You've probably seen a handheld microphone. They're mounted on the podium at press conferences, in the hands of vocalists at concerts, the best man or maid of honor at a wedding, and possibly in the hands the person calling your BINGO numbers. However, much of the audio production world does not rely on this type of microphone. Selecting the proper microphone for the situation you'll be interviewing your subject in is the key to a clear representation of their voice with minimal background noise. You'll learn about 3 types of microphones and listen to samples of each to hear how each one sounds.
Lavaliere (Lapel) Mic
​
This is the most common type of microphone used for interviews and for a good reason. These microphones clip onto your subject's shirt, jacket, or tie and provide a close-range pickup pattern to capture their voice while minimizing background noise and chatter. The pickup pattern, called omnidirectional, can capture audio from a spherical range around the microphone. Even when the subject isn’t speaking directly into the microphone, it will evenly capture their voice, so long as it is close to their mouth. These microphones are also tailored to capture the audio frequencies of the human voice, so your subject will sound well balanced and clear. Use these microphones as your first choice for interviews where the subject is able to be tethered to the recording device by the microphone wire and when you are not conducting a quick, off-the-cuff interview at an event where you'd have a limited time to position the microphone on the subject.
Shotgun Mic
​
This microphone is a great multi-purpose microphone. They can be mounted on the camera, on a stand or on a long pole (boom pole) to get close to your subject. Shotgun mics are often preferred to be used “on location” and as a secondary, or back up, microphone to a lavaliere in an interview setting. These mics have a narrower pickup pattern and are directional, so it picks up sound where you point it. In a noisy location or an event setting where a lavaliere would be impractical to set up, shotgun mics can be useful because you can get clear audio just by aiming it at your subject. However, keep in mind that the shotgun mic will pick up sound from whatever is in its path, which could be your subject or it could be the street or soccer game behind them. In the next topic, you’ll learn about proper placement, but for now it’s important to keep this microphone in mind for location-based interviews where your subject might be interviewed spur of the moment or you might be following your subject around in a video while they are discussing something. It is also the ideal microphone for capturing natural sound from an environment.
Sony Lavaliere Mic
Sennheiser Shotgun Microphone
Topic 2 - Selecting a Microphone
A little bit of background...
Learning about microphones
Rode Shotgun Microphone
for DSLR
Canon 5D On-Camera Microphone
(Three Holes Under 5D Logo)
Last Resort: The On-Camera Microphone
​
A general rule of thumb is this: don’t use an on-camera microphone. Microphones that are built into cameras are generally not of a very high quality and tend to put an emphasis on the higher frequencies, making the sound very “tinny,” or lacking depth. These microphones are also placed at a distance from your subject and aren’t designed like a shotgun microphone where you can aim them in the direction of the sound source. This makes them prone to picking up everything around the camera, even handling noise and the camera’s autofocus motor. If the camera has an external microphone input, use it or use a portable audio device. If you happen to forget everything and only have the camera, something is always better than nothing. If this is the case, make sure that the subject is in a very quiet space, one where you won’t hear your voice “echoing” in the room, and have them as close as possible to the camera.
Take a look at this video, which provides some additional insight to variations of each microphone and visual representations for each type of situation as well.
Some additional info...
Take a listen to the brief audio clip to hear what a lavaliere microphone is capable of.
Listen to the two clips of the shotgun mic. Both are recorded on the sidewalk of a busy street, but the first is from a distance of 4-5 feet away while the second is a distance of 10 feet away. In both situations, the microphone is aimed at the subject’s face.
Listen to two audio samples from an on-camera mic, one out on the street and the other in a quiet office.