Editing the Vocals Song 1 - Where am I

As I started the sound edit, my main concern were the vocals of the songs. It was important to create the right balance between studio recording quality and the emotion created on set. As I have mentioned before, I decided to use the DPA 4071 to capture the vocals. I also got coverage with the Sennhesier which I used mainly for creating the atmospheres for the songs. At the start of this process I believed that a boom mic was always the best way to capture audio However I needed the DPA's for coverage and constituency. Although the DPA's did an amazing job of capturing the vocals in times where the boom could not, once I was in the edit and matched the DPA recordings to that of the Boom, there was a clear difference in the voice. The DPA's came out much more muddy, they had to be positioned quite deep under the clothing, very near the actresses chest. Ideally I would of had them on the outside of the costume and then for the costume team to hide it with fabric. The video below is a comparison of both the microphones used from the first song Where am I.It is the same take and neither of the audio tracks have been edited.

The comparison indicates the pros and cons of both microphone. The boom manages to capture the atmosphere and the natural reverb of the voice. It also contains a wider frequency range of the voice. However, there is a lot of unwanted noise and sounds that come in from her movement, especially when she hits the back of the set. Also, due to the positioning constraints given to the boom operator, once the actress moves to the back of the set, the boom cannot reach and there is a change in volume.
With regards to the DPA microphone the voice captured is consistent and clear. It allows me to manipulate the voice without having to 'clean up' anything first. However due to the characteristics of radio mics, re recording are very dry. There is not much natural reverb and the highs of the voice have been lost. I tried to mix the two recordings in with each other but for multiple reasons this did not work for this particular song. I decided to go with consistency instead of natural sounds. For song one I only used the DPA's for the vocals. It did mean that reverb and EQ had to be used very effectively.
A lot of work went into balancing the vocals into the world of the film. Because I was bringing back the highs it mean a lot of hiss and other unwanted sound came with it. iZotope helped out greatly during these processes but it was still the fine tuning of EQ that created a more realistic voice. This wasn't just a common problem in the first song, each song had to be treated in the same way. However, due to the different locations and atmospheres, each vocal track had to go through the same procedure.




Overall I am happy with the quality I managed to get out of the DPA's. It took a lot of work to get them into a state where they fit within the realms of the film but it was a challenge. There is still much to be done, some songs I would like to re-shoot as the recordings may not be as strong as I would like them to be. More work will be done to the vocals after the graduation screening, in preparation to festivals.