Your Smartphone Microphone May Be All You Need To Get Good Video Sound

Do you get frustrated by having to use a microphone?

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Understand this…

Sound is video’s poor cousin, the wallflower at the school dance. 

As the wonderful sound recordist Gunter Ericoli - who I travelled with to many countries - was fond of saying, ‘when was the last time you went to listen to a movie?’ 

Video is a visual medium yet when the soundtrack is disrupted the movie is broken. 

Patrons walk out of the cinema. 

Without clear sound that your customer can hear, you are sunk.

Video making would be so much easier if you didn’t have to worry about sound because even though video is technically more complex, recording sound is a very fragile process that breaks down a lot. 

‘Waiting for sound!’ You will hear this on many film and video sets. 

A gremlin has crept into the system. There is electrical interference from somewhere and now there’s a hum on the soundtrack. Wind noise rumbling across the microphone ruined that take. There’s a dry joint in a plug somewhere that’s causing the audio to crackle. For efficiency and sanity, you need a simple robust system.

If you are in a quiet room, and you are about an arm’s length or so from the camera, you may be able to use the inbuilt microphone. If so, lucky you. Do some tests. Ask your customers if they are happy with the sound. Honestly, if they say yes and you make sales, then don’t touch it.

If no one can hear you then you aren’t a video presenter, you are a mime.

 #videoskills #microphones  #videocoach