2old2play Pop Culture Series

As evidenced in my last entry, last Saturday I attended the Rock and Shock convention in Worcester, MA. While there I met up with Waterborn (who also prepared a great write-up of his experience) to shoot an interview with Wednesday 13, lead singer of the Murderdolls. Waterborn spoke about shooting more interviews like this, as huge events are coming to Boston all the time (video coverage of PAX East anyone?).

We are calling our interviews 2old2play Pop Culture Series. While it was great to go backstage and meet the Murderdolls' frontman, I am viewing it as a learning experience so we can rock the next interview. Two things were immediately apparent while editing the footage: first, the two-camera shoot is a bad idea if one camera is shitty consumer grade and the other professional grade; second, my foolproof mic setup idea didn't account for the fact that Wednesday 13 was a very soft speaker.

So in preparations for our next shoot, I'm fixing the problem areas. First, no more shitty consumer grade camera. Simple. Second, instead of the same directional microphone, we will use a hypercardioid mic - hypercardioid means it does an excellent job picking up sound close to it but doesn't register the shit in the background. The only way for this microphone to be effective is handheld, on-camera, and less than a foot away from the mouth of whoever is speaking.

Which leads me to my most recent project. I have an Audix OM5 Hypercardioid microphone for some voiceover work I do and all the necessary wiring to record into my video camera. On Wednesday I stopped by the local craft store and grabbed some materials to make a 2old2play microphone flag. Thursday I did some creative Google-ninja work and found a very high resolution 2old2play logo tucked away in a hidden folder on another site, and printed the logo on high-gloss paper. Filled the inside with some extra soundproofing phone, and here is the final product:

Yes, it looks kind of homemade but unless you have it in your hands you can't tell. Overall i'm hoping it gives us a sense of professionalism - both on location and on camera in the final production, all the while acting as a little 3-3/4" billboard for the website. Also helping the professionalism is a new intro that brntguy emailed me yesterday, which I will absolutely use for the next video we make.

That's it for now. Keep an eye on Waterborn's blog - he has a lot more content from Rock and Shock, including interviews with classic film stars like Adrienne Barbeau, on the way.