The
most critical task in making a good audio recording is listening.
This is a difficult task for someone who’s spent their entire
life focusing on visual content. Listening to the audio is made immensely
easier if you use a good pair of isolation headsets. And you need
to use them all the time. When you are recording an interview, hearing
these headsets will allow you to hear only the sound being
acquired by the microphone. The headset you use should be wired to
a stereo-mini jack, which will allow you to listen to each camera
audio channel separately (one in each ear).
Let’s say you’re recording an interview with a person seated
about 12 feet away from the camera in an open park area. Your visual
is a nice head shot. You’re asking questions about growing up
in the neighborhood. You expect the interview to run 45 minutes. You
mike the subject with a lavalier which feeds the left channel of your
Beachbox; the camera-mounted mic feeds sound to the right channel.
Using your faithful stereo isolation headsets, you can check the audio
going to each channel separately by listening to each ear muff individually.
In this hypothetical interview, there’s only one source of audio
that you really care about-- the interview subject’s mic (left
channel). So take a little setup time to make sure you’ve got
it right-- taking time before the interview starts to adjust
the mic correctly will save you lots of time later. For instance,
if, 10 minutes into the interview you suddenly realize that the subject’s
jacket corner has been flapping in the breeze and covering the mic,
you have to stop the interview, fix the problem and start
over. Or, let’s say you didn’t catch that annoying little
creak in the gate as people open and close it, until you’re in
the edit room. You’ll be mad at yourself. What you should have
done before the interview started was to listen for such sounds,
and, in this case, block open the gate with something heavy, or do
the park a favor by oiling the hinge with your handy little can of
3-in-1. (I’ve always been handy at oiling hinges, fixing running
toilets, and negotiating with the lawn service folks.)
To reiterate. In order to maximize control of the audio situation
before you start the interview, you’ll need to listen
intently through the left channel ear muff (the one with the subject’s
audio), blocking sound from your other ear with your hand. Get your
subject talking about a non-interview topic close to his/her heart
(their family, the weather, politics), so you can hear their normal
tone of voice and speech pattern. Make certain the subject’s
head--and therefore, voice projection pattern--is pointed where it
will be pointed during the actual interview. You can hear if the subject
tends to angle their head to a certain side (which may cause you to
move the mic). The subject will move around--you can hear if there’s
any clothing rustle you need to deal with. Listen specially for unseen
jewelry--the bangle bracelets, the noisy watch band. When people are
nervous, they will play with something in their hands--glasses or
a pen (click, click, click). Most important, pay attention to the
relationship of the voice to the background level. Is your subject’s
voice clear and distinct? Can you understand your subject’s words
with your eyes closed?
If, during the actual interview, your subject will be talking about
a topic that they’ve talked about many times before, you’ll
most likely hear that same normal tone of voice that you heard in
your tests. On the other hand, if your interview subject matter is
quite sensitive, or your subject is nervous about talking on tape,
you’ll notice a dramatic drop in audio level once the interview
starts. Some people almost whisper. You have to be prepared. If you
suspect this might be the case, make sure the subject’s voice
almost overpowers the background in your pre-interview tests. Do whatever
you need to do to get a good voice-to-background balance (called “signal-to-noise
ratio”). Move the mic around if it helps; move the subject around
if that helps; bribe the kids playing close-by to move away for a
while, if that helps. Do whatever you have to do before the
interview starts, so a quiet voice during the interview won’t
get lost in the background. Recording a voice level which stands out
from the background is vital because, if there are quiet voice passages
during the interview, you can raise the overall audio level slightly
during the edit, making the quiet voice passages match the level of
the normal voice passages.
Now, (did you think you were finished with audio prep?) it’s
time to check in on the sound of the other microphone - in our example,
the on-board camera mic. Listen carefully just to the right channel
audio while covering your other ear with your hand. Chances are it
will sound fine-- meaning you remembered to turn on the mic and the
batteries and cables are ok. I’m assuming it will be used to
pick up questions during the interview, and it will be available to
provide audio for those cut-aways as they present themselves. Even
if you don’t intend to use interview questions in the final
piece, pay attention to this channel of audio before starting the
interview. If you get to the edit room and suddenly decide you need
the questions, and they aren’t there, shame on you. It’s
nobody’s fault but your own. Plus, there is the added advantage
that you will pick up interview audio on this mic (anywhere from faint
hint of voice to robust interview sound). In the edit, you can mix
in audio from this channel to add “presence” to the final
product. Make a habit of always recording on both channels; and, as
often as possible, use two separate mics. This way, you’ll extend
your audio possibilities in the edit room.
OK. You thought we’d never get to rolling tape. Now it’s
time. If you’ve done your prep work well, nothing will go wrong
- for a few minutes, at least.
During the interview, make certain that the principal audio is in
your ear (via the headset) at all times. Block sound to your other
ear (to minimize distractions) with the rim of the other ear muff.
(Don’t try to listen to both mics at once unless you’ve
had a lot of practice.) Just as there will be visual intrusions during
an interview, there are going to be audio intrusions. What do you
do? Well, first of all, did you even hear that car horn or siren?
A person listening to interview story line will tune out a lot of
those background sounds. But, if it’s LOUD enough to get your
attention, it will definitely get the attention of a viewer of the
finished piece. Does that matter? If your viewer pays more attention
to the background noise than to the interview content, you’ve
got a problem.
That problem is mitigated when the viewer can see the source
of the distracting sound - the kids in the background just ran through
the shot, noisily chasing after each other. The viewer will not dwell
on the sound once the source is explained to the eye as well as the
ear; the viewer will tune out the sound of the kids. (That is, as
long as the kids aren’t more interesting than the interview subject.)
It comes down to a complex balance between how engaging the person
being interviewed is versus the distraction (visual or aural) on screen.
If your subject is really pulling on the viewer’s heartstrings,
the viewer will stay with the interview through an amazing number
of distractions. Your job as a careful listener is not to produce
a perfect interview (you get studio-quality sound ONLY in a studio).
Your job is to make sure that the soundbites are usable. When you
hear a soundbite go by, you must discipline yourself to do
a quick reality check on the background noise-- was that siren in
the distance going to be distracting. Actually, that depends: a.)
on how far in the distance the siren was, and b.) on when it happened
during the soundbite. If a siren builds through a bite (starting at
almost nothing and getting louder by the end), your viewer will most
likely be able to tune it out, because they’ve become engaged
by the on-camera speaker before the annoying background sound
starts to intrude. But if the soundbite starts with the siren in the
background, bail out politely. Say to the interview subject, “I’m
so sorry to stop you but the siren just now was so loud that I’m
going to have to ask you to start that answer again.” If you
don’t do this, you may end up in the edit room cutting from an
answer with a quiet background to-- BOOM-- siren plus answer. Chances
are, at the BOOM, the viewer will pay more attention to the siren
than the answer. (This is not a good thing.) If I’m waffling
about whether or not to stop an interview because the background noise
is getting to be intrusive, I look for a logical breaking point in
the flow of the conversation to say, “Could you just hold that
thought until the ambulance passes?”
Here’s an additional problem. On location, you will have had
the luxury of listening live to the siren very far away and then getting
closer, so it makes sense to your ear and brain-- you are able to
tune it out. But, will a viewer watching the edited piece be able
to tune it out? Answering that question correctly takes practice--
you have to start thinking like the viewer instead of the interviewer.
Careful listening through the headset helps. The siren sound may not
be prominent on mic if your subject has his/her back to the sound
and, therefore, shields the mic with their body. You’ll never
know that if you are listening to the environment without the headset.
It’s important to hear the audio as it comes through the mic
into the headset, because that’s how it will be recorded.
Here’s the good news-- hooray. You WILL hear the soundbites go
by. A soundbite has energy behind the words which instantly commands
your attention. You look up, you smile, you cry, you react. That’s
your soundbite. Is it usable? Think fast. No jackhammers in the background?
Good. Idea well stated by the interview subject? Good. No kids pointing
at the camera in the background? Good. Maybe you’ve got it. If
you don’t, your insurance is that most people naturally make
the same important point several times during an interview. Usually
they don’t make the same exact statement, just the same point.
You may like the phrasing of that one with the jackhammer burst in
the background, but you have to settle for a not quite perfect soundbite
because the background audio is clean. That’s life. It’s
all a trade-off. Truth be told, we wouldn’t have it any other
way.
Now, it’s a shame you have to listen three times as hard to the
second half of the interview as you do to the first half. But this
is so. The reason is that most of the soundbites will happen in the
second half of the interview (as your subject gets warmed up). And
that is when you are bound to be at your most unguarded-- you’ve
established a rapport with your subject, tape is rolling, you’re
getting to the interesting questions and answers. Remember the viewer
of your edited piece will not enjoy the luxury of having 30 minutes
to get used to your subject’s speech patterns, the normal background
sounds, the story line. You are going to pop this stuff in and out
during the edit. Again, you need to listen like a viewer. You need
to be extra vigilant about background audio on soundbites at the point
when you start feeling the most comfortable.
Having said all of the above, I will now admit that I let an amazing
amount of background junk get recorded, because stopping for every
little thing is just too disruptive. If the interview subject has
gotten to the heart of the matter, and they are making a really strong
statement, and unpleasant background audio happens, I let the interview
go on until the offending sound gets so strong it’s obvious the
audio can never be used. At that point, I will stop the proceedings
with profuse apologies. Since offensive background sounds often leave
as quickly as they start, I tend to let people finish saying what
they want to say, even if there’s a sharp burst of annoying background
sound in the middle. You can never predict when intermittent audio
will blow out a soundbite and when it won’t. (There’s a
50/50 chance the bite will be clean.) If you’re feeling uncertain
about whether or not you can use what was just recorded, you can always
circle back to the topic later in the interview.
When it’s obvious that you have to STOP recording (sirens, planes
overhead), you have to stop. And you hope that whatever made you stop
is just temporary. When the lawn service or the tree-trimmers start
up down the block, you have a hard decision to make. Can you keep
going with this stuff in the background? If it’s a low, constant
drone which doesn’t impact negatively on the clarity of the voice--
yes. However, now you’ll have interview audio with drone in the
background and interview audio without drone. Stop and record some
“room tone”. Room tone is the sound of the background audio
as it comes into your open mics, without any foreground audio (talking,
movement, rustling papers, coughing). You should always take room
tone at an audio location-- 30 seconds before you start or end an
interview. But, it’s especially important to take room tone when
you have a noticeable constant noise in the background. If you start
the interview with the lawn service working hard, take that room tone
up front. When they’re finished and shut down the motors, the
silence will be deafening. But you can bridge those audio backgrounds
in the editing process by mixing a little lawn service “room
tone” into the soundbites which are free of droning motors. If
the lawn service sound intrudes on the interview in a way that draws
your attention, and you can’t wait it out, or move, try having
the subject refer to the source of the noise (“When I was growing
up in this neighborhood, we didn’t have an outside lawn service.”)
in a soundbite. And be sure to take a cut-away shot of the noise source
to edit into the final cut. This will help your viewer understand
what they are hearing and why. They’ll be put at ease and be
free to concentrate on the interview.
Now, all of this assumes that you intend to use head shots with “sync”
sound (the viewer watching the lips move) in your edit. If you intend
to use any of this audio as “voice over,” things can get
tricky. I love seeing and hearing the tinkle of dangle earrings as
someone is speaking. But hearing them without seeing them is truly
distracting. Speech patterns which pose no problems to a viewer watching
the lips move, can trip up someone trying to understand an unfamiliar
accent without the visual cues. In the edit, you can establish your
speaker securely (accent, earrings and all) in the beginning of your
piece before cutting away, hoping the viewer will get used to it.
Or, you can eliminate the nice earrings, and pay special attention
to that accent, making certain to have the voice pop out of the background.
Again, your isolation headsets are your best friend-- listen carefully
with your eyes closed to preview a voice-over situation.
One more piece of advice. Don’t forget tape playback checks in
the field. Make a record /playback test at the start of the day--
I find it convenient to do this as I’m checking mics (“Test,
one, two . . .”) during set-up time. Play back 30 seconds to
make certain everything looks and sounds right before the interview
starts. Then, make time to spot check your recording when you’ve
finished a tape or two-- I usually listen to the last 2 minutes. If
you’re out on a multi-day job, spot check tapes more thoroughly
back at the hotel before dinner.
I remember when I was first learning audio, thinking that I’d
never get it. Well, I did. It just takes time and practice, and lots
of determination. With time, practice, and lots of determination,
you, too, will be wearing those headsets as a badge of honor-- and
I’ll salute you.
