The Video team at FoleyPod divides their time pretty evenly between providing video production services and training people how to handle their own video projects. Sometimes we are charged with the task of cleaning up videos shot by our clients, and in all honesty, more often than not, these videos clips are of pretty low quality. The lower the quality, the more difficult they are to fix. And so we’ve decided to put together this Video How-To series.
Most of the video issues we see all boil down to the same few problems, and in most cases, these problems are easily preventable, and when avoided, make an enormous difference in the overall quality of your videos.
Create great videos yourself! Tune in every Monday, for another installment in our How-To video lessons series.
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Lesson 1: Audio Audio Audio
Nothing will ruin your video projects faster or more thoroughly than bad audio. Think back on most of the amateur videos you’ve ever seen up on YouTube, or on your friends’ Facebook pages. Most of them are shot with a consumer-grade camcorder with a built-in microphone which picks up the sound of passing cars, room noise, white noise, and other undesirable elements better than it picks up the sound of your subject’s voice.
Luckily, this is pretty easy to remedy. The trick lies in understanding this one important fact:
The built-in microphones on camcorders are terrible.
This is true for professional level camcorders too. Built-in microphones suck. That’s just how it is. So where does that leave you?
Before you buy a camera, make sure that it has a microphone input. Most of the cheaper consumer camcorders do NOT have one. A microphone input allows you to use external microphones to capture your audio instead of being stuck with the built-in mic.
If you’re shooting interviews, or a single person talking into the camera, you’ll want to have a lavalier microphone that you can put on the subject’s collar, or lapel. You can go with a high-quality wireless model, like this one (this is what we use at FoleyPod)
or you can go with a less expensive wired version like this one (click the image to view product)
If you’re shooting “man on the street” type interviews, you’ll probably want to get a hand held microphone instead, so that your roving reporter can speak their part, and then point the microphone at their subject.
If you’re shooting more general scenes, you will want to put a stereo shotgun mic onto your camera’s shoe, so that you capture whatever you point the camera at.
What should I do if my camera does NOT have a microphone input?
Well, that would be unfortunate. My first advice is to go and rent a camera that has a microphone input, but I realize that not all budgets allow for this, and not all projects are serious enough to spend money on.
In any case, if your camera does not have a mic input, there are a couple of things you can do. The first, is to use a separate recording device to capture your audio, and then merge the resulting audio file with your video file in your Video editing software, such as iMovie, or Final Cut later on.
NOTE: if you’re on a budget, and already own an iPhone or an iPod touch, there are a few apps available for doing just this. I wrote an article last year about how to record high-quality voice memos on your iPhone and iPod touch. That process can be used in this context to capture very good dialog for use in your video project.
The second way to salvage your project if you’re forced to use your camera’s built-in microphone is to carefully control and manage your shooting environment.
Some tips:
1. Don’t shoot outdoors. This one really should be pretty obvious, but I’m afraid it’s not. Too often I have seen a video recording of the owner of a shop standing out on the sidewalk in front of his store talking about his business, while cars are passing by, birds are chirping, and the world is just generally being loud all around him. This is NOT fixable in post-production, by the way. Just saying…
So the moral of the story is, don’t shoot outdoors. If you live in California, as I do, shooting outdoors poses other noise issues. Since it’s always spring or summer here, there is a constant barrage of gardening and landscaping noise at all times during the day. Lawnmowers, leaf blowers, weed whackers, etc. If you’re in the city, you get traffic noise. If you’re more rural, you get gardening industry noise. Shoot indoors, within an environment you can control.
2. Get the microphone as close to the speaker as logistically possible. When a person speaks while inside of a building, there is a certain amount of reverberation that goes on, as that person’s voice bounces off of the walls, the floor, the ceiling, etc. The microphone picks up this echoey stuff, which causes the dialog to become difficult to understand. The danger increases the further the microphone gets from the subject’s mouth.
Proximity Effect. When a person speaks directly into a microphone, there is a quality of the voice recording whereby the sound of the voice itself, being routed right into the mic, is louder than any room noise, and louder than the sound of that same voice going into the mic after bouncing off of the walls or ceiling. This is called proximity effect. You want this, this is good. That sweet spot is lost once the microphone gets more than even a few inches away from your subject’s mouth.
We recommend creating as wide a shot as your camera’s lens will allow, and putting the camera (and therefore the microphone) as close as you can get to your subject without losing the shot you’re going for.
3. Make sure that all other noises in your location have been silenced.
• Turn off all cell phones. Note that I didn’t say turn off the RINGERS. No, power your phone down, or put it in another room.
Why? Have you ever placed your cell phone next to your stereo, and heard that flutter sound that’s created when/if your cell phone rings? Even with ringers off, cell phones can wreck havoc on a microphone, and having this happen can ruin your shoot.
• If there’s a television in the room, make sure that it’s turned off as well. Even with the volume turned all the way down, televisions emit frequencies which can been “heard” by your microphone.
• Whenever possible, try to operate your camera on batteries and avoid plugging the camera into a wall outlet for power. Electricity can be pretty noisy, and some power outlets, especially in buildings that for some reason or another are not properly grounded, can inject a very noticeable hum into your video’s audio feed. Interestingly, you won’t notice this hum until after the shooting has wrapped, and you’ve imported your footage into the computer. Then it will be loud and clear.
4. Always use headphones. I can’t recall how many times I’ve seen an amateur shoot an interview and forget to test the microphone sensitivity, or in the case of mics which require batteries, I’ve seen those batteries go dead in the middle of a shoot, and in a few cases, the operator forgot to turn the mics ON. Having a pair of comfortable headphones (avoid using the earbuds that came with your iPod) plugged into the camera while you shoot will allow you to monitor the audio feed being recorded into the camera. Doing this will save you some heart brake later. It’s just Murphy’s law, and it’s always in full effect on set!
I hope that you found this article helpful, and remember that people will forgive quite a lot when it comes to quality, but good audio is what separates the amateur videos from the professional videos. Bad audio is immediately noticeable, and will greatly reduce your video’s impact.
Stay tuned for the next installment of this How-To series, which will go up next Monday.
Thanks for reading!
~ Chris
