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Speaker giving talk – Sound
I have been filming a chap who gives talks about presentations.
The first time I filmed him was a quick “Oh, you have your camera, film me please” so ended up using a Rode Microphone… sound quality was good, but picked up the person who was next to me coughing all the time.
Second time, I choose to use a lapel mic as thought this would be great.. that day he decided to give a presentation with hand movements and kept waving his arms everywhere and banging his chest.. which the lapel mic picked up.
Anyone have any advice for the third one? It’s very rare that an AV desk is with me so normally just me and my camera. Although the option of me telling him not to move his arms around like a monkey might be suitable. Thanks in advance.
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5 Replies
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On the theatrical stage, they hide small lav mics in the crook of the ear with a dab of medical tape. What’s nice about this is, the mic is invisible, and it maintains the same mic to mouth distance, no matter where the head is pointing from moment to moment. Mics are often hidden in wigs too.
You could use a headset mic, but I HATE those.
A shotgun should work, if you get it close enough and have someone to track him with it.
Hide the lav in the knot of his tie; it’s unlikely he’ll hit his throat. Most lavs are omni-directional, and hiding it in the tie or the coat collar only muffles it a little bit. Use lots of tape to tape down the cable so it doesn’t pick up rubbing sounds.
Hang a mic from overhead. Us multiples to cover more ground, fed to a mixer.
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Thanks
I’ll bring him in and do some tests with him, and will try the mic in the tie knot. -
How did it go?
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It went really well, we hid the mic in his tie knot, allowing him to wave his arms around without any problems. 😀
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If the knot and the mic are high enough under the chin, they will not be hit by sharp breathing or “plosives” from certain spoken words, (words with “t”, “B”,”P”, etc.) which is good.
If the mic rides lower down, say, on the tie itself, the BBC guys tend to point their lav mics downwards to the floor in such cases, instead of towards the mouth. The reasoning behind that is, it guards the mic from plosive sounds and hard breaths, while still picking up pretty well, because most lav mics are omni-directional. And no noises are expected to come from the floor into the mic.
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