I’ve had many people ask me about shooting with DSLR’s for broadcast, particularly when clean synched audio is needed. There are several workarounds currently on the market for filmmakers attempting to shoot single system sound including options from Beachtek and Juicedlink. In my humble opinion the very best option is to record double system on an external recorder and feed back into the camera for a scratch track (which may be good enough for primary audio if your signal remains clean)
Here’s how I do it:
Choose your audio capture weapon – I prefer Lectrosonics line of wireless lavs for roaming capture and Audio Technicas AT897 shotgun microphone for boomed interviews or static setups. I then run the mics into my Tascam dr100 portable recorder. The Tascam is a great field recorder for a number of reasons including the line level 3.5mm out which will come in handy here in a second. Coffey Sound among others has built a padded 3.5mm cable, which if you know the Canon 5D mark II at all is exactly what’s needed to bring the line level of our spicy mics back down to a healthy mic level for those testy little mini stereo ins on the Canon. If you’ve followed my little roadmap here you’ll see that now you have the ability to record clean double system audio while at the same time laying down a sweet little guide track that might be good enough on it’s own. Here’s a refresher.
Mic -> field recorder -> line out -> dslr camera of choice -> movie magic.
If you want to take this to the next level like I do go ahead and mount all of that on a RedRock shoulder system and hit record on a glacier. More on that later. You can see in the picture below the handheld system with audio recorder attached. This was shot by none other than Julie on our latest adventure through Alberta.
Aaron Shooting a scene in Alberta