Best Indie Film Audio Setup with Rode NTG 4+ Shotgun Mic

welcome my name is Tom anos and in this video I want to show you my new favorite microphone which is the road ntg4 plus uh this is a a shotgun directional microphone uh so it's used more for film uh production you know video production where you just want to capture sound in a certain direction it's very directional meaning whatever you point the microphone that's more that's pretty much where it's going to capture all the sound not too much from the from the side or from from behind uh the my previous you know favorite microphone was actually also from road that was the road ntg2 microphone uh and I've used it on on pretty much all of my Productions so if you've watched some of my films like for example dinner date uh which you can see on my website uh or or anything pretty much that I've done about a year ago uh those were all all the sound on those films was done using the road ntg2 so it's definitely a very capable and and a really good shotgun microphone here's a few just quick examples of the sound that I was able to get using that microphone Jake is down copy you know what to do Roger that and here's that same scene Now using the just the internal microphone and the camera Jake is down copy you know what to do Roger that and again here here's just a different scene from another film hey we ain't got that bear repellent but you know what works even better singing seriously you're up for a walk in the woods you want to sing loud and proud scare all the animals away especially your singing and again this is the same scene but now using the internal microphone in the camera hey we ain't got that bear repel but you know what works even better singing seriously you're up for a walk in the woods you want to sing loud and proud scare all the animals away especially your singing so as you guys could hear uh you know the root ntg2 is definitely capable of of capturing really good quality sound and like I said that was my go-to mic for for many years uh until I had a chance to start using this one this is a new fairly new microphone was released by by Road it's it's a a Australian company that specializes in microphones um and what's what's really cool about this microphone is that it's you know aside from just being able to capture even clearer you know even better quality sound you know over the the ntg2 uh the the the really cool improvement over this is that it has a built-in lithium battery so you no longer need to rely on having a phantom power if you don't know what that is phantom power basically supplies power to the microphone so you know Road ntg2 for example just like you know most of microphones out there require uh some kind of power in order to be able to capture the the audio so uh for example if I'm using it with my uh my zoom recorder here uh you know most recorders just like the Zoom one will be able to Output phantom power I guess the only drawback is is that it then it it draws a little bit more power from from your recorder so let's say you wanted to connect this microphone directly to your camera for example uh that doesn't Supply phantom power then you don't have to worry you can just you know charge up the internal lithium battery and then power power the microphone on and you're going to have sound and this internal battery is pretty amazing because not only is it so small that it doesn't really add that much to the length or the size of the microphone but it's going to power the microphone for up to 150 hours so definitely more than than than than than enough for any production uh to to charge the the microphone here uh we you have the XLR connection right in between there you have a micro USB connection just plug the plug plug that into uh any micro USB cable like the one that comes with your cell phones or for example if you're own location uh I done a video about these portable USB batteries they come in really handy like I said from many other devices and those are the ones that are I'll usually use if for example I forgot to charge my microphone so I can just plug in one of these USB batteries and uh like I said and just charge it up quickly um these batteries is the one from uh coacher uh this one is retails on Amazon right now for just $18 uh and you can also find it on a few other places uh and the same thing goes for the microphone or all the equipment that I'm going to show you in this video if you guys are interested in where you can find the best deals whether it's Amazon eBay maybe BH photo uh check all the links going to be in the description of this video so just look below or you can always go to my website at tomatos films.com some of the other features that this microphone has is is a high pass filter and a high frequency boost uh build right into the microphone so it's really cool in case like I said you wanted to plug it in directly to your camera uh you know that do doesn't have those kind of options if you're plugging in into like like I said like let's say a zoom recorder or any other portable recorder most of them will have those options in there but uh it's cool to just have it there right on the on the microphone uh now the quality of the microphone you know which is the most important uh if you guys just want to sort of hear for yourself and I had a chance actually to use this microphone on the last documentary that I worked on and just here's here a few examples of just the kind of AIO that you you'll be able to capture with this during the warm months I live on the boat during the warm months May June July August September October this is why God created the Caribbean for old white people who get cold you you can do uh you can do certain things to make life quite comfortable and uh yeah you do have to get used to a confined spot you the spaces yeah you have to live within that confin so that was the audio that was captured on the RO ntg4 plus microphone and now I'm going to play the same scene but with the audio from the internal camera microphone during the warm months I live on the boat during the warm months May June July August September October this is why God created the Caribbean for old white people who get cold you you can do uh you can do certain things to make your life quite comfortable and uh yeah you do have to get used to a confined spot you the spaces yeah you have to live within that confine and now this microphone comes with a few accessories uh the biggest ones here is just the the mount here which allows you to mount the the microphone to let's say to a boom Pole or using an adapter you can put it on the hatch Mount of your camera also comes with this foam windshield which you can just slip right over your microphone and that will obviously reduce the the wind noise uh now if you're actually going to be using this microphone in a in a kind of a more serious you know video or Film Production then I would definitely recommend that you don't just use the microphone alone like this to get really good quality AIO out of these microphones uh like you've seen in some of the behind the scenes that I've shown uh on the last documentary that I worked on you definitely want to have like a shock mount and and a blimp uh around the microphone to make sure that you know if you're for for example shaking the microphone all those vibrations are not heard and the same thing if the wind for example hits the microphone uh so that all the the noise from the wind is going to be reduced and so my favorite blimp to use is also from Road uh this this is the blimp right here so this going to protect you from like I said from any wind noise uh and also it has a you know really nice shock mount in there so here let me open it up you can kind of unscrew the the front and the back here and then you can listen these things here on the bottom and that allows you to basically slide this thing completely out and then here is the the microphone mount now obviously this will work with with any shotgun microphone uh you know including the like I said the the the road ntg4 plus so we'll just kind of slide it in here through the mount now one thing you'll notice up here is that the shock mount you know like I said it it takes away any of the the vibrations kind of you know or noise associated with vibrations but what's cool about it is that it doesn't use any of those little like rubber bands that most shockmounts use which if you've ever used them you'll know just how annoying it is because if one of them snaps or falls off it's always a hustle putting it back in well this one doesn't use it yet it works amazingly well there there's definitely no sound if you just kind of shaking it up here um also it allows you to kind of balance the microphone more on on your handle you can kind of move this back and forth and then you can you have little like measurements up here so you can remember your settings uh and like I said just if you want to have a good shock mount you can use it the microphone like this but definitely if you're outside and you're going to have you know a little bit of wind and you want to put the the blimp right over it so let's just slide it on top of here and tighten this so that will hold the boom blimp in place and then here we have this little connection for the cable the back put the front here quickly and there's your blimp and you know for example if you want you can just plug in right here you have the XLR connection you can plug that into to your like I said to your camera or to your recorder and you can definitely just use it like this so you know if you don't need to have the microphone really far you know let's say hanging over your shot uh you can just have the your audio guide just hold it hold the microphone right here by the the handle has a nice kind of handle with this soft padding on it h you can also adjust the angle here just you know just the way that it's pointing while you're holding it so you can point it any of these directions once you like the angle you just lock it in place um and then another thing for example is if you're outside and you have a lot of wind uh definitely you want to put uh you know something else up here which is you know usually it's called a dead cat I know it's kind of a weird name uh but it's basically big furry thing that I'm sure you guys have seen uh and it this this blimp comes with this so here's the the dead cut that you put over it just kind of slide it over here and then once you have it over what I what I like about this dead cut is that it just has this one kind of strap up here you just pull that and it tightens it and voila it's it's going to be nicely protected microphone so with this setup even if you're outside and you know you have just direct wind hitting the microphone you're not going to hear any of that wind and this was especially crucial when I was filming this documentary which was about sailboats and you know we were a lot of times we were just out over the water and we were just getting you know we obviously sell BS need a lot of wind to sell so obviously there was a lot of wind like I said hitting the microphone but again with this with this you know blimp and with the dec on it the AIO had you know there was no problems with the with the wind if you guys want to hear there's another example right here we we had lived in petero for quite a while and I'd had a boat on Lake Ontario for quite a few years at that point and we decided to move here so we came down here we spent a summer on this boat and then we bought a house and we had the house for a while and we kind of went from well what do we need the house for we can live on the boat and that's pretty much how we got to this point um I worked in the factory I was on the floor he was my boss yes and we got married and then we found out that our Factory was closing and I wanted to go back to school so I went back to college and we moved with my mother to the port of Newcastle and here's how the same shot now sounds with the built-in microphone on the camera I had a boat onaral for quite a few years I here now definitely if you want to use this microphone you know in a in a film where many of the times you're going to have to have it sort of further out you know over your talent uh then you're going to need a a boom pole for it my favorite boom pole is is again from Road uh this one extends up to 10 ft it's a 5section boom pole just loosen these rings and allows you to extend it so 10 ft is definitely more than enough uh for Film Production uh what's cool about it is that it has uh it allows you to internally feed the XLR cable which minimizes some of the noise with you know associated with the cable kind of flying around uh and it has you know the sort of a foam grip up here uh and over it's just it's a light boom pole so it's light but it's it's very sturdy so uh really great and it you know at the same time like I said it's it's a five section boom pole and it really allows you to to sort of fold it to a pretty compact size as you guys see up here now how would I use this whole sort of setup you know when I'm when I'm out on location and and like I said uh let's say I just have one person you know doing the sound well here let me just show you guys how I kind of put it all together so usually I'll take my my blimp here and I'll just kind of thread it here on the on the boom pole Rotator like that the boomo uses an industry standard 38 of an inch thread uh so once you have it in there you're going to connect the XLR cable here to the bottom of the handle and then you know that that now means the microphone is connected like I said goes the the cable goes through the handle and then up here and goes through the whole boom pole and as you can see I have it coming out at the end of the boom pole and then I have a lot of like excess cable definitely you you don't need as much as this uh but you know the reason why I have so much cable is because if you extend the boom pole up to 10 ft then like I said this way I still have extra cable and this way as you can see I can just have my sound guide sort of holding it up here and the cable the the excess cable just kind of hangs down here and it's not in the way uh now how would you connect this now to a recorder and uh you know and also just so it's comfortable to use I use the zoom H5 uh recorder uh but this you know pretty much will apply to any recorder that that you prefer to use this is the one that I find is has amazing AIO quality and you know the zoom H6 also works great or the zoom h4n is pretty good this a slightly better quality I just find that it's this kind of nice you know mid mid-price kind of a recorder that allows has a lot of cool functions in it uh which I've reviewed this recorder in another video so if you guys more have want more information about it make sure to check out that video now you know a big problem that I know at the beginning when I was sort of trying to figure out how to do sound was just sort of like what to do with this recorder because obviously if you have one guy doing audio he's going to be holding the boom pole and he doesn't really you know doesn't have anywhere you know unless he has a third arm growing out of his back or something he's not able to hold that recorder and you know not only that but be able to change the settings on it um uh one way of doing it is you know which I've seen some people doing it and and I've done it in the past is to attach a little line yard and kind of have it hanging off of your of your neck uh which works problem with that is it's again you have the the recorder kind of bouncing around sometimes also it's might be hard to seeing the levels on it and then if you want to let's say take a break and put this whole thing down then then you also have to you know take the the zoom recorder off because it's it's going to be attached with the XLR cable to this to the microphone so what I found best way to do it is to use this little um articulated arm which is actually this one's just meant for mounting uh you know monitors uh and this little clamp you can get this at Amazon or Ebay again for all the links check the description uh of this video or go to my website uh anyways what I do is I basically put this little clamp over the boomo tighten it and then here as you can see where instead of attaching the monitor since this is you know a quar in thre thread standard kind of thread that you would use you know on your tripod or or or you know on your monitors and it's the same kind of thread that comes on the zoom H5 recorder or the H6 or or h4n and so I just kind of thread it over here and once I have it in place then now I can just plug the here the other end of the XLR cable now what's great about this whole setup is as you can see it's all sort of self so I can have one person comfortably holding the boom uh you know adjusting the audio levels you can also see what the levels you know what the audio is that's coming in uh he doesn't have to worry about you know this thing being you know kind of dangling on his neck or having it the recorder in his packet and one person like I said Can comfortably operate this whole thing and then you know when he's done he can just put it away take a break you know he doesn't have to detach any cables it's all sort of like I said all attached into as one piece and then again ready for another taking and just take it and again he's very quickly ready to go so that's sort of my preferred setup for for you know for these kind of more independent kind of film Productions obviously in a bigger budget film you might have several guys doing the audio so might you might have a few boom operators and then you might have one guy who's doing all the mix mixing and mix boards and all that stuff but like I said for an indie production where you're just going to have one microphone maybe a few I don't know La mics you can again connect them to to your uh recorder up here but it's kind of nice to have it all attached together and it's everything's kind of attached to this this boom pole so definitely if you guys want you know uh looking for a an affordable but also a very sort of Handy and very comfortable way of recording good quality audio I would recommend uh the the roll boom pole uh the roled you know blimp uh with with the dead cut and also the road ntg4 microphone and also you know the zoom h5n recorder if you guys are looking for affordable but good quality uh portable recorder uh the last thing I wanted to talk about is just quickly the the prices of all these things so the road boomle that's going to cost around $150 as of right now uh the blimp with the shock mount handle and the dead cut that is $300 and the road ntg4 microphone is going to cost you around $400 anyways I hope this video will answer some of the questions when it comes to you know how to capture good quality audio for your next film or video production uh if you guys want more information about each of the items or uh if for example if you guys want to see some of the other equipment reviews that I have or exclusive film making tutorials you can find all of that and a lot more on my website which is tomatos films.com thank you guys and I'll see you next time

Channel: Tom Antos

Views: 423,169

Keywords: filmmaking, film school, tutorials, polcan99, Tom Antos, shotgun, mic, microphone, review, indie, film, audio, setup, kit, how to, tutorial, Rode, NTG 2, NTG 4+, Zoom H5, audio recorder, blimp, deadcat, boompole

Id: -7Dgk8_wxck

Length: 18min 38sec (1118 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 12 2016