Onboard shotgun mic- mono or stereo?

[Ty Ford]

Hello John,

Always good to see you out here. :)

I did notice an on-camera mic on a Baltimore TV station news camera on the 4th of July. He came to record sections of the Towson, MD July 4th Parade.

He has strapped a mic onto the camera handle and it looked like it had been there a while (as in years). This is called gathering b-roll with sound. The audio is secondary (or tertiary) and will probably not be used at all.

The camera was on sticks and the sound field was so loud when the bands came by that I'm pretty sure you couldn't hear and lens motors. He did go hand-held at least once, and threaded through the ranks of one of the bands, but again, usable audio was not the task.

Regards,

Ty Ford

PS: I was the MC of the parade. Here I am conversing with the Baltimore Orioles Bird Mascot (who never speaks!) And that's an SM58 on the stand.

[Paul R Johnson]

On the consumers who think mics are magic comment. We were faced today with a sudden unexpected choir in the rehearsal for the dance show. No mention at all of a choir, and no time, with the rehearsal timed to the minute, and already behind. Best we could do was two handheld radiomics on low stands. We marked the floor, with glow tape, because they had to be set in the blackout. The stage crew had one each side of the stage, and in the blackout, they ran on, plonked them down and the sound op got ready to unmute them to route their audio to the video people.

The blackout at the end of the preceding dance came, the crew set them accurately on the marks and the lights went up to reveal the entire choir had missed their marks and lined up on the upstage ones, 16 feet upstage - and nowhere near the microphones. So the video people got no audio, and the audience didn't hear the kids either. They also completely missed the specially created puddle of light created especially for them, and stood almost in the dark.
I give up!

[Ty Ford]

I love it when a plan come together! :)

Regards,

Ty Ford