Digital Voice Recorder for Ceremony Vows Demo

[Taky Cheung]

This is a comparison video showing the same clip from a wedding for sound coming out from the on-camera shotgun mic vs digital voice recorder. As you can hear when the vows were read, audience cannot really hear it because the live microphone is attached to the officiant only.

Read more from my blog On-Camera Shotgun Mic Audio vs Digital Voice Recorder | L.A. Color Blog

On-camera Shotgun Mic audio vs Digital Voice Recorder on Vimeo

[Jim Schuchmann]

Taky, did you put a DS-30 on the officiant also? If not it sure sounds like you did.
Good job!

[Scott Brooks]

Are there really people that don't put a mic on the groom anymore ... let alone the officiant?

[Steve Shovlar]

Can't say it enough times. ALWAYS mic the groom, even if he kicks up and says he doesn't want it. ALWAYS have a voice recorder close by incase of a failure. I use the Edirol r-09 and its great. There are other great recorders out there as well. Always have three sources as a minimum, and preferable 4, for sound at the ceremony.

You mess up the vowels, how you going to explain that to the brides mother when she rings in a foul mood?

[Taky Cheung]

The one that I have Olympus WS-200S. It has been replaced by newer models now.

I only mic the groom. Sound recorded is from his mic only. It works well.

[Jim Schuchmann]

I think the other thing that you may want to point out (for newbies) is the fact that you used a omni-directional mic on the groom. The officiant, on the other hand, was most likely wearing a directional mic as part of the house/event system. I have found this to be the case most of the time with wireless systems at events. Whoever set the system up was probably concerned about feedback in the chance that the mic got to close to the speakers. So they choose a mic with a very narrow pick up pattern to prevent accidental feedback. Great for avoiding feedback, lossy at picking up other voices.
I've had several venues tell me that they have everything mic'd and that it will be fine and that placing additional mic's on the groom, officiant and podium are not necessary, but I always place mic's there anyway.

[Taky Cheung]

There're times any lav mic won't work when the idiotic groom did something like that during the ceremony.

Vimeo

[Stephen J. Williams]

Taky... what was he doing? :-) Thats why in addition to placing a mic on the groom I use an H2 somewhere near the altar, just in case.

I did have one wedding where the bride told me that she didn't want any mic on the groom at all. I tried to explain to her that it was "wedding video suicide" but she's the boss.
Luckily the H2 did it's job from 10ft away. My shotgun mic didn't pick up anything.

[Taky Cheung]

I have no idea what he was doing. At wedding day after the ceremony, I saw the lav mic was hanging in front of him. I knew something went wrong. I was hoping it was after the ceremony he start hugging people. That's why the mic got off clip.

I don't know anybody would refuse clipping a mic to the groom. If she insists, she will just have to accept the fact the audio will be no wear near perfect.

[Don Bloom]

I had 1 groom refuse to mic up about 7 or 8 years ago. I made sure he signed off on the paperwork that he refused to wear the mic. The audio was, to be polite, not so good, you couldn't hear the vows anyway because the church didn't have a mic on the altar either. Long story short the bride was not happy when they got the DVDs and she called me on it. I told her to talk to her husband and faxed her the paper work where he had signed off refusing to wear the mic with the understanding that I could not guarantee the quality of the ceremony audio. He then called and asked why I threw him under the bus, she was PO'd at him-I said too bad, you didn't want to wear the mic. Your problem not mine.

[Taky Cheung]

That's amazing you can think of having him sign off about not wearing a mic. But how did you prepare that on the wedding day? Was it all hand written?

[Stephen J. Williams]

I was wondering the same... Good thinking Don.

[Don Bloom]

you think that's amazing? You should hear some of the stuff I've had to do :-)

something I learned when I first got into still work 38 years ago. A guy I was working with told me (I'll paraphrase) 'if something comes up and you don't write it down, it's their word against yours-so CYA. Write it down.' He didn't say it quite that nicely but you get the idea.

As for what I did, I simply wrote on the back of the paperwork (contract) a statement something like this; (date and time) Joe Jones, the groom, refuses to wear the lavalier microphone as discussed during our preproduction meeting, and therefore I can not nor will be responsible for the audio quality captured during the wedding ceremony on (date).
They sign it or I do stating they refuse to sign and IF that were to happen I would have at least 2 witnesses sign the disclaimer.

It really isn't a lot extra to do and it can and will save your butt later.
Like my lawyer has always told me, if it ain't in writing, it ain't and you will lose! CYA.

Hell I even do a brief shooting log, just a general reminder of what's on each tape at the end of the job, so in case there's no mother son dance as an example, I'm not looking thru all the reception footage-cause it's probably a few weeks until I get to the edit and at my age, I'm lucky I remember my own name sometimes much less what happened or didn't happen at a particular wedding 2 or 3 or 4 weeks earlier. But that's just me.