Phone interview documentary

[Tony Peck]

I'm recording a interview for a documentary. The guy we are interviewing is up there in age close to a 100 and he thought cameras or any crew would be to much for him so he suggested a phone interview. I'm tying to figure out the best quality technology we could use to record the phone interview.

Thanks,
Tony

 

[Owen Rennie]

You mean shoot with an iPhone or record audio of a phone call?

 

[Terry VerHaar]

I'm recording a interview for a documentary. The guy we are interviewing is up there in age close to a 100 and he thought cameras or any crew would be to much for him so he suggested a phone interview. I'm tying to figure out the best quality technology we could use to record the phone interview.

Thanks,
Tony

Maybe you can persuade him to just sit for an interview with the interviewer and equip that person with an unobtrusive digital recorder and a lav. IMO, a face-to-face interview might seem more intimate; and, in the end, maybe even more comfortable for the talent.

BTW - I am assuming a "phone interview" automatically suggests no video is being captured.

 

[Stacey Spears]

You might consider using something like Skype as well

 

[David Battistella]

Maybe you can persuade him to just sit for an interview with the interviewer and equip that person with an unobtrusive digital recorder and a lav. IMO, a face-to-face interview might seem more intimate; and, in the end, maybe even more comfortable for the talent.

BTW - I am assuming a "phone interview" automatically suggests no video is being captured.

I'd go for what terry suggests and try to be there. If you can't be there then use Skype with Call recorder. Call recorder can be configured to capture uncompressed audio through Skype and it separates the sides of the conversation into clean split tracks.

 

[Tony Peck]

We just need to record the audio from a telephone call conversation.

 

[Tony Peck]

I'd go for what terry suggests and try to be there. If you can't be there then use Skype with Call recorder. Call recorder can be configured to capture uncompressed audio through Skype and it separates the sides of the conversation into clean split tracks.

We will probably end up using Skype unless we can find a better option.
Thanks,
Tony

 

[David Battistella]

We will probably end up using Skype unless we can find a better option.
Thanks,
Tony

You probably won't find anything less complicated with better quality. The only thing you might do is hit up a radio studio that might have some dedicated hardware designed to improve phone calls and see if you can do it from a studio.

Otherwise 48k 24bit uncompressed from skype might be the very best option.

theonly other things would suggest is thattheyavaiod using a wireless phone on the other end as the can introduce noise that a hardline would not.

 

[Patrick Tresch]

Convince him his voice is too important not to record it with due respect. A phone doesn't make justice to his voice.

 

[Erich Roland]

How about putting together a super simple but high quality kit and ship it to the person, maybe a zoom recorder and a lav mic. If he has a care giver to help facilitate all the better. Then you do your interview via skpe (get that recording also just in case), and have the care giver put the recording bits back in the box along with a pre-addressed and paid-for shipping label (make it dummy proof to return).

On Skype make sure you like the lav mic position, and have them hold up the recorder to see its lights blinking to appropriate levels and away you go.

 

[Terry VerHaar]

If you are actually just recording from a telephone line, I can't see where worrying about sound equipment is very relevant. It's going to suck. lol

Get the best connection possible (I find a FaceTime audio call via wi-fi to be pretty good) and think about what you can do in post to clean it up.

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

Proper sound setup takes less time and money than proper sound post, and the latter cannot fully compensate for the lack of prior.

If the interview is of higher importance to the project I'd suggest doing what Erich proposed and make sure the man being interviewed just has to press the button. Even if the optimal levels and mic position are slightly missed it will require less sound post and sound much better than restaurated skype call.

I'd suggest Skype call route only if it is not possible to go with sound setup route and/or if the interview is of less importance.