SHUT UP AND SHOOTAPPLIED TO OUR PROJECTANTHONY Q. ARTIS

SOUND

Mounting a Lav Mic –

Professional lav mics come with a “tie clip” for mounting them onto your subject. The important thing is that the mounted mic is not too low and doesn’t distract the audience. When a clip is put on sloppily and the wire is dangling down the front of your subject, it screams to the audience that this is a haphazard production. The technique outlined below

1. Put the mic into the clip mount, screen side facing out. Form the wire into

a loop and place the loop inside the clip.

2. Put the clip into place on a shirt lapel or the neck of pullover shirts. Use

the clip to hold your loop in place inside the clothing.

3. Hide the wire by having your subject drop it down inside their clothing,

then tuck the excess wire into their waistline or pocket.

4. Stash the mic capsule in sub- ject’s pocket or on the floor. If they need to

get up, disconnect the XLR and leave the mic in place.

5. This is how you would mount a lav vertically on a jacket, tie, or collar.

6. For T-shirts and other clothing without a place to mount verti- cally, just

turn the whole thing 45 degrees and mount it sideways.

Other methods of mounting when recording with two subjects –

Solution #1—Mic Opposite the Biggest Mouth: When recording two people with one lav, mount the mic on the softer spoken of the two subjects and on the side closest to the louder person. Make sure your subjects are sitting close to one another. You may have to ask the subject without a mic to speak a little louder, or pay more attention to your mix in post to make sure things even out, but this technique will generally work fine in a pinch.

Solution #2—Hide a Lav in the Scene: You can hide the mic in the scene between the two subjects if you can find an appropriate prop or another object to mount it to—a cup, pencil holder, or desk decoration. Make sure the mic screen is facing your subjects. It’s normal and acceptable to see lavs mounted on a subject, but they look like crap just taped onto something in frame. If you have to do so, hide it.

Solution #3—Dangle a Lav from Above: If you have enough XLR cables (and you should), you could also dangle the mic just above frame using a mic boom stand or a C-stand and gobo arm. If you’re keeping it real down and dirty, you can just string it from any light fixture or other object you find on the ceiling. Make sure the mic is centered and about a foot in front of your subjects with the tiny mic screen facing them. Beware, this configuration is more susceptible to ambient noise because lav mics are omnidirectional. This technique is best suited to quieter locations.

BENEFITS IN RELATION TO OUR PRODUCTION

Using lav mic’s will have huge benefits during the interviewing process’ as recording on both a boom and lav mic’s will give us a variety of different quality sound to select from.

These microphones will also have a significant impact within the scenes of us following the band as we will be able to clearly pick up all of their convocations and therefore make the documentary more personal.

COMPOSITION When framing your shots you want to follow the “rule of thirds” wherein the screen is divided into thirds, horizontally and vertically, forming a tic-tac-toe pattern. Your subject should be framed so that they fall on one of those lines, ideally at a point where two lines intersect. In close-ups, it is also important that your subject’s eyes be framed along the upper horizontal line as well.

Make sure you leave enough “look room,” or extra space, in the direction your subject is facing. If you don’t allow for this, your subject will appear crowded and the composition may subconsiously bug your audience. (Which is okay if that’s what you meant to do.)

INTERVIEW LIGHTING

Hair Light

A hair light, or backlight as it’s alsoknown, is not always necessary ifyour background sufficientlycontrasts your subject, but it’s one ofthose nice touches that can addsome dimensionality, productionvalue, and compliment your subject.A small light source placed above andjust behind your subject on the opposite side of the camera from the key light will work this magic for you. Be careful that your hair light does not spill onto your subject’s face or elsewhere. It should only form a nice rim around one side of the head, neck, and shoulders.

MORE…Background Light

A small or standard hard source will serve you well as a background light. One method is to create diagonal slashes of light across the background. These are easily formed by adjusting barn doors or blackwrap to form a small slit. Other popular options are triangular slices of light shooting up or down across the background. This effect can also be created using barn doors or blackwrap to narrow the beam then slightly twisting the light toward or away from the background. Another common method for interviews is to use a cut-out pattern called a cookie. Cookies may come as part of a flag kit. You can also easily create your own cookies to cast interesting shadows by cutting a piece ofcardboard or blackwrap to a desiredpattern. Experiment to see whicheffects work best for your project.

The final touch to your background lighting will be to gel the lights an appropriate color that provides some contrast or otherwise compliments your subject.

HANDHELD SHOOTING

This will be very useful whilst following the band round as it will give us a variety of shots which we can switch between in the editing process, overall making our product more interesting and personal.

PERSONALISATION We aim to use many POV shots in order to create a personal documentary conveying the personality of each band member to the audience.