$20 Lav Mic with 20' Cord!
Knoptop is sounding off in his current episode of Quick FX! Today he shares his usage of a very important element in filmmaking: the microphone. In this example, he's using the Audio-Technica ATR 3350, an unbalanced wired lavalier microphone with an insanely long cord--20 feet! This means you can mic your talent and have plenty of slack to stay far enough away to frame your shot properly.
I use the Radio Shack version of this mic (which keeps going up in price for some reason) for my video intros, which has a shorter cord and is probably better if you're going to body-mount a mic and recorder on the talent (a nice alternative to a wireless mic). If you need a longer cord suitable for interviews or what Dave is doing here, then I'd go with his recommendation.
Of course, you are not going to get the same kind of quality that you would with an XLR lav, but we're talking about $20 and web delivery here, so no worries.
Comments
It's great for doing live narration when you're behind the camera, since the mic on the camera itself is usually directional plus it's amplified so you get a little more level out of it which comes in suprisingly handy.
I have the AT-6550 shotgun and its quality is hit-and-miss. I usually have to run it through Audacity to improve the quality, which would add significant time to the delivery of longer productions.