Production Guide
When a video production goes wrong, the camera usually gets the blame. Shaky footage, bad framing, wrong exposure — these are visible problems that clients notice. But in 15 years of enterprise production in Las Vegas, the most common reason footage ends up on the cutting room floor is not the picture. It is the audio.
A beautifully lit, properly exposed interview with HVAC noise underneath it, or wireless microphone interference cutting in and out, is not usable. There is no fix in post for audio that was not captured correctly. You can color grade bad exposure. You cannot restore audio that was never clean to begin with.
Here is how professional audio actually works on a production, and what you can do as a client to help it go right.
Most professional video productions use some combination of three microphone categories. Each has a different job, different strengths, and different failure modes.
A lavalier is a small clip-on microphone worn by the subject, typically clipped to a lapel, tie, or shirt collar and connected wirelessly to a transmitter pack worn on the belt or clipped to a waistband. The audio engineer or camera operator places the microphone before the interview begins and monitors levels throughout the recording.
Lavs are the workhorse of interview and corporate video production because they maintain consistent audio regardless of where the subject turns their head. A subject who looks left, right, or down will sound the same as a subject looking directly at camera, because the microphone moves with them.
The failure modes for lavs are clothing noise (fabric rubbing against the microphone capsule), wireless interference (radio frequency congestion in venues with many active wireless devices), and placement problems (a lav hidden under a jacket layer picks up muffled audio). In a Las Vegas convention venue with hundreds of wireless devices active simultaneously, RF management is a real technical challenge that requires professional wireless audio equipment with frequency coordination capability.
A boom microphone is a directional microphone mounted at the end of a long pole, operated by a dedicated boom operator or mounted on a stand and pointed at the subject from above or below the frame. Boom microphones are highly sensitive and capture natural, open-sounding audio.
The boom is the preferred microphone for scripted production, documentary work, and any situation where a subject cannot wear a lav or where natural ambience is part of the audio design. The tradeoff is that boom microphones are sensitive in all directions, which means room noise, HVAC, and ambient sound are all captured along with the subject's voice. The boom also requires a dedicated operator on larger productions, which adds to crew size and cost.
For corporate interview work, the boom is frequently used as a backup or as a primary when the subject cannot comfortably wear a wireless pack. Many productions use both — a lav as the primary and a boom as insurance — giving the editor two clean options to cut between.
A microphone mounted directly on the camera body picks up audio from wherever the camera is positioned, which is often several meters from the subject. Camera-mounted audio is useful for event documentation, run-and-gun ENG coverage, and situations where time or logistics don't allow for lav placement or a boom operator.
The tradeoff is distance. Audio quality degrades significantly as the distance between microphone and subject increases. A camera-mounted microphone on a wide shot is picking up the entire room. This is fine for establishing audio — natural sound from an event floor, for example — but it is not acceptable as the primary audio for an interview or presentation. If you have ever watched a corporate video where the speaker sounds like they are in a large empty room, camera-mounted audio is usually why.
Las Vegas convention venues present a combination of acoustic and radio frequency challenges that don't exist in most other production environments.
HVAC noise is the most common problem. Large convention halls, hotel ballrooms, and meeting rooms are managed by industrial HVAC systems that run continuously and generate significant low-frequency ambient noise. In smaller breakout rooms, HVAC can be so loud that it competes directly with the speaker. The professional solution is a combination of directional microphones positioned close to the subject, high-pass filtering to roll off low-frequency room noise, and when possible, scheduling interviews during periods when HVAC can be temporarily reduced.
Wireless frequency congestion is the second major challenge. During a large convention like CES or NAB, there are hundreds of active wireless microphone systems, camera hops, intercom systems, and streaming encoders all operating on overlapping frequency ranges. Without a professional wireless audio system capable of frequency coordination — scanning the RF environment and selecting clean frequencies automatically — interference is not a matter of if but when. Mr. Camera uses Lectrosonics wireless systems specifically because of their frequency agility and rejection of RF interference in congested environments.
Crowd noise and ambient sound are the third factor. Convention floors, ballroom prefunction areas, and hotel lobby settings all have significant ambient noise floors that make clean dialogue capture challenging. This is where microphone placement and proximity become critical: a lav on the lapel six inches from the speaker's mouth will reject significantly more ambient noise than a boom five feet away.
It helps to understand concretely what audio problems look like in practice.
Clipping happens when audio levels are set too high and the signal distorts. It sounds like crackling or crunching on the loudest syllables. Clipping cannot be repaired in post-production — the audio information above the distortion threshold is permanently gone. The fix is a properly trained audio engineer monitoring levels in real time and adjusting before the level peaks into distortion.
Wireless dropout happens when the wireless connection between the transmitter pack (on the subject) and the receiver (at the camera or audio mixer) is interrupted by RF interference or physical obstruction. It sounds like a brief cut-out or crackling in the audio. A good wireless system in a well-managed RF environment should have zero dropouts. A cheap wireless system in a crowded venue will have many.
Clothing noise is the sound of fabric rubbing against the lav microphone capsule. It sounds like low-level rustling or thumping. It is caused by poor microphone placement or a subject whose clothing moves significantly. The fix is better placement, a different mounting method, or a moleskin pad around the capsule to isolate it from fabric contact.
Phase cancellation happens when two microphones (a lav and a boom, for example) are used simultaneously and their signals are slightly out of time with each other due to their different distances from the subject. The result is a thin, hollow-sounding recording that lacks body. The fix is careful microphone positioning and a basic knowledge of phase relationships that any professional audio engineer should have.
Most audio problems are preventable with preparation, and some of that preparation is on the client's side.
Tell the production company about the environment in advance. If your interview location has loud HVAC, is adjacent to a noisy event space, or is on a convention floor, that information should be in the brief. It changes the microphone selection, the crew size, and possibly the schedule.
Prep your on-camera talent on wardrobe. Wool jackets, stiff-collared shirts, necklaces, and lanyards all cause clothing noise problems. A simple note to talent before shoot day — wear soft, flexible fabric, remove noisy jewelry — saves time and audio quality on set.
Build time for audio setup into your schedule. Lav placement, wireless system scanning, and level setting before an interview takes five to ten minutes per subject. A schedule that has talent arriving two minutes before recording starts is a schedule that produces rushed audio setup and the problems that come with it.
Ask whether a dedicated audio engineer is included in the crew. On any production where the spoken word is a primary deliverable, a dedicated audio engineer is not optional. A camera operator who is also managing wireless audio is managing two jobs simultaneously. One of them will suffer.
Mr. Camera includes dedicated audio on every production where the deliverable requires it. If you have a Las Vegas production coming up and want to talk through the audio requirements, get in touch here.
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