Audio in Rich Media
Field Recording Techniques
This article is the third in a series exploring how audio can be integrated with other media to create richer, more dynamic journalistic features on news websites and beyond.
Recording audio interviews and ambient sound for multimedia projects is easy. Recording good audio takes a little more effort. In a rich media presentation, most people notice flaws in audio quality before shortcomings in photos, text, or video. Since it can be difficult to improve the fundamental sound quality of a recording after the fact, it’s essential to capture the best possible audio at the source.
To record good audio, you need a basic recording setup that includes a high-quality portable recorder, one or more microphones, and accessories such as headphones and cables. (For some suggestions, see Apple’s “Audio Gear for Rich Media” article [link to Audio in Rich Media, Module Two]).
Fortunately, you already own the most important tools for the job: your ears. The key to recording great audio is simply to listen.
Is your interview subject speaking too softly? What’s that odd echo? Is that low hum a fan in the next room, or is your microphone connected improperly? With a bit of practice, you’ll become an expert at identifying and troubleshooting such issues.
Let’s start with some basic do’s and don’ts when recording interviews and ambient sound in the field. Using a few pieces of simple equipment and the tips in this article, you should be able to start recording good-quality audio right away. (We’ll talk more about fixing, editing, and manipulating audio in subsequent articles in this series.)
Field Recording Basics
Whether you’re literally in a field or in a controlled indoor environment, place your recorder on a flat, stable surface — and if possible, use a small portable mic stand. Try not to hold your recorder or microphone, as this may introduce handling noise or level fluctuations, especially if you’re recording someone or something close at hand.
To guard against problems like distortion, excessively loud or quiet input levels, and extraneous noise, monitor your audio both visually (on the recorder’s meters) and via headphones as you record. You may feel conspicuous wearing headphones in public, but listening to what you’re recording is like using a camera viewfinder to focus and frame a photograph — it’s the best guarantee that you’ll capture the sounds you need. At the very least, wear a pair of high-quality fitted earphones or earbuds to get some sense of what your recorder is hearing. If you absolutely can’t wear phones during an interview, at least try to record a sample snippet and review it before proceeding.
If you’re working outdoors, you may want to add a foam windscreen to the microphone, and choose a sheltered location to minimize wind interference. Protect your equipment from rain or other wet conditions. If you’re also taking photographs, position your recorder away from the area where you’re shooting to avoid capturing the camera noises.
Most modern digital recorders give you a choice of recording quality settings, from low-resolution MP3s to CD-quality or better. As in digital photography, it’s a good idea to record at the highest quality available, with minimal compression. Even if your audio will be delivered in a medium that demands heavily compressed files (web videos, for example), it’s smart to record, edit, and mix at high quality and bounce down to MP3s in the final production stage. However, you may sometimes need to record at a lower resolution if you’re short on storage memory. For example, the same 1GB memory card that lets you record three hours of CD-quality sound could record all day and most of the night at MP3 quality. Plan for the maximum possible recording time you can imagine — and then prepare for still more.
Recording Atmospheres
Adding ambient (or background) audio is the simplest way to impart instant atmosphere to a series of images. It sets the tone and defines the location in just a few seconds, and immediately draws listeners into the scene. Ambient audio can consist of environmental sound or ambient chatter (people talking indistinctly in the background), or a combination of the two.
The primary goal in recording ambient audio is to establish a sense of place without focusing on overly identifiable or jarring sounds. If you’re capturing street ambience, for example, you might want to guard against an ultra-loud car horn. If people are talking in the background, make sure their conversations are unintelligible so they don’t distract listeners. Since you may be cutting these recordings into smaller pieces, you also want to avoid anything that’s too cyclic, like a recognizable piece of music playing from a radio. (In this case, there may also be copyright issues involved.) If the sounds you’re recording aren’t blending together enough, try moving farther away from the source.
If you’re planning to use ambient sound as a featured interlude before or between spoken-word sections, it may be effective to capture some sounds that “stick out” a bit. Just be sure to get some relatively smooth passages as well.
Compared to interviews, it’s less crucial to monitor the audio while you’re actually recording ambient sound, but you should check levels carefully as you set up the equipment. Record a minimum of thirty seconds of background audio for each atmosphere or setting you want to depict, or more if you’re trying to capture a sonic event that unfolds over time, like the swell of a foghorn or the roar of a crowd when a goal is scored.
Record a little more audio than you think you’ll use, but not too much. The more you record, the more flexibility you’ll have in the editing stage — but recording for an hour instead of a few minutes probably won’t give you that many extra options, and you’ll have more to sift through during production.
Recording Interviews
As with real estate, location is everything when you’re recording voices. Try to do interviews indoors, in a quiet, controlled environment with a minimum of sound leakage from outside. Small rooms with at least some soft surfaces — chairs, sofas, curtains, rugs — are your best bet. Avoid spaces with distinctive sound coloration or echoes, like bathrooms, stairwells, gymnasiums, and parking garages. The bigger the room and the harder the walls, the more the sound bounces around, producing unwanted artifacts.
Before you begin recording, take a minute to listen to the room itself, with nobody talking. Identify any background noises that might detract from the interview audio, and eliminate them if possible. Close the windows and doors, unplug the refrigerator, or temporarily turn off the fan, air conditioner, or furnace vents. Place a sign outside the room asking people to please remain quiet during the recording, or ask them not to walk or talk near the doorway for a few minutes.
If you’re doing an interview at a remote location and there are no nearby buildings in which to record, try conducting the interview inside a car or truck with the windows closed and the vents off.
Set up your recorder and microphone so that the interview subject can talk normally, without craning forward or backing away from the mic. Ideally the subject should be sitting in a natural position that can be maintained throughout the interview without shifting around too much.
