Shooting a 2 person interview

[Kelly Huffaker]

I shot a 2 person interview with both of them facing towards the camera. Never shot an interview before so I thought it would be best to have them mice'd with pocket recorders and lav's. I tried to set both recorders with the same settings with a slight tweak on volume, as 1 spoke a little louder than the other. I synced the clips using PluralEyes in PPCS6 but what I found is that there is some hiss when both audio sources are playing simultaneously. Also, when 1 person talked, it sounded as if there was a slight echo in her voice. Would it be best to bring both audio sources into Audition first and mix both and export as 1 single file? Or is there a better way? If i would have known it was gonna be this much of a headache, I would have just simply had 1 mic on a boom stand above their heads.

[Jonathan Levin]

Kelly,

This question might be best addressed in the "All Things Audio" section of the forums. I've been pretty much living there for the past month or so.

The advice from the people there is top notch!

Maybe Chris can move this to that forum...

Jonathan

[Garrett Low]

You should not be using the audio from both mics at the same time. Only cut between the two tracks only using the one for the person who is speaking.

One mic on a boom may have worked but may also have given very poor quality as you would have had use an omni placed too far way from either speaker to give good quality. I can't really tell since I can't see your setup. Yes, getting good audio takes work during both the production phase as well as post production. But, remember that audio is more than 50% of the experience for your viewers so it is important and warrants the time, attention, and care that you are now finding it takes.

[Les Wilson]

There's nothing wrong with using multiple lavs and mixing them down. If the subjects are close, a good mic on a boom can also work well. I think you are dealing with a equipment quality and multiple recorder issues. A mic on a $60 pocket recorder isn't going to be that great. The echo is probably because the mic on the other person picked up some of her voice and because they are on different recording devices, they aren't exactly lined up so you get reverb. As for the hiss, that could be the AGC on the recorder kicking in maybe or just the result of adding the two tracks together and instead of there being the base noise level of one recorder, you have both and they get added together.

[Shaun Roemich]

The potential issue with leaving multiple mics open at the same time is comb filtering. Again, the word is "potential".

The 3:1 rule addresses the problem.

3:1 rule

[Les Wilson]

Originally Posted by Shaun Roemich

...The 3:1 rule addresses the problem....

Good to know. Thanks for sharing that article.