Nothing kills the conversational flow of an interview faster than putting a big, honkin’ microphone in front of people’s faces. Clipping a lapel mic to their sweater is no better. Perhaps just dropping an iPhone on the table is less obtrusive and more “normal” to a interviewee… but what is the sound quality like? And what impact does a visible phone have on the conversation? There’s some interesting research emerging about how even just having a phone in view affects the depth and significance of a conversation. Shelley Turkle, in an interview about her book, Reclaiming Conversation, cites studies that observe “If you put a cell phone into a social interaction, it does two things: First, it decreases the quality of what you talk about, because you talk about things where you wouldn’t mind being interrupted, which makes sense, and, secondly, it decreases the empathic connection that people feel toward each other.” (Link to Interview)
But in my case, it’s no big deal. I’m not talking about anything traumatic with my subjects. I’m not uncovering deep emotional damage from the past. I’m not creating this fragile, easily lost “safe space to be vulnerable.” In my case, we’re talking shop about preaching. So here’s my setup. And it uses a big honkin’ mic.
MAIN SETUP
I use a Blue Yeti USB microphone. It looks like this. It is not unobtrusive. It’s not designed to be. It’s a big, obvious, even distracting mic. But it’s a great mic with four different pickup patterns: cardiod, omnidirectional, stereo, and bidirectional. This means as an interviewer, I can have the mic between us, off to one side using the stereo pickup pattern, and both voices will be in the mic’s sweet spot and all other noise will be muted comparatively.
I connect this mic to my iPad Pro 11” using Apple’s USB-C to USB adapter. There are some YouTube videos out there that say these mics need additional power; the videos say that the iPad can’t drive this mic without some kind of hub and a connection to an AC outlet. But Blue’s own website has verified compatibility, and I have just finished 5 interviews in 2 days with this setup. It works just fine!
BACKUP SETUP
You only get one shot at interviewing someone. There’s no way to call someone back and say, “Hey, my tech failed. Can we get together again and can we redo the interview?” Always have an independent backup recorder running. In my case, I dropped my iPhone down beside my BHM (big honkin’ mic) using the Voice Recorder Pro app. Rock solid build, has never crashed on me, and provides a solid backup recording in case the iPad glitches out.
BUT WAIT — WHAT ABOUT THE iPAD APP?
That’s a post for another day. Because I’m not using what one might consider a typical audio recording app on my iPad. I’ve connected this big mic to my iPad for a very specific reason — I want to link any jotting I do during the interview to the specific audio happening at that time. There’s a great app for that…