How To Record Clean Audio In An Echoey LED Volume

Episode 5 of The Making of Resignation: Sound Bites

Hey, you know how shooting in virtual production is awesome and liberating and full of creative possibilities? Well, unless you’re shooting a silent film or photos of hamburgers, none of that matters if you can’t get good audio.

And it turns out that some configurations of LED volumes can be quite echoey—and the computers that run virtual production can be loud (or require lots of fans).

In the past, our team had always shot on flat or gently curved LED volumes in large soundstages with good acoustics. But we came across an auditory land mine early on in our pre-production process for our 100% virtual production TV pilot Resignation, when we started prepping inside of a brand new J-shaped volume with an awesome full-resolution ceiling. The new studio was efficient, gorgeous… and had sound issues in unexpected places.

It turns out, though, that there was a solution to our sound issues that was both elegant and ironic:

When shooting in an LED volume, plan on recording your audio like you would outdoors. It solves any virtual production audio issues 99% of the time.

Watch today’s episode for the breakdown:

See you tomorrow for Episode 6—

—Team SHOWRUNNER