How can I adjust or fix Sound in Premiere

[Morne]

Hi all

So I know nothing about sound. I have some footage shot with a DSLR and the built-in mic outside. When you stand behind the camera, the sound is pretty clear, crisp and correct loudness. When you stand in front of the camera about 3 to 5 meters away however, the sound becomes softer, alsmot hollow and it sounds like you standing 20 meters away.

How can I adjust the sound with Premiere (only standrad stuff - NO PLUGINS) to be able to reduce noise, reduce the hollow sound and also make the speech louder?
Please excuse my ignorance - I dont usually deal with sound, but it's about time I learn.

[Neilg]

edit: Do you mean that you're playing the footage back, then standing in front of the camera to check the sound, or that someone in front of the camera was recorded like that even though it sounded ok at the time? because if it's the former, it's probably because the speaker is in the back of the camera...

Some general audio stuff anyway - I think they're all standard plugins in prem. I remember it having a few decent options though.
Try a noise gate with a low threshold to cut some of the quiet bits of noise out. Will need some fiddling because it can cut quiet points of audio out but should do you a decent job unless the noise is louder than the speech.
if feasible, use a maximiser/inflator to make the quiet bits lower and the loud bits louder. This may just ruin the speech if they've not got good volume control...
Use a spectrum analyser to find out where the speech fequencies are and the noise is and then an eq to cut the noise and boost the one which covers the speech. If premiere doesnt have a spectrum analyser then do it by trial and error. This has the best chance of giving good results.
You'll need to do a lot of playing around to get the best solution and maybe use combinations of them, but these will help a bit. How much depends on your recording.

[Morne]

I have no idea what you just said
but will play around and see what I can come up with.
(in all instances I was referring to already recorded footage)

[Morne]

ok I went through all the Audi Effects and I dont see any of the effects you talking about. I did see a "volume" effect which I geuss can be used to adjust the volume up or down.

EDIT: sometimes it helps to read the manual.