Sound Advice: Audio for Interviews
Good interviews require good audio. Here are some practical tips to help you get great sound.Getting quality audio when you tape an interview seems like a no-brainer because the subject just sits in one spot in a quiet room and talks. Step one: aim camcorder; step two: roll tape. What could possibly go wrong?
Step three: harvest hair by tearing it off your head during post production because of lousy sound quality. Why? Because the subject and mike sound as if they were in different counties or the interviewer sounds trapped in a 55-gallon drum or both interviewer and interviewee garble their words together so much that a neurosurgeon couldn't cut 'em apart.
In short, there's more to interview audio than meets the ear and most problems arise from mike-to-subject distance, inconsistent sound quality and/or failure to keep the subject's audio separate from the interviewer's. Fortunately, these problems are solvable if you know where to look for them and how to cope with them. That's our homily for today. We'll review options in choosing and placing microphones, procedures for setting up and recording interviews, and strategies for both two-person (interviewer on camera) and one-person (subject only) intervi…
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