Re: Close ups

Here's another technique: Get there very early :)

I don't know exactly how much experience you have but if you're a one man show, then you need time to do both jobs: camera and audio. This post is about audio:

Wear headphones and listen very carefully: What's that buzz? What's the hum? Then search for them and turn off the refrigerator, turn off the A/C or heater, coffee pot, fluorescent lights...a million things really.

One potential problem to anticipate is the lav mic: If the talent is moving a lot, then the potential for rubbing the mic on clothing is a real problem. The best mic for this would be akin to a headset mic.

I recently shot an interview, and the location jimmy-rigged their audio so poorly that I could not get a line from the board into my camera, so I did my best to use a shotgun mic. Well the room was very loud, so I've spent hours and hours EQing the thing and at best it's still less than mediocre. Business-wise, I was not on the hook for the audio, so I bore no responsibility, and offered solutions for next time and now will produce the whole thing next (rather than just shoot). Anyway, this leads to my next questions: What about room tone? Will there be music in the room?

Last: You may also want to consider posting in other forums to get some feedback that's not limited to cinematography. There's a lot of them to choose from.