Hi,
I'm going to be location shooting for a 2 week period with a Canon xm2. Amongst other locations, I will be on a building site & am worried about getting good sound.
I'll be on my own, so will have to take care of all image & sound aspects myself. I need to know what kind of affordable sound equipment I should get in order to be able to cover both interviews (some kind of clip-on mic?) and location sound, where I'll have to be able to pick a voice out over loud background noise. I have a dm50 but this hardly makes any difference to the camera mic & also cannot be taken off the camera body. I would prefer to have more control over where I can direct the microphone.
Unfortunately, I don't know very much about sound & am worried about getting it clear & loud enough.
Any advice?...

Ideally I would use a semi-directional microphone like the k6/ME66 system from Sennheiser. Some of the Senior members of this forum have them and seem to be impressed. The main drawback in your case is that it needs to be pointed towards the sound source, either by the subject or by a sound assistant.

http://www.sennheiser.co.uk/uk/icm.nsf/root/03284

Failing that I would use a tie-clip microhone, the best you can afford. Think about a cardiod microphone rather than an onidirectional. The cardiod is a bit more likely to reject unwanted sounds. If you've got a bit of money to spare, the ew-112p G2 wireless system is worth a look.

http://www.sennheiser.co.uk/uk/icm.nsf/root/21411

Thanks a million!
Could you recommend accessories for this mic; a boom pole, windshield, etc.?
Together they could all be a bit pricy. Maybe you know of something similar, but less expensive?

As soon as anything is for video, the price doubles!

Sennheiser do a support system which is excellent but it's (in my opinion) outrageously expensive.
The best (value for money) windshield is definitely the softie from Rycote. It costs about £150 for a rubber handle/support and a furry foam cover. According to their publicity, it's just as good as a "Zeppelin" costing three times as much and will outlast your camcorder. My experience is that it does just what they claim. I have a battered old "Zeppelin" and the Softie is just as effective in the wind as the airship.

http://www.rycote.com/products/softie/index.asp

As for a boom (some anal-retentives will insist on calling it a fishpole but it's all the same thing) There are all sorts available, most of which seem excessive for what is, in effect, a plastic tube. One of Videoforums' Moderators, Alan Mills (a K6/ME66 user) built a boom out of a carbon-fibre fishing rod which seems to be a lot better than my "proper" aluminium boom which cost damn near a hundred quid!

I would split the audio recording into two sections. Firstly using the mics described get as clean as possible voices for your interviews, move the person/people you want to interview to a relatively quiet part of the building site (if possible) and when you are done with that, then record a wildtrack (how long is your building site piece anyway?) Well, whatever length it is record enough wildtrack to cover the entire piece to give you more choices at the editing stage. This means you will have two audio tracks, the interview voices and the wildtrack that you can play at a lower volume when you need to hear someone speaking. If you want to add visual variety to your interviews use the Insert Edit technique, to show what the interviewee is talking about rather than just a talking head onscreen for whatever number of minutes.

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