Prakash Ramkissoon, Facilities Assistant
Wherever possible, try to control your surroundings when filming, to minimise any unwanted noise. Avoid locations with a lot of reverberation.
It's easy to add reverb later, but impossible to remove it. Try to get as close as possible to the sound source and to record the cleanest and strongest possible signal, without clipping. Turning audio down is no problem; turning it up boosts all of the unwanted noise that you didn't want in the first place. Do not use the automatic volume control function of your camera. Always record at least a minute of atmos at each location. On low-budget films it's tempting to try to save money by not hiring a skilled sound person. In most cases this decision will be to the detriment of your film and will cost you money trying to fix problems during post-production. As the audio on HDV is MP2 compressed, record any audio-only takes as DV rather than HDV to get uncompressed audio quality.