Booming
The go to technique for Location Sound Recording is booming. This requires a boom microphone and a boom pole. This is favoured as it produces more natural sounding dialogue (Viers, 2012, 45). Booming is following the talent with a boom microphone as close as possible without entering the frame of the camera. The position of the microphone matters as there are placements which won’t give the same quality of audio as others. Booming overhead is the much preferred technique as the loss of frequencies is reduced but you can boom from underneath (Scooping). Scooping can reduce background noise and hard surface reflections but doesn’t pick high frequencies which can result in heavy, muffled dialogue (Viers, 2012). Where you aim your boom microphone is essential. The best place your microphone is at the chest.
There are three types of boom microphones; A short Shotgun, a Long Shotgun and Cardioide. Shotgun refers to the type of polar pattern the boom microphone has. The polar pattern of a shotgun microphone is the most directional of the polar patterns with sharp rejections from the side and back and a narrow pick-up from the font. Short shotguns are more forgiving in terms of cueing (microphone position) and are used for interior locations and sometimes exterior depending on the environment you are shooting in. Long shotguns can be up to three times the size of a short shotgun and have a narrower and longer range of polar pattern and are really only used on exterior sets.
The Cardioide microphone has a much larger pick-up polar pattern than the Shotgun having a much larger front and side pattern with rejection from the rear. Cardioid microphones can be more forgiving if you make a mistake on cueing your microphone and can capture more natural sounding reverb. However, because of its polar pattern it needs to much closer to the talent because the pick-up range is reduced.