>To the 'outdoor interview' scenario (simulated or otherwise):
>As you have correctly understood I am interested in capturing 3 sound
>sources (2 mono one stereo) processed into a single stereo track.
>
>The setup that I had thought about was simultaneous capture on three
>minidiscs:
>1 binaural ambience, or possibly stereo ambience captured with some rode
>mics such as nt1a's or an nt4.
>2 and 3, capturing interviewer and interviewee each with there own MD
>and a mono lavalier - in the same outdoor space as the ambience capture
>is simultaneously occuring.
>
>If I mix these three tracks there will be some sounds reaching more than
>one track such as when the inverviewer and interviewee are standing
>close to each other or perhaps close to the the ambience rig or when a
>loud bird cry penetrates all three recording stations.
>
>I can think of two post-processing strategies:
>A sync them really precisely (but then will the cancelling out of sounds
>recorded across sources mess it all up?)
>B sync them a few milliseconds apart so any doubling up appears as a
>type of quiet reverb .
Depending on the delay time, it's possible that this won't sound much
like "reverb". Rather, it will be very "phasey". You'd need to
increase the delay time to avoid the phasiness, so if you experiment
you'll probably get a useful result, given that you're close-micing
the sources.
>
>- bearing in mind that each voice will be loud only on its own recording
>station and the ambience will be loud only on the ambient station.
Maybe the ambience will not behave as you anticipate. I'm not
familiar with the acoustic ecology near Northcliffe, but I know the
Australian bush can often be fairly quiet. Also, the human presence
of the interview could scare most birds away from the area. And /
or you may have wind in the trees to contend with. You might need to
consider recording an appropriately active ambience at another time
to mix with the interview. Yes, this is distorting "reality", but no
one knows this except you (and perhaps the interviewee).
>
>Allen and Walter I realise why you're naturally thinking to record the
>voices in a studio and thereby have three pure sound sources to mix.
>That would be the precision engineers way an ensure a reliable result.
>But do you think it will be possible to be a bit more of a chaos
>magician and make the outdoor/simultaneous recording setup work? That
>has a type of purity too - although not of sound sources.
Purity is one thing. Effective communication with your audience may
be another. What you're proposing might work beautifully. But it
might be stressful playing the role of interviewer and recordist
simultaneously. (By the way, I hope you have plenty of time to get
used to the new equipment beforehand.) It would be far simpler to
edit out the questions. That way you don't have to worry about your
"performance" as interviewer, and you can concentrate on what the
interviewee is saying, as well as how he or she is saying it. You
may need to guide your interviewee in how to best express themself.
Also, your audience might get more out of an interview if they feel
that they are being addressed directly, without the presence of an
intermediary. On the other hand, if all goes well, your suggested
approach could certainly work well.
John
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