Which Mic?

[Trevor Allin]

Hi

I am using a JVC GY-HD100 and will be filming a documentary in a studio setting. I want to purchase the main mic, and would like some advice on which mic to get, it would have to be out of view from above.

Many thanks

Trevor

[David Ennis]

The application you described normally employs mic on a boom and a boom pole operator. Will you have one?

[Trevor Allin]

hi

Yes, I will have someone who can do this. Is there a particular mic that you would suggest?

Thanks

Trevor

[Steve House]

Originally Posted by Trevor Allin

hi

Yes, I will have someone who can do this. Is there a particular mic that you would suggest?

Thanks

Trevor

The industry standard for indoor booming is a Schoeps CMC641 hypercardoid. Takes a pretty rich budget though.

[David Ennis]

Audio Technica makes excellent, affordable (well, relatively anyway) microphones. As Steve said, a hypercardioid mic is preferred over a shotgun for indoor work. The AT4053a, costing about $400 would be a good choice.

If you need to go economy class, you could do worse than a Rode VideoMic for $150. For attaching to a standard boom pole, do a search on this site. Rode is scheduled to come out with their own more compatable boom pole in December

[Dennis Khaye]

Just because it's the way my brain works, but when you have the time, could you explain why you want to use a hypercardoid versus a cardoid or a lav?

No hurry on it, just wondering.

[Trevor Allin]

Thanks for this, very helpful.

Trevor

[Steve House]

Originally Posted by Dennis Khaye

Just because it's the way my brain works, but when you have the time, could you explain why you want to use a hypercardoid versus a cardoid or a lav?

No hurry on it, just wondering.

First to clarify - cardoid and hypercardoid refer to the shape of the sensitivity pattern while "lav" is indicates it's designed to be clipped to the clothing like the mics you see on a news anchor's lapel. Just like other mics, a lavalier can have an omni pattern - meaning it's equally sensitive to sound coming from all directions - or it can be cardoid - meaning it's most sensitive to sounds coming from along the front axis and around toward the sides and less sensitive to sounds coming from the back. It gets the name "cardoid" because when you draw a diagram showing the sensitivity around the mic's centre axis, it resembles the shape of a heart.

"Hypercardoid" indicates that it is a greatly elongated heart shape, very sensitive towards the front but relatively insensitive to sounds from the sides and rear. Since indoors reflections from the surroundings are often a headache, colouring and distorting the recorded sound, a mic that minimizes them is preferred. A lav is close enough to the speaker that relected sounds are not so much an issue, but sounds reflected from the walls and ceiling around a boom mic that's 3 feet from the speaker's mouth can be a factor. Hypercardoids minimize the problem.

Shotguns are also used, especially outdoors, but unlike hypercardoids their off-axis rejection doesn't affect low tones as much as it does high tones. In fact, a shotgun is quite directional to mid and high frequencies but closer to conventional cardoid or even omni at the low end. As a result, indoors the sound reflections aren't reduced so much as they are filtered to the bass end of things, colouring the desired on-axis pickup and making it sound hollow. So the "best practice" is to boom with a shotgun outdoors where reflections aren't a factor and a hypercardoid indoors.

If you need to intercut scenes shot indoors with those shot outdoors, one of the problems is to pick shotgun and hypercardoid mics that are reasonably close to each other in overall sound quality so the tonality doesn't change from shot to shot within the same scene. Don't have any hands on experience with it but from what I read the new Schoeps CIMT shotgun mic was designed specifically to match the tonal qualities of their CMC641 hypercardoid for exactly that reason. (And if Santa is listening, I've been a VERY good boy this year!)

[Dennis Khaye]

LOL @ Steve's last line there.

Thank you very much for that answer, helped me a lot.