On his most recent project for the upcoming Bollywood action feature film “Ghajni,” a Hindi remake of the classic Tamil film, Sound Designer Resul Pookutty was posed with the challenge of capturing the ambient sounds of the busy streets of Bombay. “Ghajni” is a revenge film where the main protagonist searches the streets of the city to seek revenge on the man who has murdered his girlfriend. With much of the action sequences taking place in the city, Pookutty selected the Holophone®‘s H2-PRO as part of his audio setup because of its portability and superior audio capture.
To effectively create the sense of urgency the protagonist is experiencing, Pookutty wanted a mic that would be able to stay with the overhead camera as it followed the actor as he traveled through the city. Recording usable production sound on the streets of Bombay is a challenge, but the H2-PRO was able to provide Pookutty with accurate ambient sounds.
“I‘m a great lover of natural sound and like ambient sounds available from each location to use when I‘m cutting the final product,” Pookutty explains. “In Bombay, the H2-PRO followed the camera on the protagonist as he walked through the city streets. This way I can get dramatic 5.1 sound images when the camera makes a swish pan — a sound I would otherwise have to recreate in the edit stages. Here, I get it naturally.”
The H2-PRO is able to effortlessly capture 5.1, 6.1, or 7.1 channels of discreet audio with no mixing or signal manipulation required. Harnessing the way the human head receives and interprets sound, the elliptical casing of the mic houses eight microphone capsules arranged so that they correspond with the speakers typically found in a studio or home theater setup (left, right, center, sub [LFE], left surround, right surround, top, and center rear). As a result, the H2-PRO eliminates the need for complicated mic setups, while still providing a clean sonic image.
“I have used all kinds of stereo mics, made XY patterns with various shotguns, and used Double M-S mikes for surround recordings, but I have never heard such clean, wide images as I receive from the H2-PRO,” says Pookutty. “It‘s easy to record surround sound on-location with the H2-PRO because it‘s just one mic with all discrete outputs and no confusion.”
Pookutty is able to set up the H2-PRO as he would a stereo mic — following the camera. He keeps the left, center and right channels of the surround mic in line with the camera angle so the front and back sound distribution corresponds with the image size and angle. Audio from the H2-PRO is recorded to a PDR 2000 or DEVA IV multi-channel recorder.
“Ghajni” is set to release in early 2008. For more information on Holophone‘s products visit, www.holophone.com.
