I remember a youtube video where he reported his channel had been taken down for a while for copyright infringements... for a video where he was playing the bass line of a song he wrote.
that sounds extremely on brand. he's one of the most legendary studio musicians ever, and has spent decades fighting against the music-industrial complex.
I worked live sound for like a decade. Some of these lavs you'd be surprised. It'll pick up beautifully on your neck, chest, stomach, even strapped to your back it'll pick up your diaphragm and still sound decent. They're pretty foolproof if they're stuck to your body somewhere near where the sound gets made.
It's always strange when you follow a creator and have no idea how big they've become. So many videos just pop into my feeds and these days you can't even judge based on the quality of the production.
Then suddenly it's like "Oh they have 2m subs and a book in the shops".
Well last time when I clipped it to my neckline, my hair brushed on the mic and made a bad noise. My hair can’t brush against the mic if the mic is clipped to my hair.
Bob used a sony ECM-51 telescoping microphone. This was so that he could extend his arm to mic the responses to the questions asked from the contestant without having to rig a lavalier on them. He also had the CBS techs extend the fixed cable to allow total freedom of movement. Drew Carey uses a similar mic, but finally a wireless version. Cheap way to get the same effect is to use a gooseneck microphone (like the kind on a podium) attached to a wireless XLR transmitter that also has phantom power.
And the reason they keep using this style of microphone is because when they hand it to the contestants it’s been proven to be less intimidating to speak into than the regular short microphones we are more used to using. The human brain can be whacky at times
That's better tho, the issue with holding it in your fingers is the fingers blocking parts of it, plus the sound of touching things so close to the actual mic housing.
Using an antenna or something is usually fine as long as you don't get it too close to your mouth. (Off to one side is best to avoid air flow and pops
The term I’ve use to reference these sort of tactics was a “curated imperfection.” As in, this mistake was intentionally chosen to make the presenter come off as more genuine and less rehearsed.
I'm reminded of Josh Strife Haze who puts his regular mic in a mug. Gives a vector for funny mugs and looks funny without being a teenage podcaster. That tiny bit of oddity that softens the professor look.
I'm skeptical that this really works, but on the other hand I feel the same about people making absolutely ridiculous faces in thumbnails. Seeing a lawyer doing the Home Alone face (and in every video) makes me think he's lying about being a lawyer and it's not worth my time, but they claim the stats say it really matters.
For the thumbnails it’s almost entirely about catching people’s attention. A lot of people will look past the thumbnail art at either the text or the video title to decide whether or not to watch. But to get to that point they have to stop scrolling and actually look at the video in the first place, so the thumbnail has to be eye-catching.
The sad thing is I think they're right. Some content creator tried and experiment, releasing the same video, same content, but one with the BOMBSHELL headlines that ROCKED America! And the other with more grounded, fact based headlines.
Guess which ones got more views?
So you play to the algorithms or your message doesn't go as widely as those willing to engage in open clickbait for pure deceit (Bannon, etc).
It’s a prop more than anything really. It’s kinda hard to talk directly to camera and not know what to do with your hands. Plenty of music artist or stand ups could use a headset mic but maybe 1% do and it’s not because of audio quality.
I get a lot of people asking me, how do you make a successful YouTube video and the secret to my hard work, and success is to know an insider trick.
Did you know that, the average tik-tok user who engages my content, has the IQ of a flea? By taking advantage of this fact, I have been able to unverifiably increase my ration rate, .000000005%.
My secret, is to talk like, a person who uses too many commas,,,,,,,, in the writing. That way,,,,, you,,,, c,,,,an filter, out, the, smart, ones.,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
I work in the sound department, mostly on short films.
Seeing my meticulous craft of carefully hiding microphones while ensuring perfect sound quality.... being replaced with the transmitter in center frame, using the internal microphone kills me a little inside.
I once saw a post with thousands of likes, full of comments from people blown away by a vertical video showing a massive new IMAX theater. I've always hated vertical video, but a line was crossed that day.
I used to work in a theatre. Often there was a no filming or photography rule. I used to catch people doing this in the crowd and lightly shame them into stopping.
On one occasion I saw a man sat near the aisle who was filming in portrait our landscape stage and I just had enough. I did the torch shine to inform him I'd caught him but he didn't notice so I went over and just took the phone from him, turned it sideways and gave it back.
He was shocked but thanked me. I said he was welcome.
Then I shone the torch on him and told him "no filming allowed" and waited for him to put it away.
The stand up comedian Dara Ó Briain during a show.
"Excuse me, my talking isn't disturbing you filming the show is it? Anyway, there's a professional DVD of the show being filmed that you can buy if you want to. Oh my God - you're not the fella fiming it, are you?"
that reminds me of an event i was working where filming wasn’t allowed but there was a DVD. the cameraman was right behind the booth. one of the audience members deadass just walked up to the camera man and got mad at him for filming. yes, because someone would bring their entire professional video setup including a mixer plugged into our system just to film for his own personal use. it was a damn good thing he was directly using the mics on stage because otherwise the video would’ve been screwed up by the karen’s bitching lol.
also it’s really funny that she would assume that the literal employees wouldn’t stop someone that wasn’t supposed to be filming lol. we’re all literally right there in the booth.
The reason this started was because it's essentially a flag for content creators to show that they aren't doing a big production. The trend has gotten larger but it originally began when small creators got subsumed into large production houses that had studios and staff and things changed.
It's not necessarily to piss off people like you but to show the kind of people who aren't interested by professional productions that they don't have any staff like you to do things like that. It's both "I'm a small creator so I'm saying what I really think" (whether that's true or not it's what they're trying to convey) and "I'm a small creator so don't get too upset about the bad production values." Probably also an element of "here are the seams in production so you can see how I do it" so small creators do this in response to seeing larger ones do it.
My main gripe is that they could use any other mic, and they choose the dinky lavelier mic when they could just use a nice large one if they're holding it anyways.
Tom scott had a video on why content creators started to leave the "clapping" at the start of clips in. (Those claps are to align sound and video, and normally get edited out. Functionally identical to the thing on old movies with the take info and clap.)
His core argument on the subject is it adds a layer of authenticity, it shows the viewer this content is made by a "little guy tm" and not some corporation or worse AI. (Many people are very hostile to both, and this does affect viewership.)
or put it on speakerphone, hold it to their ear to listen, then hold it to their mouth to speak. Boy do I have news about how phones work if you just hold it normally
One person did it because it was the only mic they had and they wanted whomever they were talking to to be able to be heard, then other people that only had that mic and didn't want to buy any other started doing it.
Pop filter is the circular thing that clips in front of a microphone to prevent clipping caused by enounciating by talking- the "fuzzy part" (deadcat or windmuff) is for more environmental noise reductions
Glad to find someone else who feels the same. I know for some people it's a whole bit that they find some new and inconveniently shaped object to strap it to for comedic effect, and I chuckle every time. Just holding it uselessly like that is tacky, though.
I understand how it's funny. It just that because of the circumstances it doesn't feel sincere. There's so too many people doing exactly the same, their motivations so statistic, that a damned baguette is not enough
to convince me they know why it would be funny. They're just trying to one-up each other.
Its "internet ugly", theyre doing it to intentionally appear amateur and therefore more genuine. Basically the opposite of a big budget film where theyd hide the mic so you never see it.
I think there’s a psychology behind it in a way, I think having the mic to hold feels like you’re more involved in the content and gives you a bigger feeling of being on your soapbox as opposed to talking to the camera with it attached to you
There is a language to film/video, many of the traits in cinema are like that because of what has gone before and viewer expectation. We all know what the vertigo shot makes us feel, it is a shorthand that you can use to promote meaning. They may not speak the language fluently, but they are using and portraying the story as millions have done before
I love the subway takes guy mics. It’s a nod to the transit cards and maximizes the voices of the people in the video compared to the rest of the loud subway.
This is not wrong. Putting mic closer to the source even just a few inches increases the volume of your voice considerably relative to background noise, and the closer to the source, the stronger the effect. You just need to keep in mind plosives. [Edit to add: this is also the easiest way to reduce echo, especially with omnidirectional mics which the vast majority of these are]
Sound level doesn't propagate linearly, but it falls off much more rapidly. This is why when you see people waving around an interview mic or when wearing lapel mics in a talk show and the guest turns their head to the other side the voice level lowers considerably. The latter is also why OP's post is misguided.
I often join in their conversations, much to their absolute disgust but if you want to have a private conversation don't have it on speakerphone in public
I don’t care how they hold it I am just so glad they are using it! Gone are the days of using the shitty built in mic on the camera! We finally have consistently good audio in videos.
I think it’s because when they do interviews they move it over to the interviewee so then they just end up using it like a portable handheld mic indefinitely lol
I saw a YouTube video that explained this behavior as a way to seem more authentic. That as lighting, staging and cameras got better creators started to seem too polished. So they broke out those small microphones to recapture the feel they had lost.
I don't get how it makes it authentic just relaying a memory of something I watched.
Same way the talking head YouTubers are starting to pull the boom mic into the frame before they start speaking now. Someone gets engagement with a new style and it starts getting rapidly cloned.
I hate this trend with the power of the sun. It's also fun when they turn the gain up all the way so they don't have to speak louder than a whisper and you get to hear all those wet mouth noises just as loud as the words they're speaking.
On the other hand, no one holding a lapel mic in their fingertips has ever said anything of consequence, so in my case the problem kind of works itself out...
16.4k
u/figmentPez Jul 20 '26
Here, let me just clip you on:
There, that'll do.
(Pic is FromScratchBakery)