It was only a matter of time until one of the major players in audio took the power of 32-bit float recording and shrunk it down in size. Zoom has done just that with the F2, a ridiculously small field recorder that can also be used with a lav, making it one of the most versatile recording devices of such size.
What makes the F2 so unique, especially over the Tascam DR-10L, is that it includes 32-bit float recording, which is freaking amazing when it comes to audio.
We talked about the benefits of 32-bit float recording when we reviewed the Sound Devices MixPre II recorders, and it's a feature found in the affordably priced Zoom F6.
The Zoom F2 takes that dope tech and shrinks it down to a pocketable size. With 32-bit float recording, you don't have to worry about the level being too high or too low when it comes to capturing sound. You can literally set the level to whatever you want (besides 0 db) and you'll be able to recover and normalize the audio with compatible DAWs like Adobe Audition, Audacity, or iZotope.
Thankfully, Zoom is including Steinberg WaveLab Cast software with the F2 which will allow you to edit, mix, and export the audio. You can look at 32-bit float recording as the audio equivalent to uncompressed RAW video. It gives you an extremely large latitude to work with when it comes to audio levels.
Right away, we can see the F2 being perfect for car work, long walk-and-talks that are shot out of the reach of traditional wireless, for plant mics, or even for quick ENG work when you don't have time to run a frequency scan at a location.
To be clear, the F2 cannot transmit a wireless signal. It instead records audio directly to microSD, microSDHC, or microSDXC cards up to capacities of 512GB.
The F2 can record 44.1kHz/32-bit float or 48kHz/32-bit float audio files. For inputs, it has a single locking 3.5mm mic/line input with plug-in power up to 2.5 V. There's also a 3.5mm headphone/line output that has a dedicated volume control knob. On the front, there are dedicated buttons for power, record, and to lock the settings. You can also playback audio recordings on the device which is a nice touch for something of this size. The bodypack style recorder also has a quick clip on the rear for easy attachment.
Zoom may have plans for an all white F2 model
Additionally, Zoom has added an 80 Hz low cut filter, an internal clock (±0.5ppm) for timecode, and a USB-C connection to sync with its F2 Editor that's free to download for Mac or PC. The F2 Editor isn't a DAW, but it lets you adjust settings, format SD cards, and transfer files, among other things.
Upon reading the F2 Editor's manual, it looks like Zoom may have plans for an all-white version of the portable recorder in the future.
For power, the F2 runs on 2 standard AAA batteries, and Zoom says you can get around 14 hours of run time with two alkaline batteries, which is pretty fantastic.
The F2-BT version has built-in Bluetooth
With the release, Zoom has announced two versions of the product. The F2 is $149 and the F2-BT is $199.
The latter has built-in Bluetooth that allows the F2-BT to be controlled by a remote smartphone app. It also has wireless timecode synchronization built in, where the F2 version does not.
While it's reasonable for Zoom to offer two versions, the difference in price is only $50. What would have been better is if Zoom split the cost difference and only offered the F2-BT at $179. This way, you're not contemplating whether or not you "need" wireless timecode sync or wireless control. You just have it and you're happy you have it when it's needed.
That said, since the cost difference is low, the F2-BT is the better option. Plus, it's still $150 cheaper than the Tentacle Sync Track E Pocket Recorder which offers 32-bit float recording and timecode for $349.
Both the F2 and F2-BT are available for pre-order, and both flavors come with an LMF-2 lav mic, windscreens, batteries, a mic clip, and access to the WaveLab Cast software.
I read somewhere that there are only two best-case scenarios for a great screenplay—either it meets the expectations of the audience or it doesn’t. Either they sigh in relief or gasp out loud in shock.
Giving your audience what they want shouldn’t be difficult for a practiced writer. A character has a desire, and they achieve it at the end of the story. Boom! Expectations met!
But there’s something oddly satisfying about not meeting those expectations in a screenplay, leaving the audience shaken in disbelief.
Many compelling screenplays use something called misdirection—it's sneaky, it's intelligent, and it takes viewers somewhere unexpected. It's all about planting subtle clues that seem insignificant until a revelation forces us to reconsider everything.
Let’s examine how this narrative tool, when used thoughtfully, can transform straightforward storytelling into something more complex and satisfying.
What is Misdirection?
Misdirection is distracting the audience to mislead them, preventing them from getting on to your scheme of actions, until you finally reveal the truth. In essence, it is a style of storytelling, where the “audience proposes, filmmaker disposes.”
In misdirection, a filmmaker manipulates information, character(s), and their timing in the narrative while building the conflict, until everything falls into place to reveal an unexpected resolution that does not match the audience’s expectations.
Many times, the audience is also purposefully misdirected by exploiting their biases, prejudices, and gullibility.
Why Would Any Filmmaker Misdirect Their Audience?
A story is as interesting as its narration. Be it a bedtime story or Nolan’s Inception, if the narrative is linear and flat, it may be less engaging to your audience.
Misdirection is one of the finest tools that acts like a hook to your story. Misdirecting elements are thought-provoking, working with the audience’s psychology to throw them off guard.
Fiction gives you the freedom to alter realities, but even while misdirecting, it is important that the dots connect effectively by the end of the story. Information shouldn’t be irrelevant and without context.
How Do You Misdirect Your Audience?
You can use any story element to misdirect the audience, but the most commonly used are characters, sound, props, plot points, strategic information reveal, and the time of the incident of any event.
Examples of Misdirection in Great Films
Gone Girl by David Fincher
Misdirection by unreliable narrator
This is one of those stories that is completely narrated in misdirection.
The film opens through husband Nick’s (Ben Affleck) perspective, who becomes the prime suspect in the disappearance of his wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike), on their fifth marriage anniversary. As the investigation and media frenzy take over, we are let into the lives of our two main characters and led to believe that Amy might actually be dead.
We learn about their failing marriage and Nick’s extramarital affair. Thus, when Nick lies through his teeth about his loving relationship with Amy to the police, he instantly becomes an unreliable narrator in the story.
Thus, even though his alibis are believable, you cannot trust him and can’t take his word. Rather, you, with the police, start suspecting him.
This automatically shifts all your trust to Amy instead, even though you know even less about her than Nick. Wonderfully, you have begun rooting for her now.
What you might not realize is that you have been misdirected to dislike Nick as a character, so that you automatically take Amy’s side right from the beginning, until it is revealed that Amy is alive and purposefully in hiding.
This is one of the many misdirections in the film.
By regulating how the audience judges the characters, their morality, and their intentions, a filmmaker often shatters the expectations of the audience with misdirection to give them a more surprising resolution than expected.
The Sixth Sense by M. Night Shyamalan
Misdirection by character
Just by establishing a character in a certain way and revealing information about them strategically, a filmmaker can determine the character’s impression on the audience.
This is what M. Night Shyamalan does in The Sixth Sense. The magician of misdirection keeps both the characters and the audience engaged, looking for the ghost, all the while narrating the events through the ghost’s perspective!
The beauty of a nuanced misdirection lies in the clues left throughout a film’s events, leaving you both frustrated and delighted at the same time that you didn’t pick up on them!
Money Heist by Álex Pina
Misdirection by sound
In the Spanish drama series, Money Heist, the makers use a powerful misdirection but with a genius twist. This misdirection is not only for the audience per se, but for the main character—the Professor (Álvaro Morte), too.
In the Season 2 finale of the drama series, the Professor and Raquel (Itziar Ituño), the love of his life and newly minted partner-in-crime known as “Lisbon,” are sprinting through a dense, shadowy forest. The air crackles with urgency as police hounds close in, their shouts breaking the eerie silence of the forest.
Eventually, they are forced to separate, with a radio as their only mode of communication. Raquel ends up taking refuge in a barn, but not for too long. The police arrive, and she is completely surrounded. A gun to her head, she is ordered to compromise the Professor, but she’s steel-willed and denies the police any information.
All the while, the Professor is on the radio with her, frightened and worried, begging her to tell them everything in exchange for her life. The Professor frantically runs through the forest to reach Raquel, when… bang! A gunshot rips through the radio.
The Professor stops dead, the forest swallowing his anguished cry. But as the episode races to its close, the fog clears. The shot? A cruel ruse. She’s alive and in police custody. The Professor’s despair was their bait, and he bit—hard.
What I love about this particular sequence is that the filmmakers don’t use misdirection as a generalized cliff-hanger of “what happens next.”
Instead of revealing that Raquel is alive in an upcoming episode of the next season, they make a choice to reveal it at the tail end of the same episode.
Raquel is a crucial character in the series at this point, so to lose her in the narrative would have been a huge plot twist. At times, thrillers do go for the cheap surprise, whether it makes sense or not. But in Money Heist, the reveal elevates the value of the misdirection because now the audience knows things are going to change forever—for better or worse.
Final Destination 5 by Steven Quale
Misdirection by props
The sequence leading up to Candice’s fall in Final Destination 5 is a series of brilliantly crafted misdirections that keep us on the edge of our seats until the mishap finally happens.
The misdirections also seem to be symbolic, as the death of poor Candice (Ellen Wroe) is a sharp irony. Throughout the scene, we keep worrying about the loose screw in her gymnastic apparatus but how she is killed by it in the end is absolutely unexpected—just how a nuanced misdirection should be.
Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock
Misdirection by casting
Killing the heroine halfway through the film was a risky but brilliantly used misdirection by Alfred Hitchcock in Psycho, especially considering the film dates back to the ‘60s.
An actor’s face value is as important as their acting skills. Big actors usually have strong plot armor and are expected to survive the story.
In Psycho, when a star like Janet Leigh is killed off midway through the movie, the audience is thrown off guard and does not know what to assume, whose story to follow, or what to expect next. This amplifies the shock factor of the plot twist.
Misdirection can turn your story into a fun experience with plenty of unexpected twists and turns. When done well, a reveal should prompt viewers to think, "Of course! How did I miss that?" rather than, "That came out of nowhere!"
The audience hates being deceived. So, not meeting audience expectations doesn’t mean you lie and fill the screenplay with deceiving information, revealed in an untimely way, aiming for a plot twist in the climax that feels isolated and seemingly unmotivated.
Also, be careful not to clutter your narrative with forced misdirections.
For a better understanding, check out the examples in the article—how each misdirection is a strategic literary device, not just a stylized form of storytelling.
Zoom may have plans for an all white F2 model
The F2-BT version has built-in Bluetooth
