{"id":170,"date":"2012-06-25T01:31:00","date_gmt":"2012-06-25T07:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/txsound.com\/blog\/?p=170"},"modified":"2015-02-25T12:25:51","modified_gmt":"2015-02-25T18:25:51","slug":"lav-channel-1-boom-channel-2-please","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/txsound.com\/blog\/lav-channel-1-boom-channel-2-please\/","title":{"rendered":"Lav Channel 1, Boom Channel 2, Please?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Record Now, Decide Later.<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
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Ever wonder why interviews are recorded with both a lavalier mic<\/strong> and a boom microphone<\/strong>? The standard producer request, whenever an interview is recorded for television: Boom channel 1, lav channel 2, or visa-versa. Why 2 microphones for one sound source? The answer runs a little deeper than you may think.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
20 or 30 years ago, two mics for a single interview was not done<\/strong>. The sound recordist chose his weapon, a lav or a boom, and recorded with that. The producer or director, or whoever was in charge, asked no questions<\/strong>. There was only one, recordable mono track<\/strong> anyway!  Back in the news-film, documentary days, or anything that preceded video, the audio went to the mono Nagra track, or the single audio channel on whatever sound amplifier (Auricon, Cinema Products, etc) was driving a sound-on-film system. Not only were two mics unnecessary, there weren\u2019t two audio tracks for two mics!<\/strong> Two tracks of audio eventually became available when 3\/4\u201d u-matic, stereo Nagra, or 1\u201d field recording came into being. Yet two mics for a single-person interview was still hardly contemplated<\/strong>. <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Enter the days of Tabloid<\/strong> and Reality television<\/strong>. And, the need for low-cost programming to fill 80 channels of cable\/satellite TV. The tiny army of production mixers<\/strong>, in their lofty, revered, hard-earned union positions, were no longer enough in number, <\/strong>or even willing to meet the demand for the forthcoming tidal wave<\/strong> of cheap television<\/strong>.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
However, there were plenty of young, inexperienced crew people<\/strong> flooding into the production work force, many never having picked up a boom pole<\/strong> or lavalier mic.<\/strong>  They worked for cheap<\/strong>, learned by trial and error, clipping lavs on collars, happily chasing around cameras<\/strong> with their little mixers<\/strong>. Recording interviews with whatever audio gear<\/strong> the cameraman owned, or was thrown in the back of the truck<\/strong>. Often an Shure FP31 and two Sony ECM50’s…<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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oh shit oh shit oh shit<\/p><\/div>\n

You can imagine what came next. Horrible audio<\/strong> came flooding into the edit bays<\/strong>. Poorly cued booms, lavs placed too low or too high, or no mic at all- when the soundman forgot<\/strong> to switch from the camera mic,<\/strong> or connect the umbilicle. <\/strong>If a mic battery died, or a location was noisy, the editor got what he got<\/strong>– 1 channel of crappy audio from one mic,<\/strong> recorded by a beginner<\/strong>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

It didn\u2019t take long for word to come down on high<\/strong>. Make those jobs idiot-proof<\/strong>, because we\u2019ve got an army of idiots recording our field audio! Thus came the new protocol-<\/strong> record lavalier on 1 channel, and boom on the other. In Post, now we can choose the less horrible of the two<\/strong>!  The senior sound guys balked<\/strong>– they knew how to get good interview audio with one mic<\/strong>, and no memo from above<\/strong> was going to tell them how to do the job. Regardless, the protocol stuck<\/strong>, and is still with us today. I don\u2019t begrudge the method at all. Today, having both mics going makes sense in a fail-safe<\/strong> kind of way- most of the time. Let’s say you have 15 minutes to interview the King of Jordan<\/strong>. One take, no interruptions.  Mid-interview<\/strong>, someone starts a vacuum cleaner<\/strong> in the next room.   Would you rather have one mic choice or two?  Afterwards, the producer’s inevitable question- how was that vacuum?<\/strong> Which mic sounded better?<\/strong>  These days, the on-set mentality<\/strong> is:  Get it right, get it in spades, and if you can, postpone making a decision about anything.<\/strong> Works for me! All I ask is: Please, Mr Editor, pick one or the other, and don\u2019t mix the two down to mono! <\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

– by Pete Verrando<\/span>
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\nwww.txsound.com<\/a><\/span>
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Record Now, Decide Later. Ever wonder why interviews are recorded with both a lavalier mic and a boom microphone? The standard producer request, whenever an interview is recorded for television: Boom channel 1, lav channel 2, or visa-versa. Why 2 microphones for one sound source? The answer runs a little deeper than you may think. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[73,72,3,5],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/txsound.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/txsound.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/txsound.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/txsound.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/txsound.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/txsound.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":603,"href":"https:\/\/txsound.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions\/603"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/txsound.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/txsound.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/txsound.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/txsound.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}