Chris Watson Seminar

Chris Watson held a seminar at FACT today (for all three of us!).  Here is the gist of what he was saying: He talked about Wild Tracks - atmospheric audio recordings which are not synchronised with a piece of film. He mainly talked about three different types of recording which he does: Atmosphere Recordings This is a recording of general background ambience.  Chris generally works outdoors and therefore played wildlife ambience as an example, but this could also be the background noise in a room when everyone is silent.   When recording atmosphere he says you should try and stick to 2-3 minutes, as anything longer will make the editing and post production much longer.  He recommended using stereo microhpones.  He said that the important part of an atmospheric recording is that it has a small dynamic range i.e. very little change in volume level.  Therefore he said that there shouldn't be any sound sources too close to the microphone.  He recommended playing the recorded audio back at the level you would hear it live, as if it's louder than it should be then your ears will start to block some of it out and you can lose certain frequencies.  Also if the audio is played back at the correct volume then the audio will have natural balance across all frequencies.  The atmospheric recordings are the foundation of the sound scape. Habitat Recordings This is pretty much the same as atmospheric recordings, again using stereo mics, only this time the dynamic range needs to be more varied.  The habitat recordings represent the "chatter" of the wild in his case. Feature Recordings This is a recording of something in particular, like wildlife commentary or a lion or something.  Chris recommends a mono microphone for this, and suggests getting as close to the sound source as possible in order to reduce or eliminate background noise.  The closer you get with the mic, the lower the recording level needs to be, and so there is less background noise, making it easier to edit in post production. Another consideration with feature recordings is that you can use two or more microphones in a confined space, and then you can play the audio back on a widely spaced surround sound speaker set, which expands a small recording over a larger area, giving lots of people the opportunity to experience the concentrated recordings in a large room.  Expanding the recording also brings out frequencies and sounds which might have otherwise gone unnoticed. Recording Techniques Chris recommended only using omni-directional mics, as he finds that directional mics can affect certain frequencies, and can be more sensitive to noise from handling them.  He also mentioned that omni-directional mics will record sound the way whichever direction they are pointed in.  He showed us a good little setup which he had.  It was an upside-down coathanger which had two omni-directional mics tied to each end of the base (the long bit), so approximately 10" apart.  This meant that he could make stereo recordings with two mics at a good distance from each other, by moving the coat hanger around.  He could also hang the mics up easily, or bend the hook of the hanger and put it in the groud etc.  A big advantage basically is that you can experiment really easily with mic placement using this method.  His microphones were Sony ECM77's, two of which cost around £400.  But he did mention cheaper equivalents on this website: www.microphonemadness.com - BSM9's (Binaural Stereo Mics) - 2 mics for $75.The only difference with these is that they are unbalanced, meaning that you could use 60' cables with them or anything.  But they do have a good low frequency response. Two other companies he mentioned for information on mics were: Danish Pro AudioSchoers He also played lots of fascinating recordings, including the inside of Brighton pier after it had been half burnt-down, a purring cheetah really close-up and a zebra carcass being torn apart by vultures.  Amazing stuff.  And that's about it! Ian Williams