Cheap Sound

[Joel Cox]

I have a DV camcorder which I intend to make a film with this summer.

I want to buy a microphone which can do the following things easily:

1) Plug into the microphone socket so I don't have do any sort of hard work with linking the sound and picture afterwards. I want sound straight onto the tape.

2) At the same time be mobile and pick up sound (mostly speech) sometimes at long range. I will be outside for most of the film.

This may seem like a boring question and I apologise, but what is the cheapest way I can do this? Is it the best way?

Thanks alot.

[marti-c]

Hi there
What you need to do is to hire a decent radio microphone set. This would be a tie clip mic which gets plugged into a small transmitter and clips onto the person. At the camera end you would take the signal from the receiver and plug into a Four track SQN portable mixer and then the mixer gets plugged into the camera. Usually you need a converter box on the back of your dv to use XLR connections ( round with three prongs). There would also be a small headphone type socket plugged from the mixer to the camera and the actual headphones get plugged into the mixer (so that everything the recordists hears is actually the level and quality that is going thru the mixer. (hope that makes sense.
I mention HIRE one because the quality of these mics havent been great in the past (the signal can come and go deprnding on the conditions) but the new expensive ones are really reliable. The truth is though is you aint never gonna get quality like using a good seinnheiser shotgun mic. If your shots are so far away that you cant see the actors lips then i would do the dialogue all in close up with the good mic then edit the long distance video into it.


marti

[Joel Cox]

Thanks. You've helped a lot. It looks like I'm going to have to work hard

[Jim Bird]

Hi,

The Sennheiser MKH 20s but these are almost ?1,900 a pair. A good buy are Sennheiser K6/ME62 at around ?600 a pair and you can change the head, so you can use the same K6 module with a ME66 as your gun mic. You will require a Beach Tec XLR converter box if your using a camacorder with a 3.5 mm input jack.

Jim.