The built-in mike on the camera is great for capturing street-scenes or general noisy environment, but not good for interviews and such because: 1. You may often hear the cameraman breathing and/or fumbling for the controls. 2. You will hear everything else happening in the room and, possibly, outside the room also. 3. The sound of the subject will be strangely hollow, as if he/she is speaking from inside a phone booth. 4. You will also wonder what that whizzing sound is in the background (your camera motor).

The lav-mike and the shotgun-mike have different uses and advantages, which I will outline henceforth:

A shotgun-mike is usually placed just over and out of the picture the camera sees. The mike needs to be in front of, and pointing straight at the mouth of the person speaking. It usually ends up about 45 degrees pointing down from a mike-stand with a boom, over the subjects' head. In other words, you want the mike as close to the persons' mouth without being seen. This type of mike is designed to "focus" on whatever it is pointing at, while other sounds will be muffled. It is a good source for sound as long as the person is not moving much.

A Lavaliere mike is the kind you see on news-anchors and such. They are tiny mikes that have little clips that can grab onto (yes) a lavaliere - or sit in the gap of a shirt. Try to stay away from the speakers' neck or right under their chin. The sound is better from around the chest area. Hide the mike cable by leading it inside jackets, sweaters or shirts. It looks so tacky when people don't take the time to do this.

I like to hide the lavaliere mike completely by taping it under clothing or peeking out of a pocket, but this takes skill and practise. In Hollywood I learned the best kept secret of the trade: Gaffers Tape. It's like duct tape, but made with cloth. You can rip it with your hands, but you could tape a tool chest onto a wall with it. I use it for hiding lavaliere mikes in clothing. One great hiding place (if the subject is a woman) is actually (ahem) under the shirt, clipped to the bra right in the middle. In this case I recommend you let the talent affix the mike herself. Hiding the mike under clothing is also a good trick to know on a windy day. Just be careful the clothing isn't so thick that everything comes out muffled.

In either case it is important that you test the mike before you put it on the talent. When things have to fixed in the middle of production, talent (and clients) get nervous.

I mentioned earlier that you probably have at least two audio tracks available on your camera (some have four!). You can buy sound-mixers and feed the output directly into your camera, so instead of having to choose between the lav. and shotgun, it is possible to record both - separately. You can then wait until you edit to make a choice between the two tracks. This is a good thing since a lavaliere mike can suffer from clothing-noise or breathing - and the boom-mike can loose quality if the person changes position or there may be other noises in the environment.

There is a little 2 channel mixer-box that mounts right onto your camera made just for the purpose above. I don't know what it's called, but you can get it a Samys. Cost is around a hundred bucks.

A final note on lavelier-mikes: If you can afford it, get the wireless kind. You will soon need it, and most people expect it. I have tried many brands and been up many a muddy creek with tons of snaps, whips, crackle and static to deal with. Recently I bought a Sennheiser Evolution Series 100. My god. It just works. The whole thing was around $400.00 and worth every penny. Thank you Sennheiser.

IF your camera has manual control of the recording level, use it as soon as your figure out how. When the automatic level is working the camera shows great interest for any long pauses and "pulls up" the background noise. This may not be a big deal for a short interview, but in the long run it gets noticed. Watch the level. If you record too loud, the distortion cannot be removed. If you record too low it can often be fixed in editing. If your camera does not have manual control, you can still avoid most of the automatic sound pull-ups by being careful not to run the mikes too hot (loud). Experiment before the shoot, turning the mixer up and down until the sound stays comfortable between talk and silence.