From the course: Video Production and Post Tips

What is a Boom Mic and When Should I Use It

From the course: Video Production and Post Tips

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What is a Boom Mic and When Should I Use It

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- Hi there, I'm Robbie Carman and this week, we're lucky to have location sound mixer Jonathan Cohen with us here on set. Hey, Jonathan, how are you? - Good, thank you. - And Jonathan actually helps out with a lot of the location sound that we do for this series as well as other series here on Lynda.com and he's kind of my go-to resource when it comes to location sound and this week I thought we'd have Jonathan on to break down using a boom mic, how we use it and the various components of boom set up. So Jonathan, let's start with the how and why of using a boom mic, you know, I think about a lot of behind the scenes photos from movies and you always see that guy with the long huge boom, standing there for hours at a time, I always think he has like Popeye forearms 'cause he's holding it there, and by the way, we'll get the to the idea of holding the boom for a long time a little bit later, but when is a boom used? - The boom microphone is probably the sound mixer's most important tool. This microphone is gonna get you the cleanest audio, it's gonna be able to reach the actors, your talent, and still stay out of frame. - I have problems often when I tried to use things like lav mics, with clothing rub and things of that nature. Sometimes I want some actual ambiance from the room and I don't get that sometimes with a lav, so I do see that being used all the time. Now we have your set up here for your boom rig. Let's break down the actual rig itself because I think this comes in a lot of different styles and flavors and largely it's gonna be dependent on some preferences and price point, but in general, a boom kind of has all the same key components, let's start up top here with the microphone. Are there any special considerations for what type of mic you want to put on a boom? - That's gonna depend a lot on the situation, but generally speaking, you wanna have a high quality condenser microphone. This is called a shotgun microphone. It's gonna be longer-- - [Robbie] Very directional. - [Jonathan] Very directional, definitely, very directional. You don't want a lot o sound around you, you wanna focus on your actors. So you have the shotgun microphone, a shock mount, this is a nice compact one, and then the boom pole, the boom pole's gonna come in a lot of different sizes. They range anywhere from a few feet to 20 feet. - Yeah, they're also gonna come in different materials, right? You can get aluminum ones that might be a little heavier then you have carbon fiber ones that maybe are a little lighter if you're holding them all day. Now, you just took off another component here on the shotgun and I have a couple of these. You just have a basic foam windscreen. What are these two guys that I'm holding? This is gonna depend on your wind situation. When you're indoors, simple foam windscreen is gonna be sufficient. Protect your microphone from any subtle breeze that might come by. An ENG crew will use something like this, this is called a softie, made by Rycote and this'll give you better wind protection. - And that also just slides right on-- - Exactly, it also just slides right on. - Alright, and then this is, I love the name for this one, this is a full blimp, right? - This is a blimp, some people, in the business, they call it a dead cat. - A dead cat, sure. And so let me trade with you, how does this work, this blimp and this dead cat. - This is a bit more involved. This is for high wind conditions. So, you have the outside cover. This will protect you from the wind. Then you have the blimp in here and inside the blimp, will be where the microphone goes. - Gotcha. - And in there is a microphone suspension, loosen that up a little more. - [Robbie] Oh, so there's the shotgun inside-- - Shotgun inside and you also have a connector here through another box that's gonna isolate it from your boom pole. - That's nice 'cause you don't have to take apart the entire thing, you can connect right on the outside, rather than having to disassemble the entire blimp every time you wanna attach a mic. - [Jonathan] Exactly. - [Robbie] That's really nice. - [Jonathan] Exactly. - Cool. So kind of the idea behind using a boom is that it lets you reach into a scene, it lets you kind of get nice directional audio when people are talking and when we come back in just a second, now that we've broken down sort of the parts of a boom set up, we're gonna talk about how to hold and position a boom mic in a scene.

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