When we started to work on the movie L’Appat, it was obvious we’d need to re-record several high speed motorcycle movements. Besides the usual vehicle choreography, I was mainly looking to get my hand on a real intense onboard recording.
I’ve heard a lot about the dynamometer method, mostly used in games but was never convinced by the results. It always felt to me that the motor is somewhat floating, never touching the ground and that no wind/air pressure is involve in the equation.
So I fall back on something I’ve done, a few years ago, on another Fench Canadian movie: Le Dernier Souffle. At the time, after trying many wireless setup, even chasing the motorcycle in a car mounted with the wireless bases, our final solution was to rig the bike with a portable recording kit.
Back in 1999, the only portable gear available was the ‘magnificent’ Sony TCD portable DAT line….I was then a proud owner of a beat up TCD-D7. We finally ended up stuffing the stunt driver’s jacket with the TCD dat and ran a pair of binaural microphones in the motorcycle’s windshield. The result was stunning !
It is a lot easier today to find portable solutions…there’re now all over the place and give good result when used properly. My main concern was the battery life/autonomy and the Olympus LS10 was at that time our best available solution.
We established a stationary start/arrival kit and another stationary kit for the passbys further down the road. We fired up the two onboard LS10, made a few level check…and were then ready to roll !
Many thanks to our stunt driver Felix Famelart from Stunt.ca
