A friend of mine recently edited his first TV commercial, and got this note from the TV station: I wanted to let you know about the latest spots I just put in the system. The quality, especially of the audio,…
Last week, Blackmagic announced that their v1.9 firmware update for the 4K Production Camera would include audio meters. This was met with great rejoicing by camera purchasers who have been struggling with the amazingly bad audio functionality of this otherwise…
Here’s a regional commercial for a local bank that I just directed & shot with the Blackmagic 4K Production Camera. The client was looking for the slightly desaturated, shallow depth of field look that is popular in high-end national spots.…
Headphones are a critical tool for video production. If you’ve ever forgotten to bring headphones to an interview or dialogue shoot, you know what I mean. Yes, you can look at the db meter to make sure the level you’re…
You may have heard comments like, “50% of video is audio,” or “Sound quality is what separates an okay film from a great film.” If you’ve worked in video production for any length of time, you’ve probably run into issues…
When I first started working in video production, in the mid-to-late 1990s, wireless or “radio” microphones were a luxury. Transmitters were bulky, receivers were even bigger (and often had to be plugged directly into household AC power), the signals were…
DSLRs have a number of advantages for video projects, but audio capability is not one of them. It is reasonably easy to feed audio from an external microphone into a DSLR, but it’s hard to control how the camera handles…
One of the biggest challenges of microbudget or “crew of one” filmmaking is elevating the level of “production value” so that whatever you’re shooting doesn’t look like a microbudget project. Or, more accurately, doesn’t feel like a microbuget project. “Production…
Ever had a perfectly good shoot ruined by bad audio? I have, and it’s not fun. Sometimes you can tweak it a bit in Soundtrack Pro, and sometimes you’re just hosed. Nothing will hose your audio more effectively than intrusive…
Trying to sort out the best way to handle audio on a microbudget DSLR shoot can be a real challenge. Ideally, you’d hire a professional audio operator with a high-end field mixer who would adjust microphone levels on the fly,…
