Audio overload while tapping at Gun range

DWhitevidman wrote on 3/24/2011, 5:30 PM

Could I once again lean on those of you with much more experience than I for an upcoming shoot, literally?

I need to shoot footage for a "Gun Training" video. This will include footage of weapons, pistols and rifles, being loaded, cocked, aimed and then fired. It seems to me that no matter if I leave my camera in auto or set the gain manually, I'm going to get a large overload distortion at the time of the weapons being fired.

How might I go about preparing for this situation?

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Comments

GaryAshorn wrote on 3/31/2011, 9:53 AM

Many good points here. Separate mic, pointed away, etc, maybe covered to dampen further if needed. All of these will work well. Do you have access to a separate mixer with gates and compressors? I carry an old Mackie 1202B I think it was, Behringer gate and compressors/limiters. Run all the mikes to that, record separately and remix back to the video or better yet all channels to separate audio recorder and then remix. yes, more junk to carry but does make for good audio. Also if audio of gun shot is mixed to analogue tape you can take advantage of the soft roll of the tape saturation to roll off the sharpness of the crack.

Gary

DWhitevidman wrote on 3/31/2011, 4:40 PM

Well everyone, my Sony VX2100 must have some decent AGC for the auto gain. My first test shots today were at the open range and even as close as 10 ft to a .40 cal pistol the sound came out fine.

We moved to the range with benches and with a roof overhead, and the shots were significantly louder. However the bangs still didn't overload and the camera handled the sound just fine.

I think I've lucked out, but will still have to replay a test shot of a rifle and shotgun tomorrow. Thanks again for the input and suggestions.

RodC wrote on 4/6/2011, 4:52 PM

I did this a while back trying to prepare for some vids:

I used the camera gain control to avoid its wonky compression. I then used compression and transient shaping to get a good bang followed by the natural echo. (** trying to avoid the cap pistol sound most common in gun vids)

RodC wrote on 4/6/2011, 4:55 PM

You may also want to check out the M1 sounds here.

Coursedesign wrote on 4/6/2011, 7:13 PM

This pro article by a very experienced gun sound recordist may give you some ideas:

Weapons Sound Effects Recording and Design