On-scene interview mic

[Lloyd Claycomb]

I'm working on doing some man-on-the-street interviews with my new Canon A1 and possibly another secondary camera.

I will have a camera guy and myself doing the interviews. I might have access to a mic guy, but it's probably about 20% of the time--if that.

Right now I'm plugging my Sure SM58 mic into the camera, but I hate seeing the mic in the videos. Plus, doing the back-and-forth thing with the mic... it never fails I'm asking the question and the interviewer butts in and you can't hear him clearly (or sometimes the other way around, ha!).

So I'm looking for a better solution. Very few (5-10%) of the interviewees get mad and storm out, so a cordless lav on the interviewee isn't probably a good idea.

I guess I'm looking for other suggestions for this set up. The interviews last 5-10 minutes. More times than not I don't have a sound guy.... Is there anything else I can do other than a pair of lavs or the back-and-forth of the SM58 without having to get a shotgun on a boom? Or is this shotgun even the very best set up for this type of interview?

Thanks!

[Bernie Beaudry]

If you are outdoors you can get good results with a shotgun mic and still keep it out of the shot. If you're close enough and the shot is somewhat tight you can use a pistol grip with the necessary wind protection and come from underneath if need be. If you need your voice on the track it could get tricky with the back and forth just as with the SM58. So if you put the wireless lav on yourself to one channel and the boom on the other channel then you can concentrate on keeping the shotgun mic aimed at the person you're interviewing. Indoors use a hypercardiod condenser mic instead of a shotgun to help with poor acoustics. The SM58 would be ok for this to but it isn't very sensitive so you would have to get it into the shot to be loud enough. I've used a longer or medium shotgun and sometimes a hyper outdoors, and a hyper indoors with good results. Your camera person can be a huge help with how he frames the interview so a bit of practice before hand might be helpful.
Have fun!
Bernie

[Steve House]

Shotgun on a boom implies a sound person to handle it. Shotgun on camera will be too far away from the subjects to be any good unless your camera is within about 3 feet of the subjects. Lavs on the subject are awkward for man-in-the-street scenarios. IMHO, your hand-held mic is the best way to go working under the circumstances you've described. SM58 is mostly a studio/stage vocal mic - a reporters's stick mic like the EV RE50 might be easier for the interviewer to handle. Get a sound person into your permanent crew.

[Terry Wall]

Lloyd, I use the Senni MD46 and like it a lot. Somewhere, I heard that Sennheiser made this mic to NBC's specs, and I do see it a lot on TV during ENG and man-on-the-street interviews. The other mic of choice is the EV 635. It's been around forever, and you can't kill 'em! It's nickname is "the hammer," and I've heard that they've been used that way in a pinch--though I don't think I'd use my mics that way!

[Ty Ford]

EV re 50

Regards,

Ty