March 31, 2009
A freelance wedding and event videographer in New York City for more than 22 years, George Burbano and his family have established a successful business helping to capture those important moments both for families and large corporations. With home theater setups quickly becoming more accessible to all, it was clear to Burbano that he needed to add surround sound to his production offerings. The inclusion of Holophone’s H4 SuperMINI camera-mountable surround microphone in his audio toolkit is helping to make Burbano’s company one of the first in the New York City area to add surround recordings to its roster of services. 
Burbano shooting with the Holophone H4.
“Traditionally when we would shoot events, we would provide two channels of audio to simulate stereo, but with more people having home theater systems, they were only hearing our recordings through the left and right channel and they wanted to hear it through more,” Burbano explains. “The Holophone H4 SuperMINI allows us to provide our customers with the option of 5.1 recordings without a lot of additional post production work and a minimal learning curve.”
Holophone’s H4 SuperMINI is the world’s first camera-mountable surround microphone to feature Dolby Laboratories Dolby Pro Logic II encoding technology. With the mic’s Dolby Pro Logic II encoder, audio from its six microphone elements can be encoded from multi-channel to stereo and recorded directly to any broadcast camera or a stereo recording device. This unique design allows an accurate and balanced surround recording to be captured from a single point with minimal signal manipulation required. The recordings can then be edited in any standard computer editing program such as Final Cut Pro. Thanks to the H4 SuperMINI, Burbano has been able to expand his production offerings with a minimal investment in time and money.
“The H4 SuperMINI eliminates the need to run multiple microphones to capture a surround recording,” Burbano continues. “If I was to do this the traditional way it would be very difficult to set up multiple microphones and monitor all those levels and then in post production combine all of those microphones and then encode it all. It would require at least two audio engineers and involve spending four or five thousand on a recording system and a recorder itself. With the H4 SuperMINI you don’t need the extra crew and equipment and it’s very easy to learn how to use. The first time we used it, we had our dealer Gotham Sound rush order us a mic and we got it a few hours before the event. Our crew spent about a half hour reading the manual and was then able to have the mic up and running and it performed flawlessly during the event.”
For most weddings, Burbano and his crew use the H4 SuperMINI attached to a Panasonic AG-HVX 200 digital camcorder and for corporate events a Sony Z1U HD camcorder. Depending on the event, a shotgun microphone or wireless lavaliere system is attached to the H4’s center channel to capture the groom and other members involved in the wedding ceremony as well as comments from guests at the reception.
“Having the option of connecting an additional microphone to the H4 SuperMINI’s center channel gives us the advantage of getting a voice recording of the groom, specifically the vows, and the priest or the rabbi, while still getting the benefit of recording in surround sound,” Burbano continues. “We initially only started using it for the receptions but during many of the ceremonies we do, there will be an organ playing in the background or a pianist as well as people who are crying or are happy, so we started using the mic at the ceremony as well. This way we are able to catch that emotion in surround sound and create an accurate depiction of the event which will last a lifetime.”
| COMMENTS (2) | | 04/04/2009 | | Sounds like a great device but I have reservations about it being attached to the camera. Whenever the camera pans, you'll have the entire sound field rotating with it. Although surprising to me at first, this isn't what we expect to happen. Think of standing on the sidelines at a football game. As you move your head left to right and back, the brain somehow keeps the sound field stationary so that the field is always right in front of you and the cheering fans behind you. You're always aware of the layout of things and so you don't expect to have it all rotate among the speakers when you're listening to the recorded event. Consequently, I suspect the best results from this microphone will some when it's off the camera and stationary. This is particularly true when there are strong audio cues that remain stationary, such as a band playing--you wouldn't want the band to be moving around from speaker to speaker as the camera pans. However, if there are no well defined audio cues like that and there also aren't any other visual cues providing strong spatial anchoring, then perhaps the on-camera location of the microphone would work. At least, that's been my experience with surround sound recording. |
| | 04/03/2009 | | It may work, but that's the craziest-looking setup I've seen! It seems very obtrusive in appearance (it's like two feet tall!), and I can't imagine it would be very practical to use in the run-and-gun world of wedding videography. |
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