Newbie Looking for Audio Advice

[natej]

So a friend and I are heading down to Mexico to shoot a documentary in July. Very low budget, we are students, we will be shooting with a panasonic ag-dvx100b.

 

Anyways, we arent sure how we should do the audio.... a lot of our shots will be interviews, and we think a wired mic would be the best way to go. Now, when it comes to audio, our budget for audio is between 100-300 dollars. We would love to get a wireless Mic, but i dont see that happening in our budget.

 

Any suggestions would be appreciated as to what model of microphone would be best for what we are planning.

 

Thanks.

[Peter Duggan]

So a friend and I are heading down to Mexico to shoot a documentary in July. Very low budget, we are students, we will be shooting with a panasonic ag-dvx100b.

 

Anyways, we arent sure how we should do the audio.... a lot of our shots will be interviews, and we think a wired mic would be the best way to go. Now, when it comes to audio, our budget for audio is between 100-300 dollars. We would love to get a wireless Mic, but i dont see that happening in our budget.

 

Any suggestions would be appreciated as to what model of microphone would be best for what we are planning.

 

Thanks.

 

 

I would suggest seeing what you can do to raise your budget by a few hundred. You'll need at least a Sennheiser ME66 microphone, a boom, shockmount, and zeppelin. This is the bare minimum. You can plug it into your DVX and have whoever is booming carefully monitor the levels, but with your budget it will be difficult.

[James Steven Beverly]

I just looked up the panasonic ag-dvx100b, and from what I can tell, this camera has no ext. mic imputs, which means you will be religated to using the onboard mic w/ option stereo mode unless you are planning on bringing an audio recorder of some type to capture sound, which means one of you will be pulling double duty, Cameraman/soundman or interviewer/soundman.

 

But if you are planning on bringing a recorder and only have 100 to 300 bucks and your doing mostly interviews I would go w/ a Good RadioShack Hand held omni directional, possible a cheap boom w/ a mic holder or shock mount if you can afford it and a long mic cable. If it was ALL interviews I would say use inexpensive or off brands of corded lavs ran into the 2 channels on the recorder. Most likely the recorder mic imputs, there eather XLR or more probably 1/4 or 1/8 phono, concisering your budget, so you may have to get a couple of 1/4 to 1/8 adapters and a fur muff windscreen for the mic if your recording outdoors. You may also look at going w/ used equipment if you are reasonably sure they're in good condition. That way you'll be able to get a better mic for the same cash you would spend on a new, cheaper model.

Edited June 1, 2006 by Capt.Video

[Michael Nash]

The DVX does indeed have two XLR inputs.

 

You can get a lavelier mic (minus the wireless) for a few hundred, but you'll get more functionality from a boom (shotgun).

 

Typical trick for run-and-gun documentary stuff when there's no separate audio mixer is to leave one channel on camera mic (usually on auto) as a backup, and the other channel has the external mic (level adjusted manually).