Just One Room Mic
A lot of people ask me how I get such good live sound tracks in my raw video footage. I’ve seen a lot of “cinematographers” film shows with a clunky Cannon XL-1 or Sony DX-1000 and use a shotgun microphone strapped on top as their sound track. This can work if isolated in the correct location of the venue… which would be the “acoustically sound sweet spot”. Generally speaking, right where the sound engineer’s booth is setup (in a pro venue anyway).Trouble is, the moment you move your camera’s location, the microphone’s angle to the sound source changes… and unless the microphone had a perfect omni-directional pickup and remains in the same proximity to the sound source, angle changes will have a subtle effect on the audio recording.
However, most camcorder microphones, especially shotgun microphones, have a cardioid pickup that will bloat the soundtrack from boomy to shiny in a 2 degree angle shift, let along cutting the proximity of the camera in half by moving from the back of the venue for a wide angle, vs. walking up to the front of the stage for a closeup.
So how do you get a solid sound track without having to keep your camcorder stationed by the sound guy? Separate the mic from the camcorder. Use a minidisc to record the audio track and marry it to picture later… or get a wireless mic into your camcorder and place your mic and camcorder wherever you want.