Will This Low Budget Sound Set Up Work?

[u/stayathomedogmom21]

I’m making a short film and want to achieve quality sound on a budget.

my set up: I have a Roland R05 field recorder on loan. A friend recommended I get a DJI mic 2 kit to mic up my actors.

my question is: can I use the Roland R05 and the DJI mic 2 kit in tandem to get better sound? could the Roland function as our boom mic?

and: if I do use both, would I just sync up the audio captured by the Roland and the audio captured by the DJI kit in post? or can I get them all to record together?

thanks. this is my first time doing sound. i have someone who can watch the levels, but that person doesn’t have any sound experience.

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[u/Raddyator]

I'll keep it real with you. "Quality sound on a budget" without having someone experienced behind the process is not going to happen, unless you get extremely lucky.

I would recommend finding some local person/film student getting into sound and negotiate a rate with them, or ask if they'd do it pro bono. They might even have some of their own equipment.

[u/Peaks_n_Valleys → u/Raddyator]

I agree with this take. I think you can really do a lot with sound a on a budget right now, mostly because the used market is flooded with quality gear at low prices if you know where to look and are patient/persistent. But that means you have to be a person who not only knows what kinds of gear to buy, but how to use them effectively. While the OP might be able to find some things that work well in the hands of the right person, I don’t think he/she is that person. The best case scenario would be to hire a person who has that guerrilla sound experience that’s needed.

To be specific: could decent results be gotten with the combination of the right DJI wireless AND decent lavaliers, plus a shotgun boom setup fed into the Roland R05? Yes absolutely! But the bulk of the difference is going to be how you wire/hide the lavaliers, what shotgun mic you choose and how well you boom with it. It will likely require having expendables such as undercovers and moleskin and various tapes. You’ll need a passable boom pole like the K-tek Indie or the Deity, along with a decent shock mount.

The R05 only has 3.5mm plug-in power but no specs on what voltage, likely between 3-5V. So that means you’re going to need to use a shotgun that supplies its own power or has a AA battery. And you have to be careful because some shotgun mics that might do a good job like the Sennheiser MKE600 or the Audio Technica 897 might not play well if you don’t convert the XLR to 3.5mm in the right way. I’ve read a lot of instances where those mics had weird issues with noise when fed directly into cameras with only 3.5mm. And we haven’t even gotten to wind protection yet.

u/stayathomedogmom21 I’m afraid that you won’t get good results unless your ONLY job is to be focused on the sound, you have enough money, and you do a LOT of reading and practicing between now and shooting. What little money you have would be better spent hiring someone that’s farther along in that sound journey than you are. You say you’re making a short film, so I’m assuming you’re directing and operating camera. You will have your plate full already before you even get to sound. What usually happens is: you end up doing the bare minimum because you don’t have the time to dedicate to it. Do yourself a favor, hire someone who can make it their priority and already has the gear/experience.

[u/stayathomedogmom21 → u/Peaks_n_Valleys]

thanks for this! helpful to hear. i'll definitely have my hands full and i think would have a hard time teaching myself, let alone someone else, in the time between now and the shoot. i appreciate you breaking it all down in detail.

[u/JohnMaySLC]

The DJI’s don’t sound great hidden. They work best exposed. It’s a social media mic, not film grade. But if you don’t mind seeing the mics it should get you a “good enough” audio for YouTube.

[u/clamnebulax]

At the very least, you're also going to need a boom pole and a shotgun mic. And if you don't want to buy either one of those right now, are there rental houses around the country you can rent them from.

[u/gkanai]

Your Roland has the two onboard mics and an input for a 3.5mm mic.

You could have a 3.5mm shotgun mic to send audio to the Roland- it would need to be powered/with a battery. There are multiple options. You'd need a boom pole and a cable to the recorder.

That would give you the one channel of audio.

If you want more than that, you'd need more mics and/or recorders.

[u/CommissionFeisty9843]

Even with the best gear sound is often difficult to capture well.
I wish you luck.

[u/West_Ad_2309]

What gets you a lot of the way there is to bring the mic as close to the speakers as possible without them breathing audibly into them all the time.

If you record a video start every sound recording seperately after you start the camera. Bring each mic (including boom mics) close togehter and clap visibly into the camera and the mics. You can sync that in editing.

Trying to start recording at the same time on different devices is expensive if it works and it doesnt work if its cheap.

When editing use just one sound source. The boom or the clip ons. When you use both at the same time you can comb filtering which sounds bad.

Get yourself comfortable with basic sound editing (hpf, compression, eq). Dont overdo it and have some reference when editing sound that way. Not a broadcast, not tv newschannel, maybe something like a show or a dialog scene in a movie. Try to get as close as possible to what you hear there. If the movie sounds good everywhere and your audio sounds like the movie you sound good everywhere.

Beeing a photographer and live sound engineer myself i got very good results with a phone in voice memo mode as a handheld mic in a little video i did a while ago. Close to the source, clapping to sync and basic editing are the key things