Help please

Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2007 7:11 am

I know absolutely nothing about mics and I'm hoping someone can help me. I have to take a short video clip of kids (one at a time) and each tells his/her name and interests very briefly – about 15 secs. The only trouble is it’s in a school situation which is always pretty noisy. Can anyone suggest a good cheap uni-directional mic to pick up the kid’s voice (some are pretty softly spoken) and block out side sounds. Each kid sits about 3 metres (max 5m) from the video camera which is a PanasonicAG DVC 62.

Not too technical please. Thank you.

Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2007 10:28 am

Shotgun mic might work.

Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2007 12:37 pm

If you don't have a shotgun directional microphone, I recommend the Shure SM 57. Being a dynamic microphone, the SM 57 has some natural bandwidth limiting that eliminates extremely high and extremely low frequencies which contribute nothing except problems. It's quite the workhorse in these situations. A wonderful go to microphone for just about any purpose.

SM 56/57/58 my favorites
Ms. Remy Ann David

Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2007 6:43 pm

I will check out a shotgun mic and the SM57. Thanks for your input.

Posted: Tue Nov 13, 2007 12:03 am

Yay for those 57s...

Posted: Tue Nov 13, 2007 12:04 am

... They double as a hammer!

Posted: Tue Nov 13, 2007 4:14 am

We all agree that a 57 is a great mic, and can double as a tool or even as a formidable weapon (in the right hands). But using it to mic up some little kids' mumbling at TEN FEET (3.3 meters)?!?!? In a noisey environment, to boot? I dunno...
I have to mic up little kids every Sunday. They are a total PIA even when they're cute. I have to clip 'em with a wireless lav (Sennheiser) to get enough gain. But that's probably too much money and trouble in your situation.
One of the kids' dads just got the Rode VideoMic to use with his Sony digital camera. The recordings that thing makes are unreal, especially on distant vocals. And it's designed to plug'n'play with that type of gear. With the 57, which is a low-impedance, balanced XLR connection, designed to plug into a suitable mixer (got one of those?), you'd have to pop for a line-matching transformer and a suitable adapter plug to interface the mic to the camera. By the time you spend the money on all that, you could have bought the Rode (or pretty close), and I'll bet you that the Rode would work better...in YOUR situation. Check it out.

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