If you only had 2 mics....

L

LoneWolf

Member
Let's say you've already purchased a short shotgun and an omni. You need to shoot an interview. You work alone apart from someone else doing the interview, as there is no budget (volunteering for a nonprofit), with no luxury of a sound guy. As far as boom pole goes, I am wondering where I can find cheap PVC piping :D :D

You need to mike the interviewer and the subject. What would your recommendation be? I've heard that passing the omni back and forth works. Alternatively I was thinking give the subject the omni, and the interviewer the shotgun.

Ideally I'd have two omnis :) but such is the situation and the setup.
 
Use one or the other. Which shotgun do you have? Those can actually be used as handhelds for interview, just like the omni.

Just make sure that the interviewer knows how to keep up with the conversation while holding a mic.
 
A good painters pole, some duct tape, a couple stands to attach it to, park the two persons as close to each other as possible, and hang the mic overhead between them. Make sure to get some furniture blankets/pads. Put one on the floor to kill audio reflections, (if there is carpet, that will work) hang the others just off camera to kill reflections and crank the gain to the threshold of the mic's noise floor. Split the signal into two on the camera. Run one channel Hot, the other Low. In post, you can edit out the clipping on the hot channel, and delete/Blend the inaudible from the low channel.

If there are cloth office chairs around, surround the talent (s) with them like audience seating. dont be afraid to go two or three deep. That will also help break up the room-tone (natural re verb) immensely. (assuming you can keep them off camera.

If there is noise in the building, amplified by the unusual gain to the mic, ask the producer/client if you can have the talent address that noise on-camera breifly, and do it with tact. People will forgive allot of stuff if you don't try to hide the un-hidable. There is nothing worse than watching a shoot done in an udesireable location, and the people on camera look oblivious to the overwhelming noise, ETC.


If the mics arent matched, or wired in phase, you will probably end up with some sort of Phase cancelling FX. I would suggest using only 1 mic in a situation like this.

Dont know if this helps or is applicable. Ive been there a million times. This combo of techniques, or parts of it usually pulls me out of that hole.
 
Omni microphones are never the choice for an overhead boom for dialog. This is because an omni would have to be so close to the mouth (like in front of the face) it would always be seen in the shot. Omnis are typically used as handheld interview mics held close to the person talking. If you have only one short shotgun and nobody to boom for you, then get the talent close to each other and split them with the mic. This would be far better than using an omni overhead.

Glen Trew
 
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Great, thanks again. So it looks like the best way to go is one omni and pass it around. It looks like this will be the simplest solution for post as well, since if I have 2 channels each will come out of only one speaker and I'll have to do extra work to fix it. If it's one mike I can plug it into input 2 and set both channels to input 2, thus saving myself some effort :D
 
LoneWolf said:
It looks like this will be the simplest solution for post as well, since if I have 2 channels each will come out of only one speaker and I'll have to do extra work to fix it. If it's one mike I can plug it into input 2 and set both channels to input 2, thus saving myself some effort
Click to expand...

Nonsense. You're better off only using one channel of audio in post anyway, if there's only one mic. If using only one mic, set your second camera channel to record a few dB lower as a safety.

The panning ("I have 2 channels each will come out of only one speaker") is a minor issue and can easily be handled in post, most likely during capture. Which NLE do you use?

If it's FCP, all you have to do is capture your clips with audio set to dual mono (which is what you're recording). Then the audio will be captured with both channels panned to center. For single-mic, just use the primary channel when you start dropping clips to the time line.
 
iMovie :D (used to be Pinnacle 12, but not really fond of that one.)

Waiting for Apple to release FCE 5 so I can upgrade. I am not really keen to buy FCE 4 then find that they release FCE 5 shortly after, necessitating an upgrade..

Would you know if FCE has the dual mono feature as well?
 
Yes, FCE has the same capture settings for audio.

Unfortunately, with iMove, you're stuck with both channels no matter what. If FCE5 isn't too far off, then wait. But if it's going to be a few months, it may be worthwhile to go ahead and get FCE4.
 
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