Production sound mixer and recordist Rashad Omar has been utilizing DPA d:screet minature microphones and d:dicate recording mics to capture dialogue for a number of high-profile films, including American Honey, which recently won the 2016 Jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
Directed by Andrea Arnold and starring Sasha Lane, Shia LaBeouf and Riley Keough, the film is set in the American Midwest and tells the story of a teenage girl who joins a traveling magazine sales crew.
A great deal of the film’s action takes place inside a passenger van, with up to 15 characters in it at any one time. Most of the time the characters were also listening to music played through the van’s sound system, which incorporated a loud subwoofer.
“The style of filming was very freeform with the possibility of anybody speaking at any point,” explains Omar. “The van was being driven for real, so it was obvious from the start that I had to place mics around to try and cover all parts of it. We also had to ensure that all mics and cables were hidden, because it was possible to see any part of the van at any time.”
DPA’s d:screet 4060 and 4061 omnidirectional miniature mics proved important because they were small enough to be hidden yet capable of delivering the clarity Omar needed for dialogue.
“I always like to keep things as real as possible during these type of scenes, so I relied on a selection of d:screet microphones because they sound equally good on dialogue and music,” says Omar. “I decided that the best solution was to take out the whole headlining molding of the van and rig cables behind it so I could get mics inside the air vents in the van’s roof. This meant I had to modify the vents, so they no longer worked. By taking the vents out and stretching black lycra over them, I was able to stick the d:screet microphones behind the lycra where they couldn’t be seen.”
The vents ran the full length of the van, so Omar was able to get mics above each row of seats. “I still had to cover some areas of the van without vents so I hid d:screet 4061s in the joins in the heading fabric and connected them using MicroDot extension cables,” he notes. “All of the cables came out at the back of the van where I was positioned—mostly ducking down behind the last row of seats.”
The difference in sensitivity between the two d:screet variants was especially useful as Omar was able to use the low-sensitivity d:screet 4061s at the front of the van where the music was the loudest and high-sensitivity d:screet 4060s further back.
“As all of the cables in the roof were rigged with XLR connectors, I could swap to compact, side cabled d:dicate 4018 supercardioid microphones whenever I needed a fuller and more isolated sound,” Omar expounds. “Thanks to the side cable mic pre-amp, I was able to use them for other car scenes, because I could rig them above and around sun visors. I have noticed that they reject more engine noise than other supercardioids that I’ve used due to the reduced pick up pattern at the rear of the mic. They are now my new favorite for dialogue in cars.”
Given the complexity of the car scenes Omar was recording, he was plesed to have such a wide range of microphone solutions at his disposal. “These situations call for a bit of everything, because you can’t rely on one thing to work all the time. Sometimes I just quickly taped a Lectrosonics radio pack with a d:screet 4060 and mini windjammer to the back of the seat in front of the actor to grab a bit of dialogue. The fact that the d:screet 4060s and 4061s can work as radio mics or plant mics for both dialogue and music is fantastic.”
He’s also used d:screet miniature mics on several other movies, including The Lady in the Van, Rush, and Bridget Jones’s Baby, which is being released later this year.
