Guerrilla Productions Tutorials

Absolutely. No question.

Maybe your camera has a microphone connected to it or conveniently connected to the body. Great. Use a separate microphone anyway. Even if it’s a crappy microphone from the dollar store, it’ll probably be better for you than the built-in microphone on the camera.

Here’s why: if the microphone is attached to the camera in any solid-ish way (the cable doesn’t count), then the vibration of the camera motors will transmit right into the microphone. The worlds best microphone will pick these up, as well as the world’s crappiest, so save yourself the headache and just plain don’t use the built-in microphone.

If your camera doesn’t have an external microphone jack, beg or borrow one that does, or beg or borrow a MiniDisc recorder, or even an old tape recorder for pete’s sake, as long as it has an external microphone connector. Connect a microphone to that and record separately.

It’s okay if your camera’s built-in mic is still recording, because that will be useful later, but figure you’re going to just throw that sound out. In fact, chances are, you’ll be real close to the camera instead of the actors a lot of the time, so go ahead and between takes, speak notes to yourself into the mic such as “Joe dropped his line in that take” and so forth. The external mic won’t pick it up, but the camera mic will and you’ll have that note ready for you while you’re editing.

There’s a second reason why you want to keep that camera-mic audio around — for doing the final sound sync.

When you’re editing, you’ll probably be using a video editor that lets you see the audio waveforms. Maybe you’re a gifted sync artist, maybe not, but being able to see those waveforms is a godsend. Expand your editing tool to show the waveforms of the sound-connected-to-the-video (that is, the audio that the camera recorded) against the sound-connected-to-the-external-recorder (that is, the sound the other device recorded). Although the waves won’t look identical, they’ll be similar enough for you to match them right up.

Now, if your camera has an external microphone jack, then you’re made in the shade. Just plug your microphone into that jack, and find a good spot to place it and you’ll be getting great audio for the whole scene. On the downside, that means you have to keep your own notes, but you’re okay with that.

Master List of all Guerrilla Productions Tutorials