cheap Foley & SFX mic or cheap acoustic treatment?

[Zooce]

Alright, so I know that there are posts about this, but all of the mics mentioned in previous posts are way too expensive for my budget (I'm a student)!

I currently use an Zoom H4n (for field recording) and an AKG Perception 220 for Foley. Here's my problem: the room that I record Foley in is very tall, and I have no acoustic treatment; so I'm wondering if a shotgun mic may cut down on some of the reflection that I get from the room or if there is a cheap way to do some acoustic treatment (that will actually work).

My budget is a whopping $200...I hope I'm not wasting anyone's time with this post. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
-Zooce

[Gary Nattrass]

A shotgun with large phase tubes may cause more problems inside but one of these may help:http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produc...r_Shotgun.html

I use them as my stock small shotguns and they have a very focussed sound.

[Postman]

Your problem is "reflection from the room". A tighter microphone pattern will not make much more than a subtle change at best. You've already got a microphone that is good enough for now.

Put your money towards reducing or avoiding the problem. What are the room dimensions?

Look here: http://www.atsacoustics.com/cat--Fib...ards--106.html

$200 will buy you 24 ATS 2" rigid fiberglass boards. Hang 'em around the room in a checkerboard pattern and you'll be shocked at how much the room tightens up. It would be better to cover them with burlap or something, but that could be done later when you have leftover beer money. If you suspend them away from the walls by 3 or 4 inches you will dramatically extend the panel's lower frequency abosorbtion capabilities "for free".

You could get more creative and start building your own portable absorbers, using cheaper mineral wool. It is not a rigid material and needs support.

Offset your low budget with some sweat equity and you will have better results.

[Zooce]

Thanks for the replies, I really appreciate it.

(To answer your question Postman, the room dimensions are 9' 8" x 10' 10".)

[TimNielsen]

And don't forget that hanging pretty much anything over the walls will help to some degree, especially with the high frequency 'slap' you're probably hearing. Blanket, Sleeping Bags, anything is better than nothing.

But I agree, fiberglass boards are your best bet.

[spoons]

Put your movie on an ipod and go out and record your foley on location, in a room or place thats appropriate. You can get some great results and with it playing on your ipod you can do it to picture.

[Noiz2]

If this is a room you can do things to semi permanently you can help it a lot by treating the walls. Your room is about your size but not as tall and the ceiling is slanted so not parallel with the floor. One wall is a double wall sliding glass door and about 1/3 of another is the window to the control room. Everything else is covered with first packing blankets (the felt like ones not the quilted but quilted should be a bit better) and then egg create foam. The foam is kind used for putting on beds. The result is a room that can be a bit live to very dead depending on where you are. If we want more "room we open the sliding doors. It's worked very well and it's very cheap. Our walls are all double walled and double sheetrocked so we have good isolation the treatment is just to take the "room" out of the room.

[Zooce]

Thanks again for all of the advice. I really do appreciate it.

I'm going to get some fiberglass panels, and hopefully soon I'm going to get Izotope RX to help clean up some of my recordings.

Thanks very much,

-Zooce