim starts smacking this guy in the nose – with his hands! Ok, so maybe he’s been working with gators for nearly 40 years, but this is still making me a bit uneasy. I mean, I’m a foot from 4 giant eating machines, and I have all this gear strapped to me, which would severely hamper any attempted escape.

Apparently these guys were a bit tired too, because they really didn’t have much of a reaction. One or two started hissing, but no growling or bellowing. Tim told us that bellowing is a territorial call, and that it’s not really something that can be easily cued. It could happen any minute, but it might not happen at all that day. If it did happen though, it would more than likely result in a gator fight. That would be totally awesome!

Fun fact about this location: The gator scenes from Indiana Jones 2 was filmed at this location!

We continued on through the marsh and came across so many birds at their nests that it was a little ridiculous. I couldn’t even believe how many there were! It was so loud, which was both good and bad. I got some wicked bird recordings (at least they weren’t peacocks!), but it made it a bit difficult to get clean gator sounds. We managed though.

We found a place we liked and sort of formed a home base. I attracted a bunch of gators over by swinging my Rode Blimp and Dead Wombat right over the surface of the water. Took a few minutes, but eventually I had a few come over. They just sort of started at it though, so I decided to bop a few on the head. That got their attention! But only kind of. They just opened their mouths and started it down. Every once in a while one would hiss or snap, but no real action. One or two would jump at the mic, but it was only a half-effort jump. I was a bit bummed, but at least we were getting something.

All of a sudden we heard this really weird rumbling noise and looked up to see the water vibrating. It was a gator bellowing! Finally! We were able to get a little of the bellowing sounds, but he was across the marsh, so it was a bit contaminated (with birds). Here’s what we were able to get:

After he was done, I went back to bopping gators. All was going swimmingly (I’m on a roll today!) when one gator got a bit feisty. He jumped and got my (brand new!) Dead Wombat!! Oh No! He grabbed it and started his head spinning thing (what gators do to disorient and kill their prey). I pulled back on my boom pole, but it snapped (oops). He got the Dead Wombat off the blimp, bit through the front of the blimp, and popped off the back end cap. After he got away with that, I was able to grab the rest of it. Luckily, he didn’t get the mic! Most of the blimp was salvageable, and I only broke one section on the boom pole. All in all, I figure I’m out about $300 – $400. Bummer! First official HartFX gear casualty. Rode (being the awesome company that they are) told me they’d replace the end cap under their “Gator Warranty”. Awesome. Just need to buy a new Dead Wombat and an new K-Tek Section.

::UPDATE::

/Update

I was actually surprised at how well the blimp survived – the tube only had a little break at the seam – easily glued back together. There was only a slight bend in one of the bottom rails of the shock mount. I can probably bend it back no problem. The end caps popped off, saving the rest of everything. Had he gotten my Rycote WS series, I’m convinced he’d have taken the whole thing.

Cool sound though. Here’s the recording from my system:

Johnny had his mic only a few feet away from mine, so he got some cool sounds too. What I don’t understand though, is why in the world Johnny “meowed” in the middle of the whole thing! Who does that?

I was a little disheartened after that one, so I sat it out for 30 minutes or so and watched some birds and such, eventually returning to my other, still in tact blimp, and started recording more ambiences.

Johnny kept recording though and got a few cool things. One of the sounds he was able to get (by luckily having his mic pointed in the right direction) was a gator grunting as get got into the water. Again, the birds were so noisy that the recording was really quite contaminated, but it’s a cool thing to hear. So here’s the original version of that:

I felt a bit frisky and tried editing out some of the background noise despite the poor recording and this is what I got:

Kinda sounds ok, but not quite library quality…

Anyways, the park had opened by this point, and things started to get a little too busy to be able to record much more, as we decided to call it a day. Tim invited us back though – we definitely we come back in March for mating season (and possibly again before then). Tim was an absolutely wonderful host – definitely very passionate about what he does. Thanks so much Tim! A special thanks also goes out to Mariah Roberts for being our gear wrangler and photographer. It was her first time out with us, but perhaps she will make a repeat appearance! And most importantly, thanks to all you readers for stopping by!

You can check out the full gator recording photo album on my Facebook page.

Go out and record something cool! Just look out for those gators!

Our last full day in South Carolina was a big one! This is the one we planned for. Explosives and guns! Let’s talk about the explosives first.

I’ve recorded explosions before, so I sort of knew what to expect. I also knew it was going to require a lot of planning if I was going to come out with anything worth using. The things I needed to consider were location, gear, and available ordinance. Also, I had to stay within my budget with all of this.

First, I decided to find a location. The main reason we travelled to South Carolina was because of this location. We were given access to this huge farm that was in the middle of nowhere. It made getting great sounds a lot easier. Yes, the sounds we were recording were very loud, but in order to properly capture all of the reverb tails and late reflections, we had to have a quiet location. Of course, there are always birds and bugs, but we can talk about those later. So we had our location.

Next was ordnance. Since I don’t have any fancy licensing, and I couldn’t afford to pay anyone licensed to come out with me, we would have to stick to the small stuff this time. Luckily we know some people who know some people, so we were able to get our hands on a few pieces that were less than legal in most states (but in SC, pretty much anything goes…). We also picked up some fairly standard fireworks for good measure.

Finally, I needed to figure out what gear I was going to use. I decided to set up 3 recorders (744Ts with 302 mixers) – one for the close range mics, one for the mids, and one for the distant mics.

The pressure of the explosions was great enough that I didn’t want any condensers too close, so I stuck with 3 dynamics for the close mics. I had a D112 to see what kind of thump I could get, an SM57 (because hey, why not…), and an MD421. The 57 was about 5 feet from the launch point, the 421 was about 8 feet, and the D112 at 15 feet.

For the mid range machine, I used 4 condensors. I set up a sort of “array” of mics – I had 2 MKH60s set up at 90 degrees with a CS-3e in between them to pick up a strong center, or just to use as a mono if I wanted (I like options!). All of that was centered on the launch point. Then I had an MKH416 set up directly behind them, pointed up (45ish degrees from parallel to the ground) to pick up the mortar explosions. All of this was set up about 75 – 100 feet from the launch point.

The distant rig was about 1000 feet away and consisted of a Sanken CSS-5 in Normal mode and a Neumann KMR81i (the Neumann was actually pointed into the woods to pick up even more reflections).

Next was the actual setup and recording of the fireworks. We arrived on location around noon, and we had a lot of work to do, so we had to work fairly quickly. We decided on a launch point and set up the mics accordingly. We set up the close and medium recorders in the back of the SUV, and set up the far recorder by the other car, about 1000 feet away.

We had a table to set up all of our ordinance, so we unloaded all of that and organized it. We did a few test shots to figure out where the reflections were coming from and to get levels. We made a few adjustments, then prepped to start. Quick note about the far recorder – I didn’t have a remote record system with me, and I didn’t feel like walking a quarter mile every time I wanted start and stop the recorder, so I just set it to auto-advance the take every time the file size hit 1.5GB. We did a few more test shots while monitoring this recorder, then just hit record and left it, crossing our fingers! Since the trip, I’ve built a remote start / TC sync system (by sending TC over a wireless system) so I don’t have to do that again. Another cool tid bit – the far 744T ran for 7 hours without us touching it! We used an IDX NP1 LI battery on it.

The first items we recorded were these “little” firecrackers that didn’t have any English written on them. Apparently, in the fireworks community, they are referred to as “Happies”. They are basically the equivalent punch of an M80- but they are a little more densely packed, so they are slightly smaller, but deliver nearly the same bang. Let me tell you, they are a but scary for something that small. Not something you really want to be that close to when they go off! Luckily, we only set the ground on fire a handful of times with these. (Another side note – bring a fire extinguisher!)

It’s a bit difficult to monitor these types of levels – the transients are so loud, but very quick – it makes you want to turn your levels down a lot lower than you need to, but then you don’t get the tails as well. The trick it to engage the limiters, then find the middle ground. For me, it required a few minutes of tweaking and about 5 – 8 test shots to get it where I liked it. Also, it’s not good enough to just monitor during the recording. In fact, it’s nearly useless to monitor while recording (not that I’m advocating that you shouldn’t – I do) because the sound from the source is so loud that you can’t really differentiate between the source sound and the monitored sound. I might suggest you getting a pair of those HN-7506 headphones to help, and possibly have a barrier between you and the sound if you really want to be able to monitor while recording. It is very important, however, to listen back after the recordings to hear what you actually got.

A little later in the day we started shooting off the mortars. These were big mortars. They were 2″ shells and were a bit heavy. The tube supplied with them was MUCH thicker than any other mortar launching tube I’ve seen. They slightly frightened me too. We set everything up (keeping the basic setup from before, just adjusting the close mics to the new height of the tube instead of firing from the ground.

We used the same basic techniques as described for the first explosives, and just adjusted for the new levels. Here is a sample of a few of the final mixed sounds: (turn it up!!!)

These are a few of the launches out of the tube:

Here’s one of the explosions:

So, all in all, I consider it a successful session. We got a lot of great sounds with minimal noise from birds, insects and wind. A lot of these sounds ended up as source for my soon-to-be-released LFE library, and I’ll be releasing an Explosions library later this Summer. Fun stuff!

Next up: Guns!

The layout of the park is pretty cool. At the top of the park, there is a large river that comes through Downtown Greenville. The river flows through a manmade waterway, and then goes over this cool manmade waterfall. We stopped at this waterfall first. It’s one of those cool waterfalls where the water comes off of the top in these kind of thin, clear “sheets”, but then crashes into white by the bottom of the fall. The feature was about 6 feet tall or so, and it emptied into little pools that were a about foot deep, so it made a nice low rumble. Johnny recorded this one from about 5 feet away from it.

About 25 feet downstream, the water went under a wide bridge. In that bridge was some sort of drainpipe that I thought was pretty cool. I stuck my MKH60 in the pipe, which sounded cool, but you could hear a little too much noise that I didn’t want in there (birds, people talking, traffic, etc…). So I tried out placing my hydrophone in the pipe. Sounded pretty sweet. Here’s a sample of what I picked up:

A bit further downriver, we ran into the biggest of the waterfalls. I would guess that it was about 25 feet tall. The cool thing about it was that it wasn’t just a waterfall at a cliff or something. Half of it just fell pretty much straight down, but the other half of it kind of cascaded down a few different rock faces. This created a very broad spectrum of sound. You had the low rumble of the larger cliff fall, but then you had all sorts of “mini falls” off to the sides creating a very interesting sound. Here’s a sample of a medium perspective recording of the fall. (This was the CSS-5, about 15 – 20 feet from the falls).

There was this tiny stream off to the side that met up with the bigger river. Right before it met with the river, there was a little bridge with a tiny little trickle under it. I would hardly call it a waterfall, since it was only a 1 – 2 foot drop, but you get the idea.

Lastly, the hydrophone. Exiting the part of the park we were in, there was this series of two last waterfalls. They were both fairly small. Probably about 5 feet tall, but they had a large volume of water going over them, and emptied into pretty deep pools (2 – 3 feet), so they were pretty loud. I threw my hydrophone out into one of them, and was able to get this pretty cool sound. I’m not quite sure yet what caused the frequency variations (it almost sounds like something was continuously being filled up and the poured out). Nonetheless, a very cool recording.

Well there you have it. Lot of water! As has become custom with this series, the recordings featured in this blog are available for download from SoundCloud in 96k/24b. Please keep in mind though that all sounds available for download for free still fall under the same license agreement that governs the premium libraries.

Thanks for tuning in! Keep your eyes peeled for more updates coming soon! The next blog is on recording fireworks and small explosives!