Hey there
I'm looking to get a decent shotgun mic for my Sony HDR-SR11. It has the IAS input as well as a 3.5mm input. The mic recommended in the catalogue that came with is is the Sony ECM HGZ1, which seems to have mixed reviews online. Has anyone had experience with it?
It seems as though it's capable of getting clear sound in the sort of situations I'll be filming in - mostly eliminating street noise filming a few feet away from the subjects at most. One thing that stands out to me though is that it's a Mono mic - is that necessarily a bad thing though? Thinking back, I'm sure the shotguns we used in film class last year were mono as well, as we had the second channel still operating from the camera's native mic.
Would people recommend going with the Sony proprietary mic, or look into something using the 3.5mm jack? I guess the other thing I don't know is if there's an extension cable for IAS that could allow the Sony mic to be mounted to a boom if need be...
Any thoughts/comments are appreciated 🙂
Morgneto, Master of Morgnetism
Morgneto, Master of Morgnetism
The primary aspect of getting good sound is getting the mc close to the actors.
The further away the mic is from the actors, the higher the volume needs to be.
The higher the volume, the more ?noise? you get. Your goal is to have a very
high signal to noise ratio - more signal (the dialogue) less noise (the background).
Even a very good, expensive Sennheiser mounted on the camera will pick up a
lot of background ambiance because it?s far away from the actors.
You can buy the recommend ECM HGZ1, put it on a boom and record clean
dialogue tracks. And mono is fine. What makes the sound in "real" movies sound
good is the post production. If you have clean dialogue track with no ambient
noise you can add all the sound efx and ambience using stereo. That way you
have full control over all aspects.
For example: you are shooting a dialogue scene on the street. You use a mono
mic on a boom to record the dialogue - getting it as clean as you can. Then
you record a few minutes of the street noise. In you NLE you can lay in the
ambient noise after the scene is edited and control the volume. That way you
have consistent background noise at a low level.
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The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.
Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)
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The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.
Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)
Thanks for that.
I checked with Sony, and it seems that they really are so short-sighted as to not offer any kind of extension cable for their IAS connectors. I would imagine that means I'm better off looking into something to go into the 3.5mm jack, that I can actually mount on a boom - any suggestions there?
Cheers
Morgneto, Master of Morgnetism
Morgneto, Master of Morgnetism
