Monday session (sound practice)

It is our second full week since induction and our session today was a practical based around the sound equipment. I used sound equipment once in college but was not given any ideal instructions on it, so todays session really did well on showing me how to use different mic's and settings. The digital recorder we were shown to use was the Zoom H4n Handy Mobile 4 track recorder as seen in the image below. Their is also the Auray WRW-H4N wind buster used to protect the zoom H4n from wind distortion when its set to Stereo mode.

 I now understand the difference between stereo and mono sound. Stereo is a decent setting for catching background noise like in a street setting or in the university. It isn't useful for picking out certain sounds and in exterior scenes wind is a problem. Mono is the setting we use to catch individual sounds and for all attachable microphone's that is the setting we use.

For mono we were shown and got to try out three microphone's. I have regretfully forgotten the correct names for the three microphone's, so all I can really do is describe them. One resembles what you would see a singer holding whilst performing but a more smaller and slightly heavier version. This microphone is ideal for picking out individual sounds but the microphone has to be held close to the object or person doing the recording to get a clear sound and if it's moved around whilst recording wind will pick up. another one of the microphones is the more famous boom that you will see in behind the scenes footage for professional shoots. This microphone is classic for picking up audio whilst filming footage cause it picks up the sound and doesn't collect a lot of background noise you don't want. The third microphone shown to us was an interesting one that worked on vibrations. it's attached to an extremely long wire and has an object attached to it to help out, this microphone is perfect for picking up sounds like running water cause you can just guide it through the water to pick up the noise, but because it runs on vibrations from the object, or person it's placed on, it doesn't pick up any sound from the air, so it's not good for dialogue but it picks up no wind either.