Cheap Solution for Boom
 

What do you all think of this for a cheap hi quality boom solution?

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...goryNavigation

Rather than relying on the camera mic, and not spending many hundreds on a shotgun mic, pole, and battery solution, I thought a digital recorder strategically placed to pick up dialog would be good. Any thoughts or suggestion?

Uses: Dialog for indie flicks.

Where would you place it? To get good dialog a mic has to be close to the source. Planting it on the set many feet away from the talent will be too far and slipping it in a pocket would muffle it.

Input
1 x 1/8" Stereo Mini, Microphone
1 x 1/8" Stereo Mini, Line
1 x 1/8" Stereo Mini, Line(Optical)
1 x USB I/O Port


I'd be most worried about the sound quality it is supposed to record...and at that price point, you could start looking at some Flash RAM/Hard Disk recorders:

http://www.markertek.com/SearchProdu...f=60&sort=prod

http://www.markertek.com/SearchProdu...f=97&sort=prod

http://www.markertek.com/SearchProdu...f=96&sort=prod

as for the shotgun + boom pole, you can get a decent shotgun for $50 - $100 and can make a boom pole for less than $20 at home depot.

I'm with Cole on this one. My set up is a Sony MD recorder plugged into the right mic for the situation. The boom pole is an extendable aluminum broom pole. I took a roll of plumber's strap (bendable metal strips with holes in them) Made two big circles and ran rubber bands through the holes for noiseless support. There is an opaque plastic squeegee attachment for the broom pole, I just removed the squeegee part and kept the screw on mount, ran two screws through it and tightened. Works like a charm.

http://webpages.charter.net/knightscape/blimp/

Some images of the mic setup I've got...I've switched out the mic stand as a boom pole with a 12' extendable aluminum painters pole with a 3/8" flare male to 1/2" Pipe Female brass adaptor which puts the paint pole on thread with standard mic holders. The blimp is comprised of gutter screen cover (for keeping leaves out of the roof gutters) cut to length and wired together into a tube, chopsticks and rubberbands as a shock mount and an old mic holder wired into place. Cover with costume fur sock and you're good to go.

Maybe I misinterpreted his post but I thought Marco was talking about using JUST the MD recorder with its internal mic so he would not have to invest in boom poles, additional mics, etc. While putting the recorder in the talent's pocket with a decent lav attached could work well, as could a mic on a boom of some sort feeding to the recorder being carried by the boom operator or fastend to the boom, that's still adding more stuff over and above the naked recorder which is what I thought he was asking about using.

Yeah a friend of mine has two of those MD recorders and just clips the mic to the inside of a collar or somewhere not super visible. I also don't have the bloke to hold the boom pole, so it's easier to have something stationary, I think. is 44PCM not good enough quality?

I thought he was asking that as well although based on cost savings, hence the low-budget options. I could be wrong.

I have thought about using a low budget boom setup, but I usually don't have enough people at most shoots to hold the pole. I am trying to minimize labor. I also thought about mounting the boom somehow, but it seems like a lot of trouble when I could just place a recorder in a pocket and clip a small stereo mic to a sleeve or collar. $300 is pushing my budget.

I'm not aware of any stereo mics small enough for that purpose. At any rate, such a thing as a stereo lavalier mic would be pointless anyway since there's no stereo stage to capture in the first place when it comes to dialogue - you normally record dialogue in mono and any decent mono mic would will work fine. You position the track in the stereo sound field by setting the pan controls in the audio mixer of your NLE during post. Your concern that 44.1 PCM might not be good enough is also not something to worry about - 44.1 is the normal CD sample rate so it will be fine in terms of sound quality, all other things being equal. You will need to make sure it get's converted properly to match the DV norm of 48khz when you bring it into your NLE but most of them do that well these days. You might want to also consider something like the m-audio microtrack 2496 recorder - in the same ballpark pricewise, more but not too much more - that has a few more professional features like phantom power for mics and will record at 48khz if you want to play it safe fpr sync sound. Another option to consider is a wireless mic setup with a lavalier mic and bodypack transmitter to hide on the talent and a receiver for your camera. You can get some that are adequate for under $500