Rode University – ENG sound lessons

I had previously written about the “Rode University,” an online set of instructional videos presented by the mic company Rode. The first two lessons were pretty good introductions to using mics on location, so when I got an email that they had a new lesson up on ENG mics, I thought I'd check it out.

Firstly, let me say that I dislike the log-in requirements even more this time than I did the first. I couldn't remember the password, and had to wait to log in, and other than getting my email address, I'm not sure what the point of me registering is. It doesn't seem to keep track of where I've been or anything like that. The interface for navigating the university, while pretty, just seems to make it harder to find and go to the things you want.

Once in, I did find two new parts I hadn't seen before. The first one covers two on-camera mics; the VideoMic and Stereo VideoMic. At $149 and $249, these mics are mini-shotguns that are intended to produce improved results compared to the internal mics found on most consumer and pro-sumer cameras. The second episode focuses on larger (and more expensive) shotgun mics.

While these two episodes add a bit more information to that given in the first two segments, and had a few pointers on the role of the sound man when working with a cameraman, I don't think these were as compelling or as informative as the first two episodes.




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