For anyone interested in wildlife/field sound recording Ian Smith has produced an excellent set of video tutorials, that will help you to get started. Topics covered include:

Technology, Microphones, Equipment, Connections, Technique, Post-Production

Plus a number of different mircophone setups.

Background to how the Bat Morning video was put together.

The basis of the video is the MP4 file created from a video made using a Sony RX100V camera on a small tripod, my voice-over was using the camera microphone with me just a foot or so away.

The bat sounds come from two sources made at the same time (see photo). Both set ups were attached to a 12 foot extension pole projecting roughly 8 feet from a window the whole set up secured in position by various clamps and the cantilever force nullified by attaching the other end of the pole to a central heating radiator.

The wing movement a bat passing sounds were made using a Zoom H3 VR recorder set to record an ambisonic A file which was later transformed into a binaural audio file using the 24/96 original recording.

The bat vocalisation sounds were recorded using Sennheiser MKH 8020 microphones in a Jacklin head type set up at roughly 100 degrees to give a wide sound picture, feeding into the Nagra LB recorder set at 24/192 to capture the high frequencies. The 8020s can easily record up to 70kHz which covers the main frequencies associated with the Soprano Pipistrelle bats (Pipistrellus pygmaeus) which are the main subject of this video. These sounds were then reduced from a 192 kHz file to a 9 kHz file using Adobe Audition to bring the variety of sounds into the human hearing range.

The video and audio files were then mixed together using Adobe Premiere Pro software to produce the final result.