Recording everything from the bustle of the marketplaces to the sounds of the cigarette boats and tuk-tuks of Thailand saw Sound Designer/Supervisor Cameron Frankley and Sound Mixer John Fasal roaming the streets of Bangkok with a serious recording rig.

Briefed by the director of the Hangover Part II in Bangkok, the pair packed Sound Devices 788T multitrack digital audio recorders and DPA 5100 mobile surround microphones to capture the feature film’s 5.1 location audio.

With it, they visited every location in the film, as they had access to rooftops, basements, marketplaces and intersections.

The team built two sound rigs to cover different areas and aspects of the city simultaneously. These included Sound Devices’ 788T recorder, using six channels for the handheld DPA 5100 mobile surround mic, with Channels 7 & 8 reserved for MS shotgun mics – effectively recording eight channels at all times. The rig gave the team the ability to walk into any environment with the 5.1 mic on a boom pole, holding it down low to the street or, if there was too much direct sound, raising it as high as 15 feet above the crowd.

‘As far as the run-and-gun technique or being out in an environment where you are acclimatising to different events that are happening and you are adjusting your setup, this rig was by far the best set I have ever recorded with,’ says Frankley. ‘It allowed us to walk into really tight spaces and get in between things. At the end of the day, it worked out really well in post, as we had lots of useful material.’

Plug-and-play was an essential asset Frankley and Fasal, as both pieces of equipment work well together and are easy to set up. The DPA microphone’s multi-pin connector breaks into clearly labeled XLRs that can be simply plugged into the 788T. The reecorder’s multiple tracks allow 5.1 capture, as each channel of the DPA 5100 can be assigned to individual channels of the 788T. Another consideration was keeping everything in dead sync.

Additionally, the monitoring functions on the 788T allowed then to determine what to listen to while recording – all five channels or just the LR, depending on preference.

In Thailand’s streets, which are reserved for pedestrians, bicycles and scooters, there is always a lot of action around their marketplaces and small cafes. Frankley and Fasal situated themselves in a crevice between a couple of buildings and, using the DPA 5100, captured an incredible LCR soundscape of the street.

‘When you are out in the field, you listen to your surroundings as if you are a microphone,’ says Fasal. ‘When using a surround mic, you have to situate yourself so you are getting useful material in as many places as possible. When you play back the tracks, you are basically back on location, in the moment.’

‘When you come back from recording in the field, you have a palette of all of these colours, and you are able to mix and match them, and manipulate them to fit the picture and what the camera is doing,’ Frankley adds. ‘You get these different channels and pieces and then you can accentuate them to maximise the cinematic idea.’

Frankley and Fasal have used Sound Devices gear and a collection of DPA mics for past and current film projects, including the coming Gangster Squad from Warner Bros and the most recent installment of the Terminator franchise, Terminator Salvation.

More: www.dpamicrophones.com
More: www.sounddevices.com