Oscar the stunt bin

Location
Melbourne
Equipment
Zoom H4N
AKG D112
mini tripod

Today we meet Oscar. Oscar is my new stunt bin. I always try to keep a stunt bin handy as its often very useful to have something metallic and disposable that I can throw, crush and generally abuse, Oscar fits the bill perfectly. I will often use the various impact sounds from bins to mix in with other sounds,  in this particular instance I needed Oscar to sound like an actual bin for a film clip I was working on. I spent about half an hour throwing and kicking the bin around on the roof of our studio to get a variety of sounds from it. I actually found the after the bin has been beaten up a little it actually sounds better I think. The main issue with this type of recording is that you need to get the impacts to occur as close to the microphones as possible but obviously hitting them with a flying bin is a really bad idea, so it pays to aim carefully.

Oscar the stunt bin

I also needed to record some witches hat sounds, quite conveniently the door to the roof area had a couple used to mark areas when repairmen were working so I borrowed one for a while and proceeded to record it as it bounced, fell and general got tossed around. Generally this was easier than the bin as the main sound was from kicking the cone in front of the mic so there was less chance of accidentally hitting the mic. Both of these were fairly minor sounds that will certainly not amaze anyone, but they were also both quit distinctive sounds that are easily recognisable. Sometimes the best way to get a sound is simply go through the time of getting the object and moving it around.

Bins and witches hats