Riverkids: The Found Children of Cambodia recorded with Countryman
Published: ASIA
CAMBODIA: Countryman Associates’ B6 omnidirectional Lavalier microphones were recently used to capture the audio for the film Riverkids: The Found Children of Cambodia, which tells the story of three vulnerable children who live in the slums of Phnom Penh where they are at daily risk of child trafficking.
Slated to air on PBS in 2014, the film documents how and why child trafficking occurs in Cambodia and, by extension, throughout the world. Filmmaker Randy Shattuck is the producer and director for Riverkids Documentary, Inc, who stated that he wanted to ‘give a voice to the voiceless.
‘For this film we operated using a 24-bit/96kHz sample rate for our audio,’ he explained. ‘As a great portion of our narrative audio would ultimately sit in the centre channel of the 5.1 surround sound mix, the audio quality of that dialogue was extremely important. With much of the film’s audio coming from high end condenser mics combined with studio-grade processing, we wanted the field audio quality to be every bit on par. So when the question arose about what mic to use for our field recording, such as the interviews, the only acceptable answer was the Countryman B6.
‘We first used the B6 in our commercial and industrial productions where we had to have impeccable audio quality,’ he continued. ‘Based upon our experience with those projects, I knew the B6 would be a great choice for our interviews. We used the B6 to capture extensive interviews with Pulitzer Prize winning author and Stanford University faculty member Joel Brinkley, author of Cambodia's Curse: The Modern History of a Troubled Land. Similarly, we used our B6 mics with Dale Edmonds, founder of Riverkids, whose mission is to prevent the sale and exploitation of children in Phnom Penh, and also with executive director Sophon Phy. Further, we used the B6 for our interview with Chanrithy Him, author of When Broken Glass Floats, the story of how she survived the Khmer Rouge.’
Mr Shattuck’s experience with the Countryman B6 dates back four years and spans hundreds of projects. ‘Due to its broad, omnidirectional polar pattern, the mic delivers very high quality audio – even when non-professional speakers turn their heads during interviews,’ he explained. ‘We never encounter that all-too-common roll-off of signal that can easily occur with lesser microphones and, as a result, speech intelligibility and the quality of that speech is exceptional. There’s a certain “sweetness” about the sound from a B6 that is just ideal for a project of this nature.’