SENNHE I SER MEMORY MI C | USER REVI EW
SENNHEISER MEMORY MIC A clever Bluetooth lavalier microphone that captures audio when shooting on smartphones PRICE FROM £169/$178
WORDS JULI AN M ITCHELL
RIGHT The app and mic combination works to Bluetooth distances
hen you make the decision to bring video in to your digital and social media channels,
and if you’re not a videographer, you might think a budget of a few thousand pounds will cover it. It also depends what your expectations are and what you want to achieve. We go to many well-attended events with plenty of interesting people to talk to, and conventional wisdom maintains that to video them will usually mean a DSLR-type camera with a microphone attached, probably a radio mic. That’s pretty guerrilla filmmaking and easy to get together, but there is a more guerrilla way to bag these interviews. MEMORY MIC Sennheiser has launched its Memory Mic – a name that doesn’t really explain what it does, or do it justice. We always thought using your smartphone for media for a serious magazine like Definition wasn’t a great idea, but when we heard that legendary DOP Robert Richardson says all he uses is his iPhone in his leisure time, and he’s given up ‘serious’ cameras, we realised that as a pure video capture device it wasn’t bad – apart from the audio, which is terrible for anything further away than a metre. This is where the Memory Mic comes in. Sennheiser has designed an admittedly strange looking microphone to independently record the audio you are shooting on your iPhone. Through an app, you pair the Memory Mic to your phone and after a few adjustments (mostly to sensitivity levels) you’re ready to shoot. This is child’s play. You’re then in a shooting situation where your subject is working within a Bluetooth range, which is up to 20 metres, and so he or she is set free to perhaps demonstrate while talking. You are
“WE WANTED QUICK INTERVIEWS WE COULD UPLOAD TO IGTV”
also set free to shoot the subject pretty much however you want. IN PRACTICE The microphone itself is an odd, squared-off design with a corporate grey colour (there perhaps should be more a skin-coloured version or at least different colours). There is a magnetic strap to attach to clothes, predominately, and a small microphone grill to house this condenser design. We wanted quick-fire interviews that we could upload to IGTV without editing, so once we were synched up, with a quick shooting idea confirmed between us and the
subject, we pressed record and got on with it. To have the audio remoted to the subject was like having a sound person in the crew, and in a noisy convention hall it was a revelation. When you finish your shot, all you do is synch up the audio, now stored on your Memory Mic, with the app on your smart phone. In fact, you can do this later if you haven’t got the time, just don’t give your microphone to anyone else before you do! Downsides are the physical design and also the battery life, which isn’t great. We also had a bit of trouble synching, not helpful when you find yourself in a pressurised, time-limited shoot situation.
JULY 20 1 9 | DEF I N I T ION 65
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