Animated Movie - Vocal Booth Question

[akg414]

I was watching the making of Kung Fu Panada. When the showed the stars doing the voice overs, I saw a lot of the vocal booths had two mics (a black & nickel Neumann). The black one was in front and the other was on the side and slightly back.

Is this for thicker voice overs? Stereo image?

Why two mics?

[MASSIVE Mastering]

I always kept two mics in the VO booth... Didn't necessarily use both simultaneously. But there are about a zillion things you can do with them -- Simple talkback, being able to adjust distance on the fly if needed, etc.

[red cross]

You could try posting that question over at the Post Production forum on Gearslutz. My guess is that the second "distant" mic is a safety used for loud exclamations and shouts, so if the close one clips during a great take they have a clean track in the bag that they can cut to. I doubt it has anything to do with stereo image since 98% of the dialogue in a feature film is placed exclusively in the centre speaker.

[JGriffin]

All good suggestions. Having the option to mix perspective close v. distant is one possibility.

"The other mic is not actually being used" is another.

[criticalmonkey]

btw - don't believe those things too much - usually staged in some way - nobody likes to interrupt the performance work day

[rwc]

I keep a 4050 with a pop filter on a straight stand and an sm81 with its foam pop filter on, in the back, hanging high pointing down at the vocalist, so if someone ignores my advice and gets too close to the 4050, I have the other one. 90% of the time, for voiceover stuff, I use the hanging 81. less mouth effects.

[Pascal Garneau]

All good suggestions. Having the option to mix perspective close v. distant is one possibility.

Bingo. They use multiple mics so they can mix between different shot perspectives. In live action ADR, they may also use several different types of mics so the sound editor and re-recording mixer can choose the one that best matches the original production (usually a shotgun or hyper-cardioid).

[darjama]

btw - don't believe those things too much - usually staged in some way - nobody likes to interrupt the performance work day

I've heard that they video those sessions so the animators can mimic expressions from the actor's faces. So the footage probably comes from there.

[JGriffin]

btw - don't believe those things too much - usually staged in some way - nobody likes to interrupt the performance work day

I've heard that they video those sessions so the animators can mimic expressions from the actor's faces. So the footage probably comes from there.

That too.

[Nick Sevilla]

You could try posting that question over at the Post Production forum on Gearslutz. My guess is that the second "distant" mic is a safety used for loud exclamations and shouts, so if the close one clips during a great take they have a clean track in the bag that they can cut to. I doubt it has anything to do with stereo image since 98% of the dialogue in a feature film is placed exclusively in the centre speaker.

+1.

I always use two mics for safety reasons, plus two independent recording setups. This helps when stuff goes bad / distorted on the regular setup, since mostly, you don't use much compression on film dialogue. Leave that for the mixing / remixing engineer.

Cheers

[SpencerBenjamin]

btw - don't believe those things too much - usually staged in some way - nobody likes to interrupt the performance work day

I've heard that they video those sessions so the animators can mimic expressions from the actor's faces. So the footage probably comes from there.

On feature films, the EPK (Electronic Press Kit) is an integral part of the production process. But one of the benefits of an animated feature is you can bring in big name stars and only pay them for a few hours' work. It's unlikely they would bring the actors back just for a publicity shoot. It's likely that the EPK crew would have access during the actual ADR sessions; maybe just for rehearsals or perhaps even during takes, depending on the actor. These guys are pretty used to doing this stuff in front of cameras. Interrupting the performance day is a necessary evil these days, in fact it's entirely possible a stills photographer was on hand, and a small interview position set up somewhere round the back of the studio.