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.
