Sound for reality show

Question

Just like to say, this is quickly becoming my favorite site.

I know this is more of a Q and A for post-production, but I've seen many people have production sound experience too. Not to mention the production sound on this is directly correlated with the post.

I'm doing all the sound for a reality webisode series. And I've never done 'reality tv' work. How do you capture the chaos cleanly?

I have a gameplan, but I'm curious to know if anyone has experience with a few points.

1.) There will be up to 3 or 4 cameras running at a time. I may need to use the dialogue of things that are happening at the same time. Am I stuck relying on the camera mics? How have you found the quality to be? (these are higher end HD camera's w/ mini shotguns on them).

2.) There is a kitchen. A tight, busy spot. Hard enough to get a camera in let alone one w/ a boom mic and operator tagging along. I'm thinking a boundary mic would help. Can anyone confirm if that will work? or will there be too much noise for a mic that is omni and not focused? Maybe something like a countryman, or an AKG 414 mounted in a corner? Something with more direction to minimize early reflections an omni would surely capture.

I will be using wireless lav's on 2 main characters and possibly 2 or 3 more for secondary characters.

3.) Lastly, I don't watch reality tv (I'm going to have to force myself to watch it, I shudder at the idea). Do they sweeten the enviroment with foley? Being so focused on capturing clean dialog, I'm planning on doing so. I'll be recording room tones and numerious sounds of things at the location when it's not busy.

Sorry for the length, thanks for reading.

Answer 1

Yes, you'll definitely need a good set of lavaliers for the important characters. If you can get a boom/boom op in there, you may want to use that as your backup (I know this sounds counter-intuitive, since we usually prefer shotguns to lavs) or as a means to capture secondary/tertiary characters who aren't already covered.

A lot of television programs, reality and non included, use a vast array of planted mics around the set; especially in heavy congregation areas. Omni lavs can work well for this as well. If you're allowed to drill holes in things, you can easily hide those mics and have them peeking out where you need them. If you're not, then you can always tape or mount in some other fashion (i.e. the underside of the cabinets in the kitchen might be a good spot to set up a little array of mics). Unless you're really lazy in your placement, you can get away with some very out in the open mics that most people won't notice in the shots.