Right mic for interviews

[charlier]

Would really appreciate advice on this. I’m going to be interviewing some people in a basic set up…across a kitchen table. I’m still to decide bettween Canon HG 10 or HF 10. I’m looking to post the interviews onto a website and am conscious that I need to balance the volume of my voice (the interviewer) with the interviewee.

What mic set up do I need?

Many thanks..any help much appreciated.

[Rob]

i use lavalier mics for interviews. either go with a wireless set up or wired. I prefer wired if your subject isn’t going to be moving around a lot. Many mics are made to be connected to XLR inputs. If your camera doesn’t have that, look into getting a BeachTek XLR adapter.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/49318-REG/Sony_ECM44B_ECM_44B_Omni_Directional_Lavalier.html

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?ci=0&sb=ps&pn=1&sq=desc&InitialSearch=yes&O=jsp%2Fproduct.jsp&A=search&Q=*&bhs=t&shs=beachtek&sb=ps&pn=1&sq=desc&InitialSearch=yes&O=jsp%2Fproduct.jsp&A=search&Q=*&bhs=t&Go.x=0&Go.y=0&Go=submit

When you interview someone, you should direct them so that they answer your question with complete statements so that in post you can leave the sound of you asking the question out. If you don’t do that, then you’ll need to mic yourself as well, but then you may need another camera, and more lights.

[Aspyrider]

Check this out:

[charlier]

Many thanks to you both for that and for all the other great advice you give elsewhere.

The interview is going to be me asking the questions off camera……. but there will be a dialogue between us which is why I need to make sure that both sides of the conversation can be heard at the same volume when it gets to the website..so will be micing myself.

There will be one camera locked on to the subject.

[Aspyrider]

You may want to invest in a mic mixer so you can have two mics, on on you and one on your subject. 🙂

Here is an inexpensive one. (Azden CAM-3 Mixer)

You may also have another person stand off camera with a mic boom and hold it over both of you aiming it at whomever is speaking.

J 🙂

[charlier]

Thanks again.

[Anonymous]

For a two person interview, you will not need a mixer. Just record one lav mic on the left channel and the other on the right channel. Then during the post, copy your “stereo” audio to a second audio track and select “left channel only” for one track and “right channel only” for the other. Then you can do a mono mix and independently adjust volume for each of you. (Do not, under any circumstance, leave the channels on the left & right extremes. You can pan the channels so the sound moves a bit, but extreme panning will result in a sort of audio/video dissonance.)

Depending on your camcorder, you might be able to independently set record levels for each channel. This is terrific. But I haven’t encountered any real problems in interviews with either manual or automatic settings, depending on the difference in individual volumes. In situations where one speaker is a great deal louder than the other, I get the best results with auto audio. Say when one of the speakers is a young child, especially a shy child. But with two adults, I do prefer to use manual levels to avoid level drops when both are speaking at once.

And by the way, on such a short mic run with a static camera, XLR’s offer no advantage over 1/8″ stereo audio inputs. (As an understanding of the actual difference between balanced & unbalanced audio inputs demonstrates.)

Have fun & I hope you get a great interview.

[AaronMurphy]

charlier,

The easiest thing to do without a dedicated Sound Mixer, is have a lavalier on each person; one for the subject, one for the interviewer. You can rent these hard-cabled mics for about $10/day and just make sure you have a decent pair of headphones (that is headphones with full frequency response hopefully made by Sennheiser or Sony).

You can also have your Sound Mixer operate a single boom mounted shotgun or hypercardiod mic over both of your heads.They could stand 90 degrees to the line that is formed by your conversation(see ‘the line’ in film and television terminology), which is the optimal position for the Mixer to ‘cue’ the mic with the least amount of effort (and hopefully with the least amount of error). They will just tilt the mic towards each person as they speak and provide your single camera audio track with a perfectly balanced mono ‘mix’ of both of your voices.

Let me know if any of this was useful!!

[Author]

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