Wireless mic for a movie?

I'm making a movie (20 minutes) in a store which has a lot of background noise. Last time I made it there, I used my Zoom H1. I put it on different places close to the talents. But it picked up to much background noise, and I also had to sync the sound in post. Don't want to do that again with 150 clips.

A week ago I was interviewed, and the had a lavalier mic put on me. This was wireless so the sound goes straight to the camera. No sync needed. Yes, I wan something like this one. I bet the one I had is really expensive. And I probably need four of them since all four actress is going to speak together. Then probably a shotgun mic on a boom is a great choice, but I need an audio operator. Any advice?

Movie has no budget, only my time. Doing this for fun with friends, showing in a private gathering. So don't have to be best. But better then last time. I had to put on text on every dialogue.

Røde Video mic pro, placed on my camera. But still afraid it will pick up to much background noise. Perhaps I should see ha review on Youtube.

But if you have experience, please provide if you want to.

I've done long and short form film work with wireless lavs, all get plugged into cameras. I love not having to sync in post. You'll have folks claim the camera won't record as good a quality sound as a dedicated recorded like your H1. Not true. Let's set the facts straight.

Recording using an on-board mic will be lower sound quality, because of the mic.
Recording using good quality mic into the camera will be great quality.

The circuitry inside most cameras is extremely high quality for audio, this sort of technology is old hat and inexpensive these days. I do it weekly, and can attest to it first hand. My crew and the broadcast station I now contract with have both tested this extensively, an both record to camera when possible. LOVE having audio actually in my video clips and not having to sync sound to video.

Some situations won't allow it, though, in which case you record to a separate device. That's just production life.

You can get wired and wireless lav in a variety of price ranges. Read Amazon and B&H reviews carefully. But I fully support your decision to record with lavs directly into the cameras. I've been filming this way for over a decade and love it.

Thank you very much!

So if I want four lavs and one receiver (which I plug in my camera?), is this possible? When searching for lavs, there seem to be only one lav. I know that I need some kind of receiver that is attached to the talent, but I also need a receiver for my camera.

Neguah wrote: … want four lavs and one receiver (which I plug in my camera?), … When searching for lavs, there seem to be only one lav. I know that I need some kind of receiver that is attached to the talent, but I also need a receiver for my camera.

I'm too lazy to dig for a 'four to one' package, here's one with two mic/one receiver....
www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1025757-R...ng_package_ch30.html

but …
there are several steps:
you need a lav and a transmitter per person
you need a receiver which supports 4 channels
you need a mixer … at all and anyhow.

one talent has a low voice, the other starts to yell… for a 1on1 interview situation I'm with straight-to-cam solution.
but four sources …?
does you camera support four individual audio inputs? and channels?

you have to mix the audio - live on set (one wrong level and …) or in all coziness of your edit-suite (fix it in post…)?

decide, dedicated audio-unit on set (incl audio-editor with experience of 'live' mixing), or post mixing.
Then go to your local, professional rental store …

Thank you for your respons! I think audio is really difficult, and searching for options on the net. I don't know. I always end up watching Russian jackasses on Youtube.

In my head, I was thinking like this:
Four lavs. Four transmitters. Both on each talent. One receiver which is plugged directly into the camera, and can receive audio from four different transmitters. In post I can separate all four audio transmitter and adjust independently.

I might just go for Røde videomic pro, and put it either on mye camera or on a boom. That might be the cheapest solution and easier solution.

Neguah wrote: … One receiver which is plugged directly into the camera, and can receive audio from four different transmitters. In post I can separate all four audio transmitter and adjust independently. …

…IF you camera allows an 4-channel input to four separate audio-tracks - most cams, my price league, offer just stereo = two tracks…

I would suggest an ext. 4-track recorder… Tascam680 is such a tiny device.-
Use a cam-attached mic to record a 'synch track' and let FCPX do its marvel with synching and/or Multicam…

In my lil' school project we actually do a lot of synch stuff (=making our own music-videos) - exceptional what FCPX does! The set-mic catches all kind of disturbances (wrestling here with a herd of 12-14y olds…), but synch to a clean music-track is done in a snap.

Again my suggestion to go to some pro rental service, describe your needs and make a one day test shoot, alone to get comfortable with all new knobs&buttons. Plus, does the location allow wireless transmissions (e.g. sever-room, any control room)? Or are there ext. interferences (e.g. NMR, MRI in a hospital)? …

… for a good reason, 'Audio' is a department of its own in movie-making… 
For four persons, I would organize a specialist plus a boom-operator. Then, you have one source, and you can follow your original plan, recording to camera… and you can focus on your camera work.

I would go with a dedicated recorder with several inputs. Syncing is so fast and easily done in FCPX. You don't even have to sync every single clip but instead can just throw everything inside a multiclip and have FCPX do the magic for you.

Are you sure you need wireless for every talent? Maybe some of them can be hardwired as well. Saves you money.

And Karsten is very right about the rental. I think it's great to own one or maybe two wireless mics plus receivers, but four? We use a really old Sennheiser and the very affordable Rode wireless and are happy with it.

Hi, I don't know of any four channel portable receiver and I did search extensively some time ago. For a really low profile job (= really small budget) we had to film six people talking and moving and in the end I used each persons mobile phone with this lab mic:

www.amazon.es/dp/B01J3JX550/ref=wl_it_dp...I1FXE49M0TMVUA&psc=1

(Sorry for the Spanish Amazon website, but that is the one I buy from) Everybody was wearing a shirt or jacket with a front pocket so they put their phones with the mic inside that pocket and used the same recording app on all of them. We captured camera audio to let FCPX sync automatically. This was the cheapest solution I have ever used. The results were better that Ok although they could have been better with a professional solution, but the client was happy with it.

If you want to go with the four wireless lav solution you will need a mixer and two double channel receivers. Most reasonably priced on-camera mixers only have two audio channels, and double channel wireless mic units are not cheap either. In the end you would capture two people in one receiver, the other two people in the other receiver and mix both stereo outputs form both receivers to a single stereo track in your camera. Not the best solution if you need to edit the audio afterwards because you will have two people in one channel that you won't be able to separate.. The hardware would be something like this on the low budget side:

images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51GtM4V-ikL.jpg
www.amazon.es/dp/B00SSH0SR2/ref=wl_it_dp...coliid=IERABVLK0NAST
www.amazon.es/dp/B01MTV8YCN/ref=wl_it_dp...=I8VU7LU7C4WXV&psc=1

Like the others have suggested, if you don't wat to go the cheap route like I did with mobile phones and lav mics attached to them, then you are better served going to a pro rental shop and renting what they advice you to.

Another solution I have found while researching your post is the Apogee iOS app called MetaRecorder that allows, if you buy the In-App option, to control several iOS devices recording from one device.

I'm going to go with one mic. Either Røde Video mic pro or Røde NTG2. It's the easiest way.
I was thinking the NTG2, but plugging NTG2 directly into 5D doesn't give the best performance. Need an external recorder in between NTG2 and 5D.

The reason why I don't want to sync audio is that I had some trouble last time. Since the background noise is so loud 5D didn't pick up the sound correctly, leaving some clips not synchronised. So I manually had to sync them.

BTW, can I mark all 200 clips and 200 audio clips and sync them all together or do I have to sync one by one?

So, leaving the lavs, I just want a mic for a movie. And I can't rely on a audio guy. It's a one man show.

Neguah wrote: I'm going to go with one mic. …. Since the background noise is so loud 5D didn't pick up the sound correctly, leaving some clips not synchronised. So I manually had to sync them. ….

So, your plan is to record four people in such a loud environment with a single mic 'miles away' from talking persons??

… 'manually synching' is the by far the smaller prob you will stumble in… 

I like Victor's suggestion of using smartphones as 'local recorders'. Did that once, you get Lavs with an adapter for super-cheap money… and any 5€ mic, 3" away from mouth is 100x better than any >1.000$ super-pro shotgun-mic, 3 yards away… especially in a loud environment.

Karsten Schlüter wrote:
So, your plan is to record four people in such a loud environment with a single mic 'miles away' from talking persons??

… 'manually synching' is the by far the smaller prob you will stumble in… 

I like Victor's suggestion of using smartphones as 'local recorders'. Did that once, you get Lavs with an adapter for super-cheap money… and any 5€ mic, 3" away from mouth is 100x better than any >1.000$ super-pro shotgun-mic, 3 yards away… especially in a loud environment.

Well, I'm not going to be far away. I'm filming with 35mm and 50mm, and there will often be a dialogue with to people, and sometimes four. A shotgun mic will probably give me some trouble since I can only record audio when one of them are talking. If not, I have to move the mic around. I might have some help from the actors to hold the mic on a boom.

The distance between the mic (if mounted on the shoe of camera) is going to be around 30-100cm. At 100cm, as you say, in the noisy environment is not going to work very well.

This is a really low budget movie, but I just want the sound to be more then just ok.

I will look into cheap lavs and go for the smartphone-advice.

Side note, just random thought...

"...but plugging NTG2 directly into 5D doesn't give the best performance."

I have to disagree. I've found most cameras record excellent quality sound when you run an good quality external mic into them. Even the 5D. It's the built-in mics that suck so bad.

That said, if you have more than two mics, go with a multi-input audio recorder. Preferable one that allows iXML metadata to name your various audio channels with the names of the talent, for sure.

FCPX.guru wrote: …
"...but plugging NTG2 directly into 5D doesn't give the best performance."

I have to disagree. I've found most cameras record excellent quality sound when you run an good quality external mic into them. …

The OP's NTSG2 demands for an internal battery, but has no ext. switch to turn it off >> high chance to run low voltage.
And I read user reports, when using ext. 48V PhantomPower, it tends to noise…

So, it could happen, it runs on low power = cam gains like crazy, or, used with PhantomPower this specific mic for real doesn't perform well.

I guess I'll go for lavs and use smartphones as recorders. Where do I go from here to make it easy on me? Just keep the recorder running during the whole scene even if we mess things up and then just sync in post? From experience, this will take some time, so there will be a huge audio file. But what will happen with the sync if I have several video clips for the one audio file? I can't let the camera record non stop. There will be a massive file, so I guess I need to turn of recording while I direct the actors.

As long as your cameras are recording sound, you can stop and start all you want, FCPX multicam will handle this. We do it all the time.

I should have mentioned in my previous post, when recording directly to any camera, turn OFF any automatic gain function it may have.

I sometimes have trouble connecting mics to my 5D with mini jack that follows. Had to use a different aux-cable. Can it have something to do with the mic being mono and stereo input on the camera?

I went for lavs and smartphones. Worked great. But after videoclip exceeded 2GB it was split in two. Syncing resulted in some minor audio differences, so I had to create a multicam clip. It worked better, but it wasn't flawless.