Outstanding Audio – Cutting the Cord

WE’VE NOW REACHED the third part of this series on how to achieve outstanding audio, and by now you’re hopefully in a pretty good position to be taking your sound seriously. As you get more involved in this whole area it’s almost inevitable that you’ll soon be thinking about making moves into wireless mics, and will be weighing up the pros and cons of each system.

Working with wireless is something that some filmmakers get slightly edgy about. It has to be said that there’s something comforting about having a mic physically wired to a recorder, mixer or into your camera. As long as the cable is decent, there’s not much to consider: you simply plug it in, set your levels and off you go. However straightforward a cable connection appears to be, however, things aren’t always so clear-cut. Before we delve into more detail about specific systems, let’s take a closer look at a few reasons why, as a professional operator, you’d might be better off to go for wireless over wired.

Being tethered isn’t ideal, and sometimes trailing wires across the floor can be a trip hazard and altogether impractical. It’s even less desirable if you happen to be a single shooter, running around with a camera trying to do a thousand things. The last thing you need would be a cable hanging around. There’s also the point that, if you’re shooting with a boom mic on a pole, an unfastened cable can cause rattles, while any movement runs the risk of loosening connections.