Topic: Need Advice on Taping a Play

[Cools]

Hello all,

I good friend of mine is setting up a charity play at a local church and I've volunteered to help him out by video taping it so he has it on DVD for the actors, etc. I've been doing video for a year or so now and I think I'll manage to get decent quality footage given the setting. It's getting "acceptable" audio that I'm concerned about right now.

The location isn't particularly video or audio friendly: it's a large basement. The stage is very wide and basically consists of 3 8-10 meter stages put together. While I've definitely made a commitment to try and get good audio for video projects, I currently have no mic setup for such situations (plays).

The place is too wide to cover with just 2 mics on the sides and I probably won't have a big enough budget to get more than 2 mics to start with. Also, the public is going to be sitting very close (probably 2 meters away) and the stage itself is ground level so I might get a lot of audience noise if I put the mics at the back (makes filming very difficult to say the least).

Luckily, each stage acts pretty much as it's own play and there isn't much cross action between them. So I'm thinking of filming each stage by itself over 3 days and mic each one on its own with 2 mics and a backup on the camera itself (shotgun). I now need your advice on which mics to go with.

Obviously, I'd like to invest in mics I could use in similar situations in the future, but also those that could come in handy in other jobs, such as my regular video work (mainly interviews, documentaries and short film) (though I understand that no one mic can do it all).

The mics I'm leaning towards right now are the AKG ULS. I've read good things about them, in particular as boom mics (with the hyper module) for video work. They are in my budget, are modular so I could potentially use them for a number of situations, etc.

What do you guys think? Would the AKG mics be a good solution to go with at this point? Alternatives?

Thank you in advance!