Recording conversations on an iphone is pretty simple once you know how, but I had to spend a couple days and repeated trips to Radio Shack to figure it out. If you need to make professional recordings of both sides of your conversations, such as for interviews, this approach is a winner.

So here’s what you’ll need:

1. iPhone (with earbuds that have inline mic).
2. Zoom H4N.
3. A professional microphone that uses XLR jack (I used my Octava MK-012).
4. An XLR cable.
5. A 3.5mm jack splitter (part number 42-2570 at Radio Shack).
6. A 3.5mm male to 3.5mm male audio cable (part number 42-2497 at Radio Shack).

The xlr mic is necessary to record your voice; the splitter running from the phone to the Zoom records the voice of the person you’re talking to. (You might think that your voice would be included on the splitter line, since you’re talking on a mic that transmits via that line – but it’s not.

To configure the Zoom, set the recording mode to “4 Channel,” which allows you to record input from the 3.5mm jack on the back AND from the XLR jacks simultaneously. It’s totally professional because your voice and the voice of the person you’re speaking with are recorded onto separate tracks, which is ideal for editing later in Soundtrack Pro and Final Cut. You can control the recording levels independently as well.

NOTE: At first I thought I could get this to work even more simply by using the Zoom H4N’s built-in mics to record my outgoing audio. But the built in stereo mic is disabled when you plug in the 3.5mm external mic jack. Hence, the need to use an XLR mic to pick up your side of the conversation.

In this 30-second test conversation with my wife, which I edited in a very simple Soundtrack Pro multitrack project (see graphic), if you listen very carefully beginning halfway through, you can hear my wife’s voice being picked up by the very sensitive Octava mic from sound bleeding through from the earbuds. I replaced my earbuds partway through with proper Sennheiser 280 Pro circumaural headphones to keep any sound from spilling out, and for that you’ll need a third-party external mic such as the Shure Music Phone adapter. You can hear Lara telling me initially that it sounds like I’m on speaker phone when I’m using the Apple earbuds, but as soon as I hooked up the Shure, she noted a major improvement in sound.  So here’s a snapshot of my final setup for professionally recording iphone interviews, below.

I’m still in the early stages of developing my style as a filmmaker, and one technique that I’m already noticing is becoming part of my style is to record audio and video separately in two takes. That is, have a sit-down with the interview subject in which there are no cameras present – just audio recording. This puts people at ease, because they can focus on what they are saying, not HOW they are saying it, or how they LOOK while saying it. I find it makes for more authenticity, and it’s nice to be able to focus on JUST getting great audio in this pass.

Then I schedule a second session with the subject, in which it’s all about the video. I DO record reference audio with a camera-mounted shotgun mic during this second session, but find I rarely use this audio.

Breaking these steps into two also allows me to do everything: I can run sound the first day with a boom pole, and work the camera the second day. Of course not all shoots allow for the luxury of two days of shooting, and I do work with a great sound guy who is a student at Art Institute of Seattle when needed. But at this point in my career, part of the joy of filmmaking is doing it all. I missed film school, so it’s the only way to learn.

Ok so back to the reason I made this post: Using this approach creates a big long audio file, usually about an hour long, with a lengthy interview, which I then carve up into the much briefer segments needed for the edit. Initially, I would drop the file into Final Cut, and slice and dice until it was about right, before sending it to Sound Track Pro for sweetening and repair.

The problem I run into, though, is that since I’m essentially working on the same big long clip, just sliced into different segments, FCP gets unhappy when I try to send individual clips over to Sound Track for repair.

The solution: Drop the whole audio file into FCP, then immediately, before you do anything, send it to Soundtrack (ctrl-click the audio file, then select “send to > soundtrack pro audio file project”). Then apply a Limiter filter to limit the dynamic range of the entire interview, which means the quiet bits will have more volume and the loud bits won’t be too loud. For the details of how to do this, follow this step-by-step tutorial from Larry Jordan on using the Soundtrack Pro Limiter Filter.

Starting with my audio more or less correct at the beginning of the editing process has helped me immensely to get the rest of the mix right, ie, music at approximately the right level, etc.

Zachary Levy teaches interview lighting workshop

Zachary Levy taught another solid 3-hour workshop this afternoon at Northwest Film Forum. I’ve had a fair bit of mostly self-taught experience with lighting, so I was curious to see how my technique stacked up. I picked up these great tips, as well as a raft of lingo that’s new to me. Armed with this info, I feel more confident that I can speak the language of lighting with other professionals. Which was totally worth the $35 workshop fee. Here’s the highlights (so to speak):

750 stand – a sturdy light stand that is more solid than standard light stands, perfect for supporting heavier fixtures such as the Arri 650 fresnel light that we were using today.

Power math – When arriving at a location, you need to do some simple math before you start plugging in lights, or you risk tripping a breaker halfway through the interview. Typical households in the US operate 15 amp circuits, at 120 volts. Professional lights like the Arri 650 list the wattage they consume in their name, which means the Arri 650 consumes 650 watts. Here’s the formula:

Watts divided by Volts = Amps.

So in our case with one 650 watt light + one 300 watt light, that means we’d do this math:

950 / 120 = 8 amps.

In this case, we know that we’re fine to run both of those lights on the same circuit, because 8 amps is only about half of the 15 amp maximum for the typical household. Commercial buildings typically support up to 20 amps per circuit. It’s important to remember that a circuit isn’t just the same plug outlet – it’s usually all the outlets in the same room, so you’ll need to run an extension cord (commonly called a stinger in film set lingo) to tap another circuit.

Striking – when turning on a powerful light on set, it’s common to alert everyone that a potentially blinding light is about to go on by yelling “striking” (as in striking a match).

Color bars – In interview situations, it’s common to use a field monitor to get a really good picture of what you’re getting while you’re getting it. And prior to every use, it’s good practice to calibrate the monitor quickly by displaying the camera’s color bars. It’s simple: switch to “blue only” mode, which turns the color bars all grey, then adjust the chroma, luminance, and brightness until the top of the bars most closely matches the bottom. For brightness, turn it up all the way, until you can see three short bars in the lower right. Then turn it down until the brightest of the bars is just barely visible. Bingo: you’re calibrated.

Just 5 stops – most prosumer video cameras see only about 5 stops of light between the brightest white and the blackest black. Our eye sees thousands of levels.

100 percent zebra – Zach recommends setting zebra stripes to 100 percent so that you can see where the 100 percent white is clipping, and use your eye to gauge the lesser levels, rather than setting zebra’s to kick in at 70 or 80 percent, because then you can’t tell the difference between 70 and 100.

Chair test – prior to the interview,  make sure chair that will be used doesn’t squeek, rock or rotate. Obvious stuff, but easy to overlook and can kill a great moment in your interview if you don’t plan ahead.

Scrim – Red scrim is typically a double-strength scrim that cuts light by a full stop; green scrim is half-strength scrim that cuts light by a half stop.

C-47 – it’s not an airplane; it’s not a high explosive. It a fancy name for wooden clothes pins, used to attach gels and diffusion to c-stands.

Assume the position – it’s a convention to position the interviewer so that they are close to the camera between the camera and the key light. This way, the subject is looking more into the light. Also, position interviewee to one side of the frame – not in the middle. Then, you can position the next interviewee on the other side, and they’ll intercut better (not always in same place). Reframe during questions. Keep camera on sticks, but don’t lock it down fully – be ready to follow interviewee.

Pack black garbage bags – and gaffer’s tape to mask out unwanted window light when you’re trying to fully control the lighting for an interview.

Clothing – avoid pattern shirts on interview subjects (because it causes nasty moiree pattern on video). White is also bad – it’s too hard to lighten face relative to shirt.

Documentary filmmaker Zachary Levy

I had the privilege of participating this afternoon in a cinéma vérité workshop taught by documentary filmmaker Zachary Levy. He’s in town for the Seattle screening of his first feature documentary, 3 years in the making, Strongman. It opened last night and deserves a much bigger audience than the handful of people who showed up to see it last night at Northwest Film Forum (I’ll be blogging a filmmaker review of the film soon).

As a cameraman on big shows like Oprah and 60 Minutes, Zach has a ton of experience in how NOT to make the kind of films he wants to make. Citing influences like Al and David Maysles, Zach pursues a simpler, “truthier” style in his own filmmaking known as cinéma vérité.

Eschewing even common cinematic accompaniments such as music (there is only one song in Strongman, and it accompanies the credit roll), Levy strips artifice to the bone, leaving his characters with nothing to be but themselves. To make this kind of film, Levy says, you want to find a subject who WANTS something – the stuff of classic character-driven plot. Then you start shooting, and trust that what happens will be interesting. Levy compared this approach to filmmaking with a jazz musician’s improvisational approach to music: the notes that are in front of you determine the ones you play next.

Here’s 12 things I learned from Levy today:

1. Hold the Shot. When you THINK the action is finished and you’ve got it, force yourself to count to 10. Something even more perfect just might happen, OR you might get something that will make your edit easier.

2. Wear long pants. Translation: be willing to use your body to get the shot. That means kneeling, standing for long periods of time, stretching beforehand, getting physical with it.

3. Keep your camera close. Simple body mechanics, but something I’ve overlooked: when you hold the camera in your hands actually touching your stomach or chest, it’s not only braced and more stable, but it’s better supported, so you can shoot much longer without getting tired.

4. Always shoot SHOTS. That is, think like a still photographer and frame things so they look good. That doesn’t mean going all “Living in Oblivion” style. But do shoot pretty rather than just shoot.

5. Look for the conflict. Stories that make for good verite involve conflict of some kind. In the case of Strongman, the conflict was mostly internal.

6. Shoot first, get releases later – if at all. Learning this one fact was worth twice the price of the workshop. As a former photojournalist, I have a solid working knowledge of “fair use” doctrine. But I’d been led to believe by other filmmakers that since films were commercial in nature, different rules applied. That turns out not to be the case with documentaries. Get releases when you can, he said, but don’t let NOT having them stop you from making your film. Got it.

7. Use signs as a form of narration. Levy included a brief “welcome to Orlando” sign in one scene as a way of revealing to audience where the action was happening, since the film has no narration.

8. Use visual metaphors. In one scene, Levy consciously includes a clock in the background to emphasize the fact that time was passing as one of the characters celebrates her birthday.

9. Watch the line. It’s an established filmmaking convention to keep characters on the same side of the frame throughout a scene, to avoid confusion about who’s who. You can break this convention, but be aware of it, and do it consciously for a reason.

10. Watch for repeat behavior. People behave predictably – so observe that and use it to your advantage. Over the years of filming, he came to know exactly where Stan would sit, and was able to make subtle adjustments  to the table beforehand so that light would fall just enough to light the scene without Levy having to intervene.

11. Keep lighting simple. Levy was able to get acceptable levels of light in most of the scenes in Strongman by simply replacing the standard 60-watt bulbs with 80- or 100-watt bulbs. Side benefit: the natural light of the place was preserved, and he didn’t have to do any additional work to light the sets. Drawback was he had to use a big shoulder-bourne camera that was capable of shooting in low light. (That is less true today with small cameras with fat sensors like the Canon 5d).

12. Sound guy should “fade away.” Levy’s crew consisted of just one person – a person to record sound. And he made clear to this person that he or she was not to make eye contact with the subjects, as much as possible, so that there wasn’t any relationship developing that would show up on camera and have to be edited out.

Levy’s teaching another workshop tomorrow from noon-3pm, which I’ll attend and blog. Meanwhile, if you’re interested in seeing what a Slamdance-winning cinema verite film looks like, don’t miss this chance to see Strongman – it’s showing at NW Film Forum through Jan. 14.