The Board < 48 Hour Film Festival Entry

How important would you say a good shotgun mic is when paired with the H4N? I only have an H4N and a Rode VideoMic Pro for sound recording, which works perfectly when mounted on top of my rig.

However, obviously you don't do that when doing a short film. You stick it on a poll.

Is the AT 835ST worth the price over, say, a Rode NTG-2 or NTG-3? Is spending 500+ on a shotgun mic important if I'm only using a H4n?

Oh and random question, but did you shoot this using the technicolor profile?

It's extremely important. Sound is 50 % of a movie! I would say get something better than the AT, so yes using the H4n is not used for it's mic just it's recording ability. And no I did not hear about this profile until I just did research on it today after your question.

fcrabbath wrote in post #12432662
It's extremely important. Sound is 50 % of a movie! I would say get something better than the AT, so yes using the H4n is not used for it's mic just it's recording ability. And no I did not hear about this profile until I just did research on it today after your question.

I absolutely agree with you about sound, I just didn't know if the H4n was a good enough recorder for high end mics to make a difference (I guess $600 isn't high end... but it is for me, heh). Right now I've got an H4n with a Rode Videomic pro which works great for interviews since I can just mount it on the camera. Unfortunately, you can't boom the Videomic pro because it has an unbalanced connection, thus long cords necessary to boom it will make the audio unusbable.

I was looking at the Rode NTG-2... but I guess if paying a premium for a mic makes that big of a difference when paired with an H4n, I'll save up for a 600-800 dollar one.

Technicolor profile is great for grading.

http://philipbloom.net​/2011/04/30/technicolo​r/

There's technical explanations that show how increased the latitude beyond simply changing the curves of the profile... but it's very technical and I can barely understand it myself. Something about logarithmic color space vs rec 709 (which the old ones used) which allows the profile to evenly distribute the bitrate information to the entire latitude range.

I've gotten great results with it.

Very impressed that you created such a good film in 48 hours

Yeah, a sound pro once told me that unless you spend at least 800 dollars on a mic - it's not worth it. Good luck and thanks for the kind words.

One last question:

I saw in your last film "Clocked Out" that you used an AT 875 mic with a Zoom h4n. That mic is $450 cheaper than the one you used in this film. Did you notice a substantial difference in the quality of your audio in this piece? Did you feel that the AT 875 didn't deliver as needed for short film work, hence your reasoning to upgrade?

I'm sorry that was actually a typo, I used the same mic. The more expensive one. I could never get the model name right because I have a product with that number too. The (875).