#8 - My friend, the compressor!
Hi friends, For a location sound mixer, recording dialogue can be a challenge. Dialogue can be very dynamic. The softest dialogue as compared to the loudest dialogue, (by the same artist), can easily have a 30 db swing! In film school, we were taught how to use a compressor. But back then, I never paid attention to how a compressor could even out the dialogues, so that a soft whispered dialogue and a loud shout can be heard comfortably in the theatre. I am sure, our professors taught us all this, but somehow, I can't seem to remember it. One of my first jobs after passing out was at a place where we did not use compressors while recording music. It was a purist way of recording music. So I spent several years of my early life, working without compressors. For the first time in my life, I actually realised the importance of a dynamic compressor when I was shooting a television show, sometime in the nineties. I was new to multicam television shows. A 12-channel analogue mixer...