GEAR
BUYERS’ GUIDE
MICS FOR MOBILES
1. RODE SC6-L MOBILE INTERVIEWKIT £185/$199 rode.com
The innovative Sennheiser Memory Mic is a plastic clip-on box that can fit on to a lapel or pocket, and it features an omnidirectional condenser capsule mic that’s designed to record the subject’s voice and pretty much all the sound around them as well. It’s designed to communicate with a smartphone via Bluetooth, but it comes with the ability to internally store up to four hours of audio. Once you’ve used the app to start recording video on your smartphone and audio on the Memory Mic, you don’t need to maintain the Bluetooth connection between the mic and the phone. What this means is that your subject could literally be way off in the distance while you’re filming them, and yet the mic would still be picking up their voice. When paired up with the smartphone, the Memory Mic downloads its audio. The Memory Mic is internally powered and so 2. SENNHEISER MEMORYMIC £169/$200 en-uk.sennheiser.com
If you’re a run-and-gun shooter, then even using the camera’s built-in mic for a quick interview or person in the street for a vox pop is a no-go. And it’s a situation that Rode’s Mobile Interview Kit is designed to avoid, since it uses your iPhone to record decent audio. It’s a simple set-up, with a small box that plugs into an Apple iPhone’s Lightning socket that contains outputs for two tiny wired SmartLav+ lapel microphones and a further socket into which a set of headphones can be plugged. Power is supplied from the phone and you can set up audio for an interview in a matter of seconds, as both you and your interviewee have a dedicated mic to ensure that your voices are independently recorded loud and clear. To control this device, you need to download the free Rode Reporter
app, which will then give you the ability to do such things as configure the record mode, turn direct monitoring on and off, and adjust the mic pre gain. The biggest issue is that the wire supplied with each lav mic isn’t especially long, so you do have to be sitting quite close to your subject, which can be a bit of a restriction. But for kit that can slip easily into a pocket and uses your phone, it’s a great solution.
will need to be charged up, and this is done via a USB cable. The device records 48 kHz/16-bit audio and, despite its diminutive size, it features up to four hours of battery life. It’s a strange little accessory for sure, but it does work. You just need to think a little out of the box to get the most from it.
2. RYCOTE OVERCOVERS £11/$13 rycote.com
1. RODEWS6 DELUXEWINDSHIELD £45/$45 rode.com
WINDSHIELDS
Wind noise is a huge headache when working on location, so you need an effective sound deadening device. Rode’s Deluxe Windshield is designed for the NTG-1 or any similarly sized shotgunmic. The Rode Deluxe windshield has a rubber base to stop wind from entering the rear of the microphone pickup area and has open-cell foam around the outside of the mic as well as fur to keep wind noise at bay.
Rycote’s Overcovers have been specifically designed to mount over lapel microphones in
windy outdoor conditions, as well as reducing contact noise between the mic and clothing. The kit comes with six black furry disc windshields to use onmost standard lavalier microphones, and 30 black sticky pads to fix them. Replacement sticky pads are available.
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WINTER 2019 PRO MOVIEMAKER
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