Hi all, I am creating a set of swimming tuition videos and looking for a little advice on the audio.

The location is an indoor home pool, I’m told it’s 8m x 5m and by the pictures, the room is not much bigger than that.

The videos are being recorded with phones and underwater with go pros, but I don’t suppose the audio is going to be very good from those.

There will be sections where I’ll speak to the camera, so I want clean sound there, and during demonstrations, just to have a low level of the water noises I think will be nice on the videos, which may also have some instruction added on top after the recording.

I don’t have a big budget, and hoping to be able to manage this with a budget of £100-£200 max on the mic(s?).

Does anyone have any advice on what kind of mic/mic pattern to use for a situation like this?

I also don’t have a studio setup at home for additional vocals and had thought that maybe a shotgun mic may be a useful choice for that? (There is often rural work noises going on where I live).

I was hoping that there may be one mic that will do for both aspects but I’m certainly not the expert!

One final factor I’m concerned with is the water getting splashed during the recording. Would that be a problem? And if so does anyone have any suggestions for protecting it? I wondered about those fluffy things that help protect against wind….???

Thanks for any advice in advance!

Alex

I think Rode Wireless GO might be just what you need...

Within budget, good sound, easy to use, I don't think a water splash here and there will be that dangerous...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ewl-_rzIehk

A room like that is probably going to be rather reverberant and ringy. A wireless lapel mic can help isolate your vocals in a situation like that.

For this shoot, I’d use a shotgun mic on a long boom pole, and put a boomoperator on the side of the pool.
You also need a portable recorder that supplies phantom power - which is needed by shotgun mics.
The suggested Rode Lavaliers can’t get close enough to the mouth, and if you’d try, you’d probably soak and kill them.

I’m afraid your budget is not enough for the equipment I mentioned. You would best rent it, but rental houses are usually located only in bigger cities.

Splashing: you could point a shotgun mic away from splashing sounds, but you still need to be as close as possible to the mouth, preferably less than 2 feet.

For a VoiceOver type recording in a ‘difficult’ room, I’d advice using a dynamic microphone (the type that singers use on stage).
In audio-post, (the process of fixing audio after the edit), I would use a so called de-reverb plugin, to get rid of bad acoustics in the swimming pool. Trial versions of such software are available free of charge.

In all, this is a pretty difficult task, even for a professional. Only using a VoiceOver would make it a lot easier..

In a "pool acoustic" lavs will isolate best... clipped to a shirt - if the narrator is only wearing swim costume or is actually in the water, then it's not possible... but could be clipped to a swimming cap for example.

The sounds of water can be captured via lavs, too - and even mix in phone or camera sound for this purpose... which is not something fancy...

The Rode Lav 2 mics which are included in the Rode Wireless Pro package (you get a pair of transmitters, with a Lav 2 for each, plus a receiver) have foam windsocks which slip over the lav pickup head, which isn’t going to waterproof it, if a splash hits.

Provided the speaker doing the voice to camera isn’t in the pool the Wireless Pro with Lav 2 plus foam sock should be fine.

Thank you all so much for your advice, that is so helpful. There’s something to take from everything there.

Since the shotgun setup ‘sounds’ (sorry) like it may not be possible due to its proximity and needing an operator, I’ll probably take a trip to the Lav (I am so sorry) and investigate that avenue for the live recording, and I love the idea of the dynamic with the so-called de-verb thing! Sounds like the way forward there!

Mixing in some low level phone sound is a great idea just for the ambience, thanks for that! It only needs to be very low so the quality probably isn’t such an issue there.

Thank you all, what a great help

I would spend a little time on the script and pre production planning, taking all the shortcomings of the room into account. So you can do a simple VO in a quiet area which will be added during the edit. Record the ambient sounds of the pool area and swimmers without any speaking.

The shotgun mike does not do what people think it does. It eliminates correlated sources but does nothing much for uncorrelated room reflections. Your only hope of intelligibility lies in getting a lav mike as close as possible, but it's difficult to make this look good with a bathing suit. (I did do this with sealed mike packs on surf movies years ago).

If it were me, I would loop it. Add some reverb so that it sounds like you are in a big live swimming pool hall, but not so much that it destroys intelligibility.
--scott