Do you have a team working with you or is it just a one man show?
Bit of both really. I'm doing a lot of the a/v preparation for a major national project, working with a group of 20 professional photogs, and we have commissioned a couple of pro filmmakers, and a film production house, who are doing most of the location work - both film and sound - as the project goes forwards over the next two years. I'm doing as much of the editing as possible. but we may engage another editor if I get swamped. I've also been doing some podcast materal using a mic straight into my Mac, not ideal but ok, and in the future I'd like to do some further for-broadcast sound, either for radio or webcast.
In the longer term I'll be co-working with my colleagues on discrete aspects of the project - doing a couple of specific filming/recording tasks - outdoors, needing good ambient sounds mainly, crowd noises and perhaps the odd bit of narrative. This will probably have sufficient extra hands about so I could have some assistance, but not always. To help me in the subsequent editing process I'll need some ambient sound that I can gather mysef, water, wind, leaves, specific sounds from differing habitats - seashore, woodland, mountain etc
That aside I have a couple of personal documentary projects - involving people and the effect their environment has on their health, and this is the challenging personal work. Basically using the shallow depth of field that VDSLR's can give when used at wide apertures in low light. So I'm looking for a 'clean' visual aesthetic - non-distracting background with emphahsis on subject, and careful focus shifts bringing in light and shade areas very subtly. The story is about real stuff, particular psychological consequences of certain environmental factors, and the sound (I'm hoping in my naiivity about sound recording) will have a similar 'clean' aesthetic. The sound focus will be on the individual as the narrow visual focus plays across them and they talk about their experiences, but as the focus shifts and they stop talking and the environment takes centre stage the sound stage shifts to a more inclusive one. Subject probably wont move too much as they're talking, or if they do it will be within one room. If and when working outside it will only be for cut-away shots and the indoor narrative will run over this, and obviously if its clean enough speech obtained inside, I can add a track with ambient outdoor sounds to give more 'depth' if I judge that necessary.
I guess what I'm aspiring to is a documentary about people's experiences, that strikes a balance between 'arty' and 'informative' in a visual sense, but which avoids being contrived, and in which I see razor sharp crisp clean sound playing a vital role in underpinning the narrative. Hope that makes sense?
When I'm doing this personal stuff its critical, because of the sensitive subject matter, that I am able to one-man-band it because I'm pretty sure that the success of the venture will critically depend on the relationship developed between the subject and me. A sound man in the way will be too distracting, so ease of use by me on my own is going to be vital.
Hopefully that will explain the need for 'clean' audio (apart from the fact that it just sounds 'better' anyway)!
My main difficulty aside from all of this technical stuff is getting access to the subjects - the Data Protection Act and medical confidentiality are, as I suspected they would be, proving formidable hurdles!
Topic: Recorder that will 'grow' with additional kit as needs increase? (Read 9225 times)