Mobile Documentary Audio Options.

[seedubb]

We are about to start production on a 2hr extreme sports documentary to be broadcast later this year.

We will be shooting on 7Ds and are now considering our audio options. There will only be two of us working on this, both shooting together.

The nature of the show means we will be shooting on the fly with short notice and hands-full. As far as mounted mics I had really only gone as far as looking at the Rode Videomic Pro, but I wasn't sure how much this would cut it in a broadcast world. Ideally we would use radio mics but don't know where the price/quality barrier lies.
I have a Sony ECM77B which I was given, have never used but briefly tested on a PA to make sure it worked. This would then require a transmitter/receiver and some sort of converter or mixer, and my plan falls apart about there.

You can probably tell audio isn't my forté.

Budget is tight but we know this needs to be right before we start shooting. I have no worthwhile experience with audio recording and need to start learning!

We will be recording indoors and outdoors, mainly just recording our subject alone but occasionally he will be conducting interviews. I'm assuming we're looking at a shotgun here, but not sure how far we'll be able to stray from our guy to still have decent sound.

Any ideas or questions welcome!

 

[Alex H.]

Your first stop should be to read through some of the threads linked in the Audio 101 Sticky.

Second, you're shooting with the 7D which has poor audio, no control, and no Magic Lantern option. Your only choice here (and the best choice even with a different camera) is second-system sound, or, recording to an external audio recorder. There will be plenty of information in the sticky to get you started.

That said, something like the RøDE VideoMic or VideoMic Pro makes for a much better reference track in-camera. This is not audio to be used in the edit, but makes it easier to sync sound from your audio recorder when you edit.