Sometimes, you want to use a shotgun microphone, but the angle is too wide, or the location demands that the microphone would be very close to the subject. So close that it gets in the shot. Videographer Griffin Hammond has a great tip on placing a shotgun mic very close to your subject, while not seeing it in the final frame. Think invisible shotgun mic.
The trick is to actually place the shotgun very close to the subject (i.e. in the frame) but making sure that nothing is moving behind or in front of it. Then masking the video “in post” with a piece of frame that does not have that microphone in it.
Griffin goes through the process of making the mask in Final Cut Pro, but similar tricks exist in all editing software.
Here are two quick samples of the microphone, a Rode NTG-3 in this case, disappears from the frame.
Just make sure that nothing moves in the area of the mask, that just looks weird.
I do this with lights often.
its a good tip to do with lights also
Awesome 3 minutes
Can’t you just bring the microphone up out of shot and not have to do any extra work in post?
Preferable to get it out of shot but sometimes getting the mic as close as possible is paramount, ie background noise or reverberant space.
I prefer to hide a lav and low pass it if necessary.