Ideas To Capture Wedding Speeches

J

jasonpthiel

Member
I am looking for a more solid solution to capturing wedding speeches during receptions. Ultimately I hook into the DJ's output and get a great signal. However that is not always possible if the reception hall microphone is used (and they typically don't have the ability to let me tap into the feed - and the last place's mic was all distorted anyway so the audio I recorder with my recorder near their speakers sucked!).

I am looking for a solid way to either 'mic the mic' that looks good or to use my own mic and have an output from that which feeds the reception hall's mic. Taping my sennheiser wireless transmitter & lav onto the wireless hand mic is a little bulky but gives me the greatest ability to get a quality signal that I can monitor and have control of. I think I've annoyed a couple reception halls doing this though as they freak out when they see all the gaffers tape and gadgets on their mic!

Any smaller/easier ideas? What are you doing that works?
 
Try some extension cables for your wireless. Then all you have to duck-tape to the house/DJ mic is the lav itself.

GJ
 
If it's a formal setting with a podium and goose-neck mic, you can always clip a lav onto the goose neck. It's not ideal, but yields surprisingly good results. The only risk there is that some folks tend to grab and adjust the mic without paying attention to what they're touching. If that's a concern, you can always use a small piece of gaff tape to put the lav on the top of the podium.
 
H2 Zoom... I can either hook into the DJ, or set it up to record on its own. i use this as ambient sound pick up during the wedding also. Could not be more pleased with the quality or price.
 
If you're going the splitter route, and don't want to spend a lot (we have an 8-channel ART and love it, but that's pretty pricey if you're just trying to split one mike for camera), there are smaller boxes buy Whirlwind, Galaxy, and I think Behringer and EBTech. Also, check out what they might have at Audiopile:

http://www.audiopile.net/

Good stuff at great prices.

GJ
 
skinners1 said:
H2 Zoom... I can either hook into the DJ, or set it up to record on its own. i use this as ambient sound pick up during the wedding also. Could not be more pleased with the quality or price.
Click to expand...

I have an H2 that as I said ideally I would hook up to the DJ's out on their mixer but that is not always available. I would like to come up with a 99% always use solution so I don't have to waste time once I get on location wondering what I have available. For picking up ambient the H2 is fine but I do not think it is fine to pickup speeches as you get all the plate and room noise (I've done it before but not great results - especially as I mentioned in my last wedding the reception hall's system gain was too high and the sound out of the speakers was distorted...which is what I recorded from - yuck!). I have used a shotgun with my h2 also which helps a little more than just the H2's built in mic with getting rid of some ambient noise.
 
Alex H. said:
If it's a formal setting with a podium and goose-neck mic, you can always clip a lav onto the goose neck. It's not ideal, but yields surprisingly good results. The only risk there is that some folks tend to grab and adjust the mic without paying attention to what
they're touching. If that's a concern, you can always use a small piece of gaff tape to put the lav on the top of the podium.
Click to expand...

I've never shot a wedding where a podium was used - always maid of honor or best man standing at the head table with wireless mic from the reception hall or DJ. Thanks for the thought which I'd use if I get that situation.
 
Just a wild thought...

A diversity wireless receiver of your own set to the same frequency? Two potential problems; you never know if it's VHF or UHF, or which block.
 
there have been times when there were no stick mic available to use on weddings i've been filming. so luckily i have two g2 systems(in same freq block) with a plug on. i set both my rx's to same freq as the plug on. gave one to dj and hooked the other to my camera. boom. guests hear speeches, DJ loves you, refers you work and you get good audio of speeches that make client happy.
 
Last summer I did speeches and found out that talking to the toastmaster and letting him/her point who is the next talker, then I went up to them and attached a Sennheiser wireless lav or placed it on the table in front of them if they didn't felt comfortable having the mic on them. Worked really well and gave me excellent audio.
 
Thanks everyone! I think I'm going to go with putting my sennheiser wireless lav on each person that gives the speech (in the event I can't pull from the DJ's signal). I just feel relying on the reception halls system just isn't a great idea as audio isn't their main focus and some of their systems aren't that great.

@Editman - great idea once I have another set of sennheisers sometime this Summer (I was thinking to do this same thing to feed multiple cameras during the ceremony for a better Plural Eyes sync in post).
 
Also considering making an adapter that can quickly get my transmitter attached to the end of a hand held mic. My mock up is VERY rough so don't laugh too hard. I'll look to find some type of silicone/rubber sleeve that can snuggly join the two quickly with no tape and less bulkiness than if I would tape the transmitter to the side of the hand held mic.
Mic the mic ideas.jpg
 
Jason, no offence meant but talk about the wrong tool for the job.
That's ridiculous.

Either spend the cash on a plug on transmitter for your wireless system or
buy a simple xlr y cable and split the DJ's receiver off before it goes into his board.
 
+1 on what Rippie said. Don't hand anyone that ghetto Frankenstein mic!

And think about what it would be like to try to wire up all the people delivering speeches, but having to wait while you wire them up. You will be wasting 1 minute of their time between each person speaking, and holding up the whole thing. Big no no. You must be almost invisible. The splitter I suggested will allow you to get the mic to your camera/transmitter without the distortion associated with the house system, yet the signal will still go to the DJs system to amplify in the room. And for the future, look into getting a plug-on transmitter. You know if you have 2 sennheiser receivers you can receive the wireless in both too.
 
Thanks Rippie and Chadfish LOL! No offense taken - I'm trying to figure this out best I can (as I said the image is VERY crude and I'd have something much sleeker if I go that route). I just want to be clear about this... 1) If I am able to get a feed from the DJ I will do it as I know I can trust it 99% of the time. 2) If I can't I rarely have access to the reception hall's system as many I encounter are in a screwed in rack in a back room with no access - so splitters here won't help me (Rippie I'm not shy on spending money if it gets me what I need). So in the event I am not able to use the DJ feed then I need a solution I can use otherwise 100% of the time assuming I can't tap into the other mic used in any way. Getting a lav onto their handheld mic is the best I can figure...and that's why I'm on this board as I wish there was something better under the circumstances. I do appreciate the suggestions on the splitter but I don't think I'll have the ability to do that when the reception hall's mic is used without access to their system.
 
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Jason, do you scout locations?
If so you'd know in advance about tapping into an existing system and a good time to figure out who/how you can make that happen.

In the situations where you have absolutely zero chance of tapping into a system I suggest another option is literally to mic a speaker.
If it's a clean sounding speaker (no giant buzz or blown out cone) You might just be fine with that.
Obviously tapping into the house pa would be a better choice but we already established thats not possible.

I do think it's wise to scout in advance when you can so all problems can be addressed in advance.
 
You don't need to get to a rack to use a splitter. You just need 2 XLR cables and the splitter. If the mic has a cable you just plug your own cable into the mic, run that to the splitter. Then run their xlr cable (that was plugged into the mic) out of the splitter to wherever it was going. Then take the 2nd cable and run it to your camera/recorder. Simple.
 
Rippie I've been to most of the halls we shoot at but it was in the capacity of photography (added video early 2010 so still learning a lot). So I have not scouted the audio setup at these places but I started taking notes so I know what is available next time. Ideally I'd love to visit these places before hand if time and logistics allow going forward. My last 5 weddings I had 3 that I couldn't get a direct feed for as the reception hall mic was used with no access for me to split. So I did go with recording from a speaker, but then the last wedding I had the bad experience of some distortion coming out of the speakers so that kind of put me over the edge to get this thread out here as hearing this audio in the video makes me cringe! Anyway thanks for the scouting advice!
 
Chadfish said:
You don't need to get to a rack to use a splitter. You just need 2 XLR cables and the splitter. If the mic has a cable you just plug your own cable into the mic, run that to the splitter. Then run their xlr cable (that was plugged into the mic) out of the splitter to wherever it was going. Then take the 2nd cable and run it to your camera/recorder. Simple.
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I'm with ya on that. What if the mic doesn't have a cable and is wireless (with receiver in a rack and no access is available)?
 
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