floats and rifles?

[ahocknul04]

Hi Guys I thought I was better off asking this question on here more than google, so now I have just this - floats and rifles but what are they or what does it mean? I know this may seem an silly question

[paulears]

Floats are the old fashioned, upwards facing compartment battens placed right on the edge of the stage, in front of the audience. They fell out of favour many years ago, but the empty location is a useful place for various items of kit - including rifle microphones, although we tend to call them shotguns nowadays. Most theatres now use flat PCC/PZM mics instead of these because the performance is more suited to theatre - rifles go deeper, but are not very wide. If you search for shotgun microphones on Google it works fine.

Paul

[matt_h]

+1 to Pauls post.

 

However as you seem to be taking a real stab in the dark, here's a massive oversimplification:

 

Float/rifle/shotgun/boundary mics are most often used to capture sound from the entire stage/cast, they can be used on their own to simply amplify whats happening on stage, or mixed with radio/principal mics to reduce the differences in volume between prinicipals and chorus; which is particularly useful in larger auditoriums. In amateur and student productions they are most commonly deployed across the front edge of the stage at foot level, although there are many other means and methods of placement.

 

I'll leave others to describe microphones types and their uses. Suffice it to say that this is much like kick drum mic choice, everybody has their own preferences and techniques. Intial success with boundary micing depends on a bit of theaory and a substantial amount of luck, its a pretty inexact science and takes alot of practice and a fair amount of tinkering to achieve a good result.

 

HTH

 

Matt

[Bobbsy]

In the semi-prehistoric days of my TV and Film Production course (almost 40 years ago now!) we were taught that a rifle mic was one stage more directional than a shotgun (and shotgun was sometimes broken down into "short shotgun" and "shotgun"). I recall a photo in one of my text books illustrating a monster about 2 metres long, mounted on a stand and pointed by an operator at a football match--that was called a "rifle" mic. Nowadays though, the terms are much more blurred with most people just saying "shotgun" for any long, thin directional mic.

 

As has been said, "float mics" are anything you put in a row across the front of the stage. Nowadays, things like the PCC160 are more often used than shotguns--though I've been known to put something like an AKG451 on short extension tubes in the same position when trying to get really quiet performers. The only time I'd use a shotgun (like a Sennheiser 416) is aimed at a specific playing area (usually well upstage), hidden someplace on the set to get it as close as I can. Shotguns aren't so good for general pickup because of the tight "beamy" pattern and the rear lobe that often ends up pointing at the pit if they're used on the lip of the stage.

 

Bob