Goody Goody Memories

Columbus is losing baseball. The Columbus Catfish are leaving Columbus, and Golden Park, behind and as of yet there is no replacement team on the horizon. We wanted to talk with a few fans and put together a short video for the website. I was able to use a better camera for this assignment...one with XLR inputs....and so was able to get better audio but faced a few more challenges. From my night at the ballpark, here are a few things I learned about audio.

....If you're still a newbie at this, make yourself a list to work from.Don't worry about it being overly detailed. Miss one tiny item and you may end up with nothing.Or, have a friend help. I asked our reporter to ask me, before each interview started, to ensure the wireless mic was turned on. I don't mind looking like a dummy if I get what I need.

....Definitely mic the subject with a wireless microphone if one is available.The sound is much better, especially when you have to interview someone in a noisy environment. If you don't have one, pull the subject to an area that's quieter....but not so quiet you can hear a pin drop. You'll still want some of the ambient sound in the background.

....If you mic one person, mic them all. When I interviewed the PA announcer, the acoustics sounded OK to my ears and so I didn't mic him. Mistake. The audio from his interview just lacks some punch.

....Monitor the audio with headphones(I didn't, but will next time) or at least check the levels via the display on the camera to make sure both channels are recording.

....If there is still too much distracting noise, try just using the wireless mic on the subject. I finally did this out of desperation(I just unplugged the other one) and it worked OK.

....The wireless mic doesn't need to be clipped to someone. During a spring multimedia workshop at the University of Georgia, a team of students did a nice piece on a dog jog. They got great audio of a dog slurping water from a water dish by simply holding the wireless mic near the dish, just out of the frame. So, experiment and play around when you can.