Complete Noob seeking audio advice/help for conducting interviews at expos...

F

Fryedegg

New member
Hi There,

So in my vast searching for the place to ask A/V advice, everything keeps pointing me to DVX and I am sure you guys can handle my me and my noobness. To start off, I am a career firefighter/paramedic for the last 8 years. I am no computer/tech/AV illiterate but I've also had no formal training or schooling. So I am learning completely as I go. Hope you guys can help! I have a small gaming website and youtube channel that I cover games and gaming tech and mostly videos of me actually gaming and after PAX East 2012 last year I fell in love with going to Expo's/Con's and interviewing people about all the new/cool stuff. Just got back from CES 2013 actually. To the my issues, I know I have alot!

Let me start with my gear. I feel like my gear is decent for someone starting out.

Canon t3i w/magic lantern firmware for most video/photography.
Canon Vixia HF R300 I will use this if I know I am shooting something longer than 10 minutes since the T3i cuts off around 12mins. Also use this guy for Vlogs since its lighter/smaller
Zoom H4N - I was advised to get this for the most pro interviews as I can have my mic and interviewee on separate channels and adjust us both nicely ( having major trouble here )
Pyle Pro Lav Mic with this so I can plug it into Zoom via XLR ( is this thing my problem? I know its cheap ) Also, I bought one of these and was going to return it since the Pyle works is this one THAT much better?
Sennheiser MD42 stick mic this was recommended by alot of different peeps and appears to work great from my noob stand point
Various other lights, wires, tripods and accessories. And I edit in Adobe Premier CS6 with PLural Eyes to sync up the audio.

So basically a friend who has been doing A/V for years and went to school for it said the H4N and me lav mic'd and the stick mic for the interviewee ( or 2 lavs or 2 sticks, whatever ) is one of the best ways to capture your audio for interviews since you can have each person on their own channel and adjust them during pre/post as needed. Well, that sounded great but his advice was like giving a hand grenade to play with. Things were so over complicated for me I did WORSE at CES than I did at PAX last year when all I had for audio was a Zoom H1 with a windscreen plugged directly into my T3i via a 20ft 3.5mm cord!

At 1st the Zoom kicked my butt with jsut getting it to record MTR the way I wanted too. Once that was figured out I had to scrap my lav audio from 2 interviews and jsut use the interviewee's from the stick mic! I was getting gnarly echoing because my input levels were obviously all wrong. My level of experience defnitely showed through and made it clear to me no matter how much money I throw at a hobby you can only be "pro" if your truly "pro" =(

Ok, I know I wont learn everything over night, but I at least want to be able to conduct the best interviews possible with my equipment! So, to the questions!

1. Audio input levels... how should I adjust these so my mic ( the lav ) is not picking up the interviewee and vice versa? I did the most obvious thing to be and adjusted the levels on the H4N low enough on each mic so I did not see too much bouncing on each mics level when the opposing person was talking. Having both mics input too high was the cause of some of the terrible echoing I had. So how do you achieve perfection in this? This is not even accounting for ambient noise!

2. Ambient Noise! I do primarily everything at Expos/Cons... very noisy. So Once i tackle the above issue then I have the ambient noise... or is tackling ambient noise the 1st step? I have no idea. Aside from the ambient noise stepping on your actual interview audio I face another issue. I post all my videos to my YT channel and can get copyright strikes is any copyrighted song for example is playing in the background and is clearly discernible. So nipping this in the butt would be very helpful.

3. A/V tips in general I should know about?

4. Is there any pieces of equipment that could greatly assist me in what I am doing? Or do I just need to learn the most about what I have already and how to use it to the best of its ability? I feel like I am at the phase where I just need to cut my teeth and learn via trial by fire.

Here are some of the vids I have done for reference to how bad I am.

This was my last interview from CES and I thought I had the levels on the Zoom adjust properly... but not so much. Interviewee is decent. I am still too low because in post if my audio levels were up too high it still picked up the interviewee some and had that echo. Also messed some of the added clips audio levels, basically the whole master track is too low and a few added clips are BLASTING LOUD. **Watch your ears**

This is the 1st interview from CES wher I had to mute my lav mic audio in post because it picked him up way too much. Luckily that Sennheiser was turned up enough capture my audio fairly decent with him holding the mic just in front of him.

This interview I said forget the lav and jsut did the stick mic. Not too bad but this is the example of the "Ambient Noise" I had the mic input on the H4N turned down to about 10 to try and pick up as little music as I could. I felt it was low enough/scattered to where youtube wont strike me for playing copyrighted music, lets hope.

Here is an interview from PAX East last year with the Zoom H1 setup I spoke of. Very simplistic and I almost missed how simple it was... attempting to be "pro" was tough and really frustrating for my caveman brain.

In closing, I know I suck. I suck terribly. But I really want to get better. I know i have a long way to go but I plan on being persistent and doing what i can to hone my craft until it is acceptable by Pro's like you guys. I know my shots can be better, I am missing lower third graphics ( did a few at CES ) and can improve in all areas of A/V. Any tips/feedback/criticism ( constructive or not, I will take it! ) will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance to anyone who takes their time to help such a nooby. =D

-Marc J.
 
The issue of voice versus ambiance isn't one of recording level settings, it's an issue of mic placement. Consider recording a voice in a noisy environment. You adjust the level so the voice sounds right but you find the background is too loud and tends to drown out the speaker. Okay, so you turn down the recording level by 50%. Now the background is 50% softer but unfortunately so is the voice and it's too soft to be intelligible. Now in post you turn the level up to make the voice sound right. But that turns the background noise up by an equal amount and you end up in the same place you started.

What you need to do is change the RATIO of voice to background and that is done with a combination of selecting a mic with the proper polar pattern and placing the mic as close as possible to the speaker's mouth. You're using a Senny MD42 for your handheld stick mic - excellent mic for interviews BUT it is an omni pattern, meaning it picks up sound equally well from all directions. When you point it at someone's mouth it picks up their voice well but it ALSO picks up equally well the chainsaw demonstration on the other side of the room. The Senny MD46 is a cardioid version of that mic, developed by Sennheiser at the request of NBC to use for interviews in crowded noisy environments at the Sydney Olympics many years ago, A cardioid pattern means it reduces pickup from the surroundings starting at about 90 degrees off-axis and strongly reduces pickup from the backside of the mic. Of course that comes with a price - you have to stay on top of just where the mic is pointed or your intended subject can drift off mic. Hypercardioid mics are even more directional and shotguns even more than that. Proximity is also a factor - if you half the distance to the source you increase the intensity of sound hitting the mic by a factor of 4 - it goes by the square of the change in distance. So if you hold the mic 2 feet from the mouth and find the voice and the background are equally loud, moving the mic to 1 foot from the mouth will make the voice 4 times louder than the background.
 
Dang it. I should have grabbed the cardioid version since I was getting soley for this purpose... =( So correct me if I am wrong... but a cardioid stick mic as well as a carioid lav mic would be much better than my current omni/omni? kicking myself in the ass right now as the omni/omni purchases seem to have been a HUGE fumble =(
 
So correct me if i am wrong, but these 2 mics:

the senny cardioid
a cardioid lav

would immediately improve my issues being caused by my omni mics? Also, do you guys recommend a better stick/lav cardioid mic from the ones I have linked above? They need to be able to plug into my zoom h4n which I think XLR is the way to going for doing the MTR. But I dont know anything....
 
Cardioid stick mic, probably. But a cardioid lav, probably not. Everything is a tradeoff and the directionality of cardioid lav means that normal head movement takes the wearer on and off mic very easily. Cardioid lavs are used for sound reinforcement situations where the wearer is generally facing an audience and feedback control with PA speakers is an issue. Film, video, and broadcast work is generally done with omni lavs.

BTW, work on your mic handling technique a bit. If you look at an experienced field reporter doing a "steeter" you'll see they hold the mic within a few inches of their mouths and are able to keep it at a constant distance as they talk. In your sample video from CES it was much too far from your mouth most of the time and even worse, didn't move with you as you turned your head. You spent a lot of time with the hand holding your mic in your lap and when you raised it to your mouth you stopped too soon - especially in a noisy environment the head should have been locked tight at your chin a couple of inches from your mouth and when your head turned to look at your subject the mic should have moved with you. Practice not gesturing with the hand holding the mic.
 
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Ger a headset mic for you so it will be right next to your mouth, that will give you the most isolation. then if the handheld mic is still too noisy for your taste then get a cardioid handheld mic.

the reason why Omni handheld mics work well with interviewees is because they have minimal proximity effect (they dont get boomy as the talker gets closer) as well they are more forgiving with an untrained holder.

just a thought.
 
The main problem is that you're using two different mics. And the weak Zoom preamps can't drive that cheap lav forcing you to bump up your levels to compensate. That just raises the sound floor and introduces more background noise. You should stand closer to your subject and just go back and forth with the stick mic. It's better that you control the mic since you'll better know how to hold it on axis and minimize handling noise. Or use two wired omni lavs (Tram tr-50 or OST 801 which are sidefire mics that can be turned in towards the clip to reduce noise). The former is the cheaper option since you don't have to buy anything extra. It just takes some practice.
 
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