Beach Wedding - ocean behind bride and groom - Audio solutions?

[hasselblad]

Hi!

I am shooting a wedding right on the beach 10 feet from the ocean. This means wind noise and noise coming from the ocean waves.

I have used lavalier sennheiser mics and handheld sennheiser mic system in the past but I am not thrilled by the quality. It is good but nothing similar to Hollywood movie quality...

How can I achieve excellent quality similar to movies? Do I need to use a boom with a Sennheiser 416 shotgun mic? I would love to but it is a wedding. It just doesn't look good on the photos.... and would look weird during the ceremony.

I was thinking to point the Sennheiser mkh 416 on the bride and groom while they are speaking but I am afraid the shotgun mic picking up the noise of the ocean behind them. I LOVE the quality of the sound coming from the Sennheiser shotgun mics but I am not sure how to position the mic so it doesn't pick up any wave noise from the ocean....

ANY suggestions?

Any help greatly appreciated!!!

[smrpix]

Hollywood movies use a process called "looping" where the actors come into a studio and repeat their lines into a microphone while watching playback of the original scene. They do this over and over again until they like the results. This is not an option for you.

What you want to do is get omnidirectional microphones as close to the participants as possible -- whether lavs, handhelds or mics on stands. Yes, OMNI-directional, because they record sounds in all directions in a widening shperical pattern depending on where you set the gain. This means the background can be suppressed to a greater or lesser extent.

The 416 (an excellent microphone, the closest thing there is to an all-purpose mic -- is not a shotgun (hyper cardioid) it's a super cardioid, which will record almost everything in a single direction -- that means the bride and groom, the ocean behind them, and the drug runners in the boat in the distance. A true shotgun would be even worse.)

Cardiod mics are also sensitive to wind and handling noise -- omnis far less so.

[julitomg]

How can I achieve excellent quality similar to movies?

Easy...dub all the voices in post, create ambient and sound fx tracks and mix them carefully
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubbing_(filmmaking)

[hasselblad]

Hollywood movies use a process called "looping" where the actors come into a studio and repeat their lines into a microphone while watching playback of the original scene. They do this over and over again until they like the results. This is not an option for you.

What you want to do is get omnidirectional microphones as close to the participants as possible -- whether lavs, handhelds or mics on stands. Yes, OMNI-directional, because they record sounds in all directions in a widening shperical pattern depending on where you set the gain. This means the background can be suppressed to a greater or lesser extent.

The 416 (an excellent microphone, the closest thing there is to an all-purpose mic -- is not a shotgun (hyper cardioid) it's a super cardioid, which will record almost everything in a single direction -- that means the bride and groom, the ocean behind them, and the drug runners in the boat in the distance. A true shotgun would be even worse.)

Cardiod mics are also sensitive to wind and handling noise -- omnis far less so.

Thanks soooo much!!!!

[julitomg]

hasselblad...what is it that you don´t like about sennheiser lavalier mics?

[hasselblad]

hasselblad...what is it that you don´t like about sennheiser lavalier mics?

I can't put on the bride 99% of the time. I am not sure how to hide it under her dress. Most of my weddings are on the beach where most bride have a light wedding dress because of the warm Florida weather. I usually put it on the groom and give a handheld mic to the officiant. Lot of times the officiant forgets to hold the handheld in front of the bride during the wedding ceremony. The lav on the groom doesn't really pick up the bride's voice in good quality.

Any suggestions?

[Cornucopia]

Hollywood movies use a process called "looping" where the actors come into a studio and repeat their lines into a microphone while watching playback of the original scene. They do this over and over again until they like the results. This is not an option for you.

What you want to do is get omnidirectional microphones as close to the participants as possible -- whether lavs, handhelds or mics on stands. Yes, OMNI-directional, because they record sounds in all directions in a widening shperical pattern depending on where you set the gain. This means the background can be suppressed to a greater or lesser extent.

The 416 (an excellent microphone, the closest thing there is to an all-purpose mic -- is not a shotgun (hyper cardioid) it's a super cardioid, which will record almost everything in a single direction -- that means the bride and groom, the ocean behind them, and the drug runners in the boat in the distance. A true shotgun would be even worse.)

Cardiod mics are also sensitive to wind and handling noise -- omnis far less so.

You've got some good stuff, but some misinformation here.

Omni's and Cardioids, and many other patterns have little to do with sensitivity to wind. That has to do with mic construction & whether you've used a wind sock (aka foam or "dead cat").
The surf is going to be ever-present, and in ~180 degrees of the perspective, and it as well as wind is broadband noise. What you want to do is use a directional mic (bi-directional, cardioid, super-cardioid, or hyper-cardioid, or line/shotgun, or a pzm/boundary). You want to point it so it has most sensitivity to the bridal party and the least sensitivity to the surrounding noise. Now, OMNIs would give you this, but "democratically", unlike what the directional mics would do. Yes, like smrpix said, directional mics MIGHT pick up those other objects, but ONLY if you point them wrong or use the wrong pattern.

Having recently attended a wedding ON the beach (and recorded it), I can attest to the problems, but they aren't insurmountable.
Most importantly, you need to know how the bridal party is placed in relation to the surf. At the wedding I attended, surf was in the background, officiant with his back to it, and B & G facing each other next to him. That means that an omni lav mic on the officiant is kind of ok because an omni on a surface acts like a pzm (boundary mic), which means that the sensitivity is ~hemispherical and most of the sounds of that hemisphere would include the officiant, the B&G, and the audience.
The same mic on the B&G, however, would ALSO be hemispherical, but because they are positioned perpendicular to the surf, there is ~half of the hemisphere with (mainly) the surf in it. So you DON'T want an omni here, you'd want a cardioid or super-cardioid lav (or better yet, a mini headset mic). With the sensitivity of the mic pointed upward, sections of the back side (the downward side) would be greatly decreased, an that just happens to be where the surf is originating from.

This would of course change if the B&G were to be facing the surf or facing the congregation, so you have to choreograph it with them. But the thing is, directional mics allow for the pointing sensitivity to taken advantage of, whereas the omni really doesn't.

Next on the list is actually MORE important: proximity. Since sound intensity is lessened as a square of the distance, closeness is your best bet to getting the ratio of important stuff to non-important stuff as LARGE as possible. That's why I suggested mini headset mics. You can get them in nude or ~clear color and have them project out only on one side to mid cheek. So, with the mics positioned on the B&G's FAR side (from the congregation), it probably wouldn't even be visible, making it totally unobtrusive for during-ceremony pictures (if your situation allows for that kind of media involvement in a ceremony - my denomination does NOT, and that changes the situation greatly). They can be removed for after ceremony pictures anyway.
Regardless of which polar pattern type you use, you do yourself a favor by being as close as possible. But you can get creative here: shotgun booms held from below, mics on a podium/lecturn, mics hung from an "archway", and other hidden, pre-placed mics can be very useful in fixing this problem. Also, one thing I tried this last time could really work well for you: the pzm/boundary-effect. Putting an omni mic on a board/plate and putting that on the sand gets rid a a LOT of the surf, for 2 reasons. First, the surf is reflected up into the air from the water and so at ground level there is very little surf noise compared to just a few feet up. Second, the board/plate doesn't have to be flat all around, it can have a raised CORNER into which the mic rests, which again cuts the pickup into a quarter sphere (or 1/8th if you have 2 corners). This is a LITTLE further from the bridal party, but the drop in noise from the surf is much more, so it still can be an improvement.

Also, I mentioned "broadband noise" earlier on. Surf & wind are both types of white or pink noise. The effect of this is that you have got lots of your recording picking up frequencies BEYOND human speech range. And these areas should be pre-filtered out. At the mic or at the mixer, prior to recording. A 120Hz LPF and a ~6kHz HPF will greatly decrease the environmental sounds while barely making a dent in the speech.

Lastly, like I mentioned, use foam or better yet a "dead cat" furry cover. Yes, these do SLIGHTLY muffle the sound of the speaking, but they GREATLY reduce the wind noise in this particularly windy environment. These should be used on ALL mics, including lavs (though they will have to be smaller). This is the only point where it's tricky on a mini headset.

My experience shows this. Unfortunately, the mic I used (which had a wind sock/fur and was placed pzm style on a plate on the sand) was the ONLY mic I had available at the time. Wouldn't you know it, after I had placed the mic and retreated to the back and AFTER the ceremony began, but BEFORE the vows occurred, a HUGE gust of wind tore the sock off my mic, ruining the sound for the rest (bulk) of the ceremony. And it's not like you can just say, "cut, re-block". This is THEIR event, not mine. The stuff is still usable (and fine for their needs), just not optimal. Lesson from this story is: thoroughly anchor your wind socks!

Notice I mentioned a LOT of options. Which one to pick? Well, if you are doing this as a job (I wasn't), you should be using as many of those options as possible, simultaneously. Feed multiple mics into a mixer and then out to a separate multi-track audio recorder. I've got a nice little Zoom H4N that I can feed 4 separate mics into. I've seen nice Rolands & Fosteks that can record 8-16 channels simultaneously. Even if you don't have one of those nice recorders, you can still get a multichannel field mixer (rent one even) that can take feeds and you could do live, on-the-fly optimization of the sound from the various mics mixed down to just a few channels.

Whichever way you go, it would help GREATLY if you went out and did some scouting at the location and did some test recordings so you actually know what you are up against. And have already anticipated and corrected for those obstacles.

Hope that helps,

Scott

[netmask56]

I had almost this same situation on Avalon beach Sydney many years ago, only it was for a film insert in a studio drama. I used a boundary effect mic lying on the sand in front of the 2 actors and it worked quite well, needed to roll out the bass in the final mix and ADD surf effects! Another loction sound recordist with a similar situation buried an EV668 cardiod mic in the sand with a thin silk scarf around it. It's an ever present problem down here in Sydney if post syncing is out of the question. Try hiding a microphone on near naked actors