Recent content by Bryant Falk

When heading out on that next location shoot make sure to stop at your nearest office supply store and pick up some cable strap Velcro. These are the kind that have a loop at one end with hoops all down one side, and hooks down the other. Yes they are very good for organizing your cables but...

AUDIO QUICK TIPS The Strapped on Shotgun: For those on a tight budget doing allot of run and gun. I will always recommend any other mic than the one built into the camera. An often overlooked option is the strapped on shotgun. This is a shotgun mic that is attached to the camera facing who...

Sound Devices Sound Devices I have heard good things about Sound Devices equipment. If you have accesss to this you should be in good shape.

Just for your info I priced a day rental for the Panasonic HVX200 and it came to a reasonable $175/day including a hard drive, (This was from Pro Sound Services in Manhattan, they have a video department). I'm sure prices may vary wherever you are but very affordable if your shooting over a...

PD 50/170 PD 50/170 Just want to let people know that most of the footage you see on TV for those reality shows and run and gun tend to be either the Sony PD 150 or 170. It's that flat washed out look. Good or bad audiences have gotten use to it. The HVX200 is definately next level. As I...

Avid Avid One of the amazing things about Avid is it's ability to work with many different file setting in one project. Had you said Final Cut Pro I would say no but I believe it should work in the Avid. At least on the adrenilin systems it does.

Boom vs Lav's Boom vs Lav's I call Booms the ultimate safety. When used correctly in a sound controlled area they are awesome. Unfortunately most low budget projects are less than ideal for boom mics. This is when we step to the "Wired" lav mic. Notice I put in quotes wired! These have...

Here are the two advantages these days of dropping sound to a DAT machine. 1. You shouldn't just drop to the tape machine! You should send signal to both the camera and the separate deck, thus creating an instant backup of your audio. 2. With a separate setup you don't have to have the...

Room Tone Since you are being very creative with room tone ie your not going to have dialogue from location. You have alot of creative freedom. If I get what you wrote correctly I would start creating a pallet of sounds to use for different room tones. Say your chararacter is in the...

Mixer Mixer Since you are using a Panasonic Camera you should be in good shape to drop audio straight in. Remember you are also getting the benefit of having all your audio synced up to sound when you digitize. Just make sure your camera audio is set to 48K 16bit. Shure makes some great...

XLR cables are those three pronged connectors you see on pro level microphone systems. Why XLR? Why not quarter inch? Couple of reasons. First, with XLR connectors the ground hot and neutral never touch each other's connection. When plugging in a quarter inch. The tip and sleeve pass...

Want to post this as I come across it often with videographers. When working with a video camera you usually have two sample rate options, 32k and 48k, (Or 12bit and 16bit). 32k being used for multi track audio recording in your camera which is silly because most cameras only have two inputs...

Dolby Dolby Keep in mind if you want to encode your short film in Dolby you will have to pay a fee as it is a licensed process. If you have a short that needs encoding for festival use only and you are a student, you may be eligible for a waver. This will allow you to encode with Dolby and...

The GARAGE The GARAGE Have you ever tried Garage Band or Ableton Live? Both software programs allow for alot of cooky creativity when coming up with alternative tracks.

Music Rights Music Rights For rights to a song you need to speak with the publisher. Who ever owns the publishing. Now for music being put to picture there is usually what is called a Sync Fee. Make sure to specify that you are using the music for Festival release only!. Otherwise the cost...