Re: Suggestions for shooting a Flash Mob for Xmas Shoppers?

HI,
I was asked to shot a flashmob for a xmas song at shopping area. (either acapella or with karoke machine on batteries for track).
I'll edit it afterwards, but was wondering if anyone has ever done something like that
and have any suggestions on recording the audio.

If they go with tracks I can take those from the source later in post, but I'm concerned about getting a decent vocal recording from various areas the singers will be spread about and moving toward a central point as they start and get going.
It'll all have pretty quickly and the song will be no more that 3-4 minutes long.

I don't want to have booms as the whole 'vibe' of a flash mob is to be unseen.

I'll be using mostly handheld Sony small family prosumer type cameras like the CX-900 (similar to the inexpensive 4K Sony cam without the 4K software enhancement feature). It'll be outdoor in So. Cal at a street fair.
They're getting the permits as we speak.

any tips appreciated,

LG

Getting a satisfactory result is not going to be easy without pro audio equipment. Video-wise I would suggest that all the cameras are set up identically, including white balance. Camera op's take their positions and have a person somewhere with a camera flash. When everyone is ready and cameras pointing at the person with the flash, camera op's start recording and raise a hand to indicate this to the person with the flash. As previously arranged, the flash person will wait 5 secs then fire the flash and 5 secs after that - "action". From there on all the cameras must keep rolling until the event is over. In the edit you will then be able to sync all the camera angles to the flash cue at the beginning.

Good luck.

Thanks for your reply XGTV. I will not have any post visual editing problems as I will be splicing and dicing (not necessarily keeping views of audience in perfect sync with performance). But final cut x does a great job of synching via audio from the individual cameras.

My main quest was for tips on how to get the audio to sound good without the audio mics being visable in the shoot as the audience will be all around the singers.

I have a TASCAM R-40 and DR-60D portable field recorders that I can place one on a mic stand and the other on the tripod.
I can also bring some recording studio mics (I have a music recording / project studio also). But I was wondering if there were any tips for how to utilize the types of audio gear I have in such a way as to them not being scene.

However since I first posted this, yesterday I got a call to let me know the venue was changed to an exterior of a community senior center and not a public shopping area (city licenses made the cost too prohibitive). The senior center (private property) loved the idea and they have a large morning class & teacher that were glad to volunteer to do this with the singers. It's only for a youTube video for fun and to help the singers get some local community attention. (Chinese family with a couple operatic tenors from Bejing who now live here in LA.)

Now I might go with a stereo mic on a boom since it won't be so much of a real surprise but more of a staged simulation.

Well that does change things quite a bit. The element of surprise, coming out of nowhere then vanishing would be hard to set up without giving the game away to passers by. Nevertheless, the audio will be quite a problem and although I've never done anything like this I have worked quite a bit on multi camera shoots at live public events and the main enemy is the PA system. In an deal situation you would have all the mic's and music handled by a sound guy, you would not use any ambient sound at all, instead take the main mix line out from the mixing desk and you will be good to go.

In the new scenario you describe, again the PA will be your enemy, it will sound awful and although you could lay a clean track underneath you won't be able to remove the original dirty PA audio because it will be recorded on the vocal mic's too, and that you can't remove.

I would suggest that you record it twice. Once with the PA for visuals - and the benefit of the audience, and a second time for vocals only. Again, that would require a certain amount of skill from the performers who without having the track fed into earpieces might find it difficult to maintain the pace of the track but I think that would be the only way to get clean sound.

Sometimes we don't have the kit we need and just have to make the best of it.

The singers are planning on coming back to my music studio in January to redo the vocals. The track is a wind band (an arranger for the band made them this mock up demo). Actually this Sunday they are doing a concert with the wind band in a concert hall at a local high school.
A junior college audio recording lab instructor is recording that.
In the past those concerts (which I also shoot for my friend the conductor) tend to sound really good as they use Neumann and AKG pro mics to a multi track and use sound stage mic stands to get them up in the air so they're not to close to the 100 pc orchestra of all wind instruments.
The singers will be singing into mics. So that audio may get substituted as an option as the playback they are using at the Senior Center is from the same music arranger and at the same tempo.

I'm still going to try to get a good live recording either way.
At this point there is no real PA to speak of, only three operatic tenors singing Jingle Bells to a specific arrangement.
The playback will be from a karoke machine that I'm expecting has batteries or will be pluged into a long extension chord.
The singers are bringing that so I've not worked with it before and don't have a clue at this point how good or bad it sounds playing back the CD of the tracks.

I do own a PA (Behringer 8 ch and JBL Eon 15" & hrns on poles) but wasn't planning on bringing that too.
Perhaps now that I'm thinking about it, I might do that and use your suggestion of getting a feed off the board of the track on one side and the vocals on the other. The Tascam recorder is a 4 track so I can do 2 line ins from the board and 2 built in xy mics all separate from each other. I also have a 2nd Tascam 4 track that I can put on one of the video camera tripod between the camera and the stand. That also has 2 phantom powered XLR mic ins that I can use on a pair of mics configured as a MS pair and set the 2nd pair to record -12Db softer as a safety track in case something gets too loud.

hmmm... lots of ideas here. I need to think this out and come up with the 'best of' alternative.

Thanks mucho for giving me some input to set the mind on a path of options to narrow down.

happy holidays,

el profe