Whenever I tend to shoot my projects, I get carried away in the excitement of the planning in the pre-production stages, with brainstorming, scripting and storyboarding. Then whilst shooting it becomes the need to get that perfect shot in short time frame. Then in the post-production stage it is about making what has been filmed look aesthetically pleasing to the audience, this is the time to make sure that the footage we have is correct and that it is something that the consumer will be interested in and be able to follow. However, it is also at this stage in post-production and editing whereby the quality of sound is most obvious.
Sound is equally important as the visual, it would be no use to have an amazing visuals and narrative, and then incoherent sound. This would render the whole project useless, and call for it all to be reshot again with better quality, wasting time and money. The technical side of sound is something that needs to be well thought through looking at the pros and cons of different types of microphones. Lambda Films, a video production company posted a video on youtube about Types of Microphones, in the video they discuss the different types of microphones that could be used to pick up audio.
The types of microphone used depends on what you are filming, the video blog outlines four different microphones, Lavalier, shotgun, bi-directional and cardioid microphones. Firstly discussing the Lavalier microphone, this one is the most portable out of the four mentioned in the video, and it clips onto the subject, making it ideal for interviews. They are discrete as they can be clipped onto clothing and hidden, nevertheless they continue to pick up speech very clearly. They can come either as wireless or wired, both having benefits of their own. Wireless meaning that it allows for even more portability, cable free, whereas wired microphones mean that you do not need to mess about and worry about audio channels or batteries. Other key situations to use the Lavalier microphone would be theatre and for public speaking situations. Shotgun microphones are the most directional, meaning they pick up the sound extremely well at what they are pointing at, but are significantly less sensitive to the side and the back of the microphone. This can be seen as both a positive and negative, because it means that they do not pick up surrounding audio, focusing only on what it is pointing at. This makes them good for use on boom poles, meaning they are most commonly used on television and film sets. Unlike shotgun microphones, bi-directional pick up audio equally from both the back and the front and the cardioid ones pick up sound only from the front however it is less sensitive than the shotguns microphones, instead making them good for live vocals.
I have only given you a brief introduction into the different types of microphones, but even this shows how each of the four differ and that if they are not used correctly they will not benefit the project. If anything potentially ruining the visual image and creating unnecessary work in post-production. I found this series of video blogs, one demonstrating the benefits of online video, so take a look at that by clicking here!