Audio help for Trade Show Video Interviews

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Ortho2000

New member
Hi all..

I just joined but have been reading this site for years..

Question: I need to do short 1-5 minute videos of people at trade show booths. Asking them about their products, pricing, etc. End results for webcasting. Indoors, available light, & medium ambient noise conditions. I'll be shooting with a Canon HF200, Benro Tripod, and Manfrotto 701HDV Fluid Head Tripod. I do already have a Zoom H4N and an old Beachtek DXA-6VU with double XLR inputs with phantom and it also has an auxiliary 1/8 input jack for the right channel, so one can choose right channel input using XLR or mini 1/8.

One man operation, no soundman, no camera man, gaffers, just me. I need decent audio. My budget is practically zero, so no Lectrosonics or Sennheiser G3 gear for now, or Gitzo carbon fiber boompoles with Neumann mics.

My thoughts: For me a wireless Samson UM series UHF or NADY VR-3U UHF set up with a lavalier or headset mike for me. I'll be standing behind the camera asking questions and letting the talent speak.

For the talent maybe a similar set up with a lav if they can handle it. If not maybe a shotgun on/off camera such as a Rode NTG2 (stretching the zero budget) or a cheaper ?? Audio-Technica AT 875 or AT897. S/N for the AT897 is a tad better than NTG2 but S/N is just one of many factors.

How to best use the H4N in a solo situation is also a little tough for me to get together. I thought of a wired lav or even giving the talent a handheld mic but they may be holding up products and a mic would be in the way.

This is a challenging question... mainly because of the budget situation. if I had $2-3 K to throw at this I would not be posting this question :happy:.
 
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Because of the nature of a trade show and the noise level being so loud
you might also want to consider a dynamic hand held mic that they can hold while
talking to you. It would be the quickest solution too.
Hand them the mic and off you go.
 
Yep... that's exactly what I was going to say.

Forget that lav mic... get an EV RE50... that's also "the" news mic you'll see on virtually any reporting show... so when your viewers see it on camera it gives you a little boost in credibility. You could even take it a step further and make yourself an ID with your show logo. (the box that you see on the end of mics... they're on there because everybody KNOWS they'll be seen on camera... "see, this interview is happening by an ABC reporter") All those are is a square foam block, with a hole through the center... and that's glued inside of a plastic box that's open on both ends.
 
yeah thats how we do our videos for vitalbmx.com during the interbike tradeshows. good ol re50 with a mic flag.
 
Thanks all. Yes the RE50 N/DB is exactly what I was looking at.

I was also looking at wireless dynamic mics, or plugging that Sennheiser wireless XLR adapter onto say the RE50 for wireless in case the talent can't have a long mic wire running out.

I'll be doing a lot more reading and checking the forum here. It's only a semi noisy trade show, namely a bunch of doctors looking at the instruments they use in their practices.

I know mixing mic types causes post production eq headaches as well.
 
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