External Microphone Tip – Shooting In A Noisy Crowd? Grab One Of These
February 21, 2012 by Kim R Miller
Filed under All Posts, Equipment, Video Production, Video Production Tips
Here’s an external microphone tip…
Are you going to be shooting videos in a noisy environment? Consider getting the type of external microphone I’m using in this video. Watch my very short clip and you’ll see why we like to pack one of these along when we head on vacation. We want to make sure we have the best tools available when we take advantage of shooting at some cool locations. With mics like these, we can make sure we still get good audio when we shoot video for our marketing campaigns – even if those locations turn out to be really noisy.
Recommendation
Electro-Voice 635A – Dynamic Omnidirectional Mic - This microphone is ideally suited for film production, recording, FM, AM, and TV broadcasting, and for the more demanding PA applications. Available for $119 at our favorite video store, B&H
(We’ve ordered ours to use when we report from the NAB Show 2012 conference this coming April.)
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Hi Kim,
Love your videos on mics.
I saw the one about you using a Sennheiser on the beach. It was excellent. I’m preparing to video birds singing this spring and have purchased the Sennheiser ME66/K6 for this with a wind shield. However I also need a shock mount like the one you show in your video.
I wondered if you could tell me which shock mount you used and where I might purchase such a shock-mount?
Keep up the good videos for us newbies. Much appreciated.
Thanks,
Larry
Larry,
I’m glad you appreciate my videos.
The shock mount we have is a Rode SM3 – You can find it at B&H by clicking here – http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/398316-REG/Rode_SM3_SM3_On_Camera_Shock.html/BI/8319/KBID/9078/kw/ROSM3/DFF/d10-v2-t1-xROSM3 (B&H doesn’t take orders from sundown on Friday through Saturday sunset…closed for the Jewish Sabbath…just to let you know.)
or Amazon by clicking here – http://amzn.to/xBYiMT
The price is $49.
You’ll have to share your videos with us when they are done. Are you planning on selling these as stock?
Kim
It will be interesting to see how well you like the omnidirectional mic at NAB. Be sure to take a cardioid mic as a backup. Omnis pick up sound from all directions, including crowd noise. Cardioid mics are directional and will better reject ambient noise.
Right, Mike, it will be interesting. I have a good cardioid mic that I use in noisy situations and I’ll have that, too. I want to try the EV because I always have to stick the other mic so close to people’s mouths to hear them that we sometimes don’t get as good a pickup as I’d like. It’s great at rejecting ambient, though. That’ll be a great demonstration. Thanks for the idea!
Something doesn’t sound right with your audio. The level seems quite low and it sounds like you are talking via a low quality telephone line. It’s not representative of what any external mic can do so you might want to listen to this yourself on a different computer via the internet to see what I mean and adjust things accordingly.
Thanks for letting us know, Larry. It sounds fine on one of our Macs but we did have a problem the way were were preparing videos for YouTube. It was particularly apparent when viewed on an iPhone, for some reason. What were you viewing it on?
We found that when exporting from FCP to go to MP4 for YouTube, we had to choose mono instead of stereo. Otherwise they played unpredictably on various machines, especially the iPhone. Unfortunately, we have many videos out there before we discovered this and they have a lot of view history that we don’t want to lose by deleting them.
Rick