slingshots and dishes

I have a project in the house that requires the creation of a ton of bullet impacts, and while I'd love to do what Frank Bry does and go record some targets shot up with custom subsonic ammo, I don't have the resources to get that done for this specific project.

I had to get creative for many of the surfaces, using a rockhammer and a mobile rig for many things, but for the glass impacts I found myself with a slingshot, a stack of dishes and about 45 minutes in an empty warehouse to get the sounds I needed.

Since the warehouse wasn't onsite and I knew I had limited time, I decided to roll with the venerable Sure VP-88 and a 744t as my rig.  The VP-88 isn't a great ambient mic because of its relatively high self noise, but it works great as a spot fx mic when the preamps are going to be at 12 o'clock or below, and I wanted a stereo rig that would be quick and easy to set up and tear down.  I set the pre's down to zero with no pad on the 744 to leave enough headroom for the close miked impacts I was setting up to record.

I needed the sounds to be able to pass for outdoors, so that meant I had to dry up the verb in the space as much as possible for recording.  I also needed to contain and direct the debris to keep myself safe and keep cleanup quick.  I solved this by building a little pup tent using packing blankets and laying down a cheap plastic tablecloth on the floor with a light layer of sand.   I also placed a board against the wall as a backstop, and angled it away from me so that any projectiles that hit it directly would (hopefully) direct away and into the side of the tent.

I protected the mic by placing it behind a heavy wooden box that was holding up the left part of my pup tent, and just poking it through the packing blanket.  Next I set up the plates.

 Not the best picture, but you get the idea.  I stacked several towers of glasses and dishes with the intent of getting as much peripheral debris as I could when stuff fell down.

I also ended up with a happy accident regarding ammo, since my original intent was to buy solid metal slingshot ammo for the recording.  It turned out that I didn't have time to make the purchase before I had to record, so I opted for quarter sized rocks from outside. That ended up being the superior choice though, because the rocks tended to shatter on impact, and if they didn't do that they would riccochet and make generally interesting whizzing sounds on their own.

20 minutes of recording yielded these final results and a few others: (these sounds are unprocessed except for MS decoding and some slight limiting)


In the end, I was surprised by how happy I ended up being with both the noisefloor and the debris detail I managed to get.  I didn't get the warehouse verb all of the way out, but layered with an ourdoor ambiance those sounds will play.

I also don't think the soundcloud conversion does these particular sounds justice, so feel free to download them to really hear what went on there.

Here's the aftermath:

truck record - this time not rained out!

First a little backstory: I needed to find a 50s model Ford F150 to match what we see on screen in the film we're working on, so my brother in law suggest a car show north of town to scout. It was a pretty small show, but lo and behold I ran into a really cool guy named Doug who just happened to be driving the exact car I needed to record. We exchanged info and two weeks later we set the date for a Saturday morning.

Of course, it rained and we moved the date to Monday after work.

By moving to a weekday we heavily compressed my recording schedule though, so I was sure to be as prepared as I could get before heading out there. Prep included:

- putting every frame of the film that included the truck on a quicktime that could be played on my ipad on location
- pre-wrapping my onboard mics with terrycloth towel for wind protection
- testing and setting up media, batteries, recorder settings, etc.

I showed up at Doug's house at around 6:30, and sunset was going to hit hard at about 8:30, so I had to work fast. I mounted the undercarriage mics with bungee cords and gaff tape, secured the boom from the back of the tailgate, and mounted the engine mic. A quick level test and we were off to find a suitable street to roll with.

No I had not scouted a street in that part of the world, but Doug knew exactly where to take us: a little gravel road with a short turn around where he could do bys and stops with little traffic intervention.

We covered the basic things we needed (mostly slow bys on gravel, slow bys on clean pavement, and some gravely tire work) and we were already starting to lose light. We did some stop n go driving so that I could catch interiors with the VP-88, and headed back.

When we arrived back at the house I pulled and re-set all of the mics for foley. The bungee cords really made that work go quickly though, because a couple of yanks and all of my mics were loose and free.

Door foley setup was VP-88 inside, Schoeps outside near, and mkh60 outside far.

We also did some glove compartment moves, and by that time we were completely dark outside and working by flashlight. Also, in summertime in Texas the cicadas come out around dusk. Out in the country the coyotes decided to announce their presence as well. I pressed on, getting what I could get and knowing that I'd have to edit a fair amount later on.

When I got back into the studio on Tuesday I opened it all up and found myself very happy with the results. The truck got just over 3 minutes of total screen time in the film and I had the entire thing cut in and sounding good by the end of the day, which was just a joy to get done.

Here's what I learned:

--Proper drafing makes all the difference in the world--

Each time I record a vehicle I get better at finding good drafting spots quickly, and this record really worked out well with regards to wind noise. Axels are great spots for mounting and drafting, but just hanging the blimp from the tailgate in the jetstream really worked out well too. I'm sure it didn't hurt that we really didn't get above 40mph, but this was truly my first vehicle record where wind noise was a complete nonfactor in all mics.

--put your best mic on the exhaust--

I made a conscious decision to get that schoeps mic in the best spot I could find for the exhaust note and it paid off in spades. I took a risk by using an unknown miking technique (at least to me) by hanging it in the blimp, but in my mixed onboard sound that mic is almost all of what I went with. man that thing sounds good.

--brighter and less true mics work well as detail spots for engine and tires--

NT5 on the tire for the gravel sound worked out really well. I wasn't relying on that mic for my exhaust note, so I was free to put it in a spot where I could get some nice crispyness from the gravel with that spot. Ditto the SM81 in the engine. While the engine does have some interesting midrange stuff going on, its mostly a much brighter sound than the exhaust and the 81 choice and placement ended up working out very well in that application.

--it doesn't take 100 mics to get a good sound--

I knew that I'd be running this record solo, so instead of bringing the 788t and a giant collection of mics to mount onto the truck, I ran the 744t and just the 4 mics. in the end, I'm more happy with the sound I got from this setup than from some others where I put much more effort and many more mics onboard. Each record teaches me more and more, and the biggest thing I learned in this one is that I really need to have those "money" mics locked down and rocking, then I'm good.

So, without further adieu here are some results and samples. enjoy!

truck onboard mix sample by Rcoronado
truck doors by Rcoronado

west texas gun recording pt 1-prep

So a little while back I packed up the mics and headed out west to record some gunfire with my friends. Not because I had a project that required it or anything, but just because they have lots of guns and I have lots of mics. Also, weapon recording is one of those techniques that requires experience and iteration, so any opportunity to do this type of recording is to be seized upon.

What I'd like to outline here is my prep process, experiences, and things that I would do differently.

Background

I have done gun records before, but have not really come back with the results I thought I could. My previous experience came from carbon copying Charles Mayne's setup as described on Gamasutra. From that article:

Channels 1/2
Start with a stereo pair of dynamic mics basically arranged in an equilateral triangle from the weapon, with the two mics in front, and pointing to the weapons muzzle. Try to have about a 8- to 12-foot distance here, but it may vary further depending on the gun itself.

Channels 3/4
A second stereo pair condenser mics in an x/y pattern. Try putting about 10 to 12 feet behind the weapon. These are elevated also to about 7 feet. Do some test firing, sometimes you will shift the whole setup and sometimes change the directions the mics are pointing for a better sound.

Channels 5/6
Again a stereo pair, this time a Crown SASS stereo PZM mic. Place the mic setup about 30 feet behind the weapon. This mic captures a very nice low end from most weapons

Channels 7/8
Start with a shotgun mic set up on the right side of the weapon, just over the shoulder of the shooter. For the second channel, a Lavaliere can be attached to the weapon or the person shooting the weapon

While my results from that setup were very usable and interesting, they weren't amazing, and that's mainly due to a series of mistakes I made due to inexperience at the time. We do this in order to learn.

I learned how much I didn't use the SM57s that I had in XY, and how much I really did use the COS-11 lav mic. I learned that Sennheiser MKH series mics don't respond to really loud sounds very well.

But mostly I learned just how important location is.

Location

Guns make lots of noise. The initial attack of a weapon firing is often only fractions of a second long. The vast majority of what you're listening to in any given gun recording in a film or game context is how that initial contained explosion sounds as it echoes out through the space it's in. This means that location is one of the most critical things you're dealing with on a gun shoot. Ideally you want a location that has lots of interesting reflections and is also free of traffic and insect noise. This is much easier to say than to find. Remote private canyon-like areas are really the best bets, at least in this part of the country.

The location for my first and uninteresting gun shoot was very flat and non-reflective. It looked like it would sound good, so we went with it, but in the end it really didn't. Out in the middle of the plains and facing one sand berm, it was difficult to really get any good reflections going. I had failed to understand the degree to which location would influence my sounds, and I paid for it.

For this gun shoot I was determined to not fall victim to that again. I had one of my friends scout a private gun range north of town that was a custom built range with 12 foot sand dunes that were making great reflections and verbs.

Gear

My philosophy here was to break the sound of a gunshot into three parts and then retro fit my gear choices around what I figured to be the best way to record those parts.

- Punch -

My punch mics were going to generally be a medium distance from the weapon and aimed at it from in front. I went with a Senn 421 and a Schoeps CMC6 MK41. Mono makes the most sense for punch IMO, so I didn't bother with a dynamic XY setup.

- Mech -

For mech I needed to isolate the mechanical movements of the weapons fired while excluding the explosions and verb to the best of my abilities. Mech also makes sense in mono, so there are no stereo elements here either. I learned on the first shoot how amazing the (wired) COS11 lav sounds for mech, so I went with that and with the Senn 416, which I would aim from behind and over the shoulder. In retrospect I think I should have used the 416 to come at the weapon from the shell eject side at about a 90 degree angle.

- Verb -

The key element, and I wanted to spend as many channels as needed to on this. I decided to bring a stereo pair of AT4050s in omni that I would place a hundred yards or so downrange. The 4050s are great workhorse large diaphragm mics that are quiet and clean sounding, so I figured they'd be prime candidates for verb recordings. I also would bring my rode NT5s set up in ORTF and place them behind the shooter. Additionally I'd bring my Sony PCM D50 and run the internal mics on that.

For recorders I ran with a sound devices 788t for all of the close up mics, a Tascam HDP2 for the distant 4050s, and the sony as a standalone unit.

I also shot video of everything on my iphone.

In part 2 I'll discuss what happend on the day of the shoot.

a tiny antique film camera

A few weeks back I went to the camera show in Grapevine looking for both camera equipment and anything interesting sounding. While I largely passed on the stuff that I'd actually want to shoot footage with, I did find this little treasure to record - and at a bargain price of $20!

What you're looking at there is a B and H Filmo Sportster 8mm film camera. It has a manual crank, a thick metal casing, an a million little noises to record.

While I did manage to get tons of coverage while recording it today, I'd like to focus on one specific usage that I get tons of mileage out of these kinds of things for: UI and small servos.

Now this particular device doesn't have any electronic parts, but it still made tons of very clean servo sounding noises regardless - especially since I was able to drag the switch you hold down to make the film spin and get a cool scraping noise. When highpassed, and pitched around it can be pretty convincing, while remaining very natural and organic sounding.

In this sample the first half is as recorded and the second half is severely highpassed. I tend to use these types of noises with a little flange for sci fi servos and UI sounds pretty frequently.



The mp3 compression on soundcloud doesn't handle pure high end all that well, but you get the idea.

The other thing this camera had loads of was mechanical latch and click sounds. In many ways it sounded like gun foley, but I can also use this kind of thing for high tech sounding buttons and clicks with the same highpass technique.

Its a little ironic that I'm dreaming up all of these high tech sounds given the source, but in the end no one cares what the thing looked like when you recorded it.

Here's a little demo of the clicks and latches using the same superhighpass filter and with the same soundcloud limitations.



All in all it was well worth the purchase, especially when you add in future foley possibilities with weapons and other mechanical devices.