Even MORE equipment.

Once again it's time for a ludicrously late blog post about budgeting! This time I'm going to cover some things that requires rental instead of purchasing. It's also one of the things I dislike because it involves something that can really make or break a film.

I am talking about, of course, audio.

I've had audio go wrong before on a short for school. Either something went wrong with the mic input, the camera settings or somebody wasn't paying attention, but we ended up with absolutely no sound on a bunch of scenes and we had no time to do ADR. I was mortified. The entire project was pretty much ruined and all I could do was take a clip from a scene in the middle of the film, slow it down and set it to Chariots of Fire.

ANYWAY, we last left off with the budget resting at a rather lofty $57,095. Yikes. Now, with audio equipment, it's one of the rare instances I'm finding where it's actually cheaper to rent than it is to buy. Probably because renting out a Senhieser is $45 a day instead of dropping about $1,800. Boom poles are expensive too and I'd rather not risk putting expensive equipment on something homemade.


So let's start breaking down costs!


Boom mics: I really like Senhieser's stereo shotgun mics. They've always offered me good performance when I've used them in the hands of people who know what they're doing. $45 a day and I'll probably want to grab two of them. That brings us to $900 for the shoot, which is about half of what it costs to buy just ONE.


Boom pole: Really, any brand here is good. If they're operated right and you keep them out of the shot, you're golden. Two of them as well at $25 a day. $500.


Mixers: I actually had to ask around about this one since it's outside of my area of expertise. Given that there's no such thing as too many backups, a mixer with a built in recording system seemed best. It came down to the Sound Devices 552. It's a 5-channel mixer with a built in SD card slot for recording. $55 a day, I only need one. $550 for the shoot.


Lavalieres: I'd have to go wireless for this, and if I did, I'd need to take special care to make sure no distortion came through. Plus I'd need three of them if I was to actually use them since they're lapels. I'm going to go with a temporary no-go on these. $0.


XLR cables: These are pretty cheap. 4 20 foot cables, purchased. $80.


XLR to 3.5mm: There's no reason not to get this and it may well be VERY important at some point, so it's best not to leave them. Last thing you want is to not be able to record audio to something you may need to. 3 of them for $60 total.


That... was actually a lot more painless than I thought. Of course, it DOES tack $1,130 to our budget, bringing us to $58,215, which isn't TOO bad of an increase. Tomorrow I'll be moving, but I'll be covering additional video equipment and possibly some other stuff! Stay tuned!