Using an invisible shotgun microphone right in the shot

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.

[Hiding a Mic in Plain Sight | Griffin Hammond via lensvid]