Man on the Street interviews--Need mic!

[Lloyds]

I'm working on doing some man-on-the-street interviews with my new Canon A1 and possibly another secondary camera.

I will have a camera guy and myself doing the interviews. I might have access to a mic guy, but it's probably about 20% of the time.

Right now I'm plugging my Sure SM58 mic into the camera, but I hate seeing the mic in the videos. Plus, doing the back-and-forth thing with the mic... it never fails I'm asking the question and the interviewer butts in and you can't hear him clearly (or sometimes the other way around, ha!).

So I'm looking for a better solution. Very few (5-10%) of the interviewees get mad and storm out, so a cordless lav on the interviewee isn't probably a good idea.

I guess I'm looking for other suggestions for this set up. The interviews last 5-10 minutes. More times than not I don't have a sound guy.... Is there anything else I can do other than a pair of lavs or the back-and-forth of the SM58 without having to get a shotgun on a boom?

Thanks!

 

[SMuir]

For handheld ENG-style work, my go-to mics are the Electrovoice RE-50 and the Electrovoice 635. Both are omni dynamics, so they're very forgiving in terms of placement and orientation (especially in the hands of a reporter or interview subject), they're built like tanks, and have built-in shock mounting and wind/pop supression. The RE-50 is the classic TV reporter mic, with a longer body and greater heft that makes it well-suited to ENG work, while still maintaining a low profile (especially when compared to the silver ice-cream cone style of the SM-58).

The 635 is a fair bit smaller, so it can sometimes look a bit akward. However, those little beauties are ideal for poking into press scrums. For a little more barrel length, you can easily rig up an XLR barrel and paint it matte black (the 635's diameter is the same as most XLR plugs and barrel adapters). I picked up a couple for about $100 each, and I absolutely love them for anything that's really close and/or really loud.

However, my preference for "man on the street" interviews is usually to use a Sennheiser MKH816 (long shotgun) in a Rycote suspension/windshield, held just below the bottom edge of the frame. Its rather heavy, and you'll need to be right on-axis, but the sound is exceptionally articulate, clean, and surprisingly intimate. The directionality of the mic is a real asset on high-traffic streets. These aren't exactly cheap mics, and they'll also require phantom power (or T-12, if the mic swings that way). These can also be a bit intimidating for the interview subjects, since an `816 in a full zepplin is a bit bigger than most ENG cameras.

For the shooting conditions you describe, I would probably opt for a 635 with an extended barrel paired with a wired lav (to catch interviewer questions). Bring along that SM-58, though; it never hurts to have a spare.

 

[Spartacus]

Mic yourself with a wireless lav (G2 Sennheiser) to record your questions and handhold a NTG1 shotgun for the interviewee...
The lav for your voice eliminates the constant back and forth of the mic between questions and answers.
The shotgun will give you more reach so your cameraman could frame the shots without the mic being in frame (a dynamic omni like the RE-50 will have to be closer to the mouth for nice voices, so the reporter´s hand will easily come in frame too...)
Actually having the foamcore of a shotgun in the lower third of the frame is typicall for news images...

But as SMuir pointed out, a dynamic omni closer to the mouth is more forgiving, so get that or train placing and handling the shotgun before using it hot...

If you can afford a second G2 and the NTG2 (instead of the NTG1) you can work completely wireless, giving you the best freedom to move when runningandgunning...

Good luck!

 

[Erik Olson]

Noise cancellation is important, but not paramount when recording person on the street. You could get away with intermediately-priced shotguns like the AT897 or the NTG2 and won't likely have any complaints about ambient noise.

In an ideal situation, you would have the shotgun in a handheld pistol grip Rycote-style mount with a slide on wind-jammer or half-zeppelin.

Mounting such a directional microphone on the camera is the last place you want it.

Best, in a one man situation, is to lock down the camera at eye level and hold the shotgun in front of you in the interviewer / producer position. This gives you an appropriate camera left / right eyeline depending on your framing. The talent will naturally make eye contact with you and you'll be free to pan the mic as they shift or if there is more than one subject. If you have subjects running away from you, even infrequently, you definitely should be using this technique. If you are somewhat hidden behind the camera, people's defenses are going to be up higher than if you are standing casually off-camera talking with them. You remove the expose factor to a great extent by drawing attention away from the lens and front tally (which you should turn off for this type of work).

Coming from a practical reality and news angle, I'd record the shotgun to one channel (Ch2 allows quick switching to both channels on Panasonic cameras) and let the built-in onboard microphone record your street ambience "tone".

This is a bullet-proof style when you don't have an audio engineer to mixdown to the camera from 3 or more channels on location.

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