George Lucas always emphasized that audio was more important than images in filmmaking. STAR WARS was the first Dolby Surround sound movie released. The first DTS surround sound was Jurassic Park – Speilberg may have directed it, but Lucasfilm and Skywalker Ranch were responsible for the visual effects and the sound! The dinosaurs were nothing without their sound. Ok, now back to Earth for the rest of us filmmakers. lol

My camera has a switch which allows mic level, line level or phantom power to be used on an XLR plug type cable input. So check your camera for such a switch near your inputs.

I too have used 48/16 and as it is CD quality (actually slightly better as CDs are 41/16) it’s certainly good enough for speaking voices OR music despite what the vinyl junkies say. lol

Invest in a couple decent mic stands as they won’t change with evolving electronic equipment. Your $20 mic, $100 mic, $500 mic, $1,000 mic will all be held up with a $30 mic stand. lol Oh and get a boom attachment for one so you can set up for shotgun mic style interviews without having an assistant holding the mic on a boom pole (which you should also have for other applications). I have a couple floor mic stands, table mic stands and one boom attached to a floor mic stand.

If you shoot weddings, please do yourself a favor and get a uni-directional mic for interviews! AND keep it as clean and “pretty” as possible. Since it will be on-camera AND people will all be dressed up in tuxes and suits and fancy dresses, you don’t want to pull out just any old serviceable mic from your bag. So if there is paint chipping off or the metal screen is dented, it’s time to replace parts, repaint or get a new one and use the beat up mic for things that will be off camera – OR for reliving old David Letterman stunts like rolling things over with a steam roller. lol

If you shoot dance recitals – make sure to set up a shotgun for capturing taps! You don’t realize how much better your video works when the audio is great and unique.

In fact, if you are using a mic built into your camcorder to capture sound, you are doing yourself a disservice. For one thing, you probably get all sorts of sounds you don’t know where it comes from. That would be sound of your hands handling your camera. Get a mic that is isolated from your camera for capturing “natural sounds” when shooting. You will always want sound! Even if you don’t use it. You can’t fake sound as well as you can video. Two ways to achieve this is by using a small shotgun mic atop your camera which sits in a mic holder with some kind of isolation buffer – ie rubber rings, rubber banding. OR get a mic holder that fits onto your camera via the shoe atop the camera which can also be “isolated” of vibrations. If you don’t have a mic holder designated spot but you have the shoe atop the camera, you can find many ready made devices which allows you to fit multiple things onto your camera. ie Monitor, Mic, Light etc. Worst case scenario, you don’t have a Pro style camera (I don’t know why not) they even have things that screw into the bottom of your camera to mount mics/monitors/lights etc. Bottom line is AUDIO is possibly more important to capture right the first time than video.

All the best,

Ellen Waghorn – Producer