News

All-in-one recording microphone continues the concepts of the HHB FlashMic... Read more

IBC 2009, HHB Stand 8.E54: The 12th IAAF World Championships in Athletics took place in Berlin in August and saw competitors from the home nation enjoying particular success. As a consequence, sports journalists from the local Berlin radio station ‘105.5 SPREERADIO’ were particularly busy recording interviews with winning athletes at the Champions Club, a venue in which competitors came together with representatives of top German and international sports, along with sponsors and guests from the fields of business, politics and the media.... Read more

With Red Nose Day just over a week away, HHB reports that the Comic Relief media team is using FlashMic Digital Recording Microphones to gather interviews from participating celebrities, members of the public, and from those whose lives are transformed by the work of Comic Relief.... Read more

For three months this summer, Icelandic journalist Guòmundur Gunnarsson interviewed more than 300 of his fellow countryman with a FlashMic for his radio program ‘Flækingur’.... Read more

HHB has shipped its 10,000th FlashMic. First launched at IBC three years ago, the innovative Digital Recording Microphone quickly caught the imagination of major broadcasters and news organisations around the world and is now the interview recorder of choice for journalists working in all areas of the media.... Read more

In an unsurpassed demonstration of its sound quality and ease of use, the HHB FlashMic has been used to compile an urban London soundtrack for an arts project executed by members of the public.... Read more

The Mark Twain Elementary School in Wheeling, Ohio is using the FlashMic to record lessons and projects for uploading to the Internet... Read more

Actor Jamie Foxx surprised everyone when he pulled out his FlashMic on Jay Leno’s Tonight Show and proceeded to tell the audience all about it.... Read more

The prestigious Syngenta ABSW Science Writers’ Awards took place at The Royal Society in London and saw New Voice category winner Anna Lacey delighted to receive her prize of a FlashMic Digital Recording Microphone from Mohit Bakaya, Commissioning Editor, BBC Radio 4.... Read more

Classic FM Magazine journalist Sarah Kirkup used the FlashMic to capture interviews with the stars of the classical music world at the Classical Brit Awards.... Read more

Building on a successful project at NAB earlier this year, UK-based media production company Eye-i is again using the FlashMic Digital Recording Microphone from HHB Communications to record podcasts at IBC.... Read more

Writer and director Scott Evans packed his HHB FlashMic when heading for The Shoot Out Boulder 24-Hour Filmmaking Festival, which pits participants against the clock to create a film, from story conception to final Foley, within 24 hours.... Read more

 

Evans knew the FlashMic DRM85, which combines the pristine sound quality of a Sennheiser omni-directional condenser capsule with 1GB of self-contained flash memory and the ability to easily record more than 18 hours of audio, would dramatically simplify his workflow. He didn't know it would save the shoot!

The rules of the game state the final product must be less than seven minutes long and contain five of 11 required items, such as Boulder landmarks or thematic concepts. While sound can be edited and dubbed, no video editing is allowed. Evans' group spent their first evening scouting locations and creating their story. After a few hours of sleep they began their shoot, which had two required exterior locations in Boulder and several interiors and exteriors 40 miles away.

The FlashMic merged with the ensuing mania, recording sound files with a single button-push that were instantly accessible on Evans' computer. Each recording came in as a discrete sound file with its own timestamp. "Filmmaking is all about workflow. Don't underestimate the importance of this," he says. "FlashMic gave us digital audio clips that we could use directly. No cutting, segregating, or trimming was required. I just dropped each sound file into the timeline and that was it."

Evans’ film, "Wet Paint," is a dance movie about a divorcing couple forced to spend time together because of a mishap in painting a basement floor. Part of the self-assigned challenge for Evans' team was to deliver an unusually high-quality soundtrack. They set their movie to an original recording by Denver swing orchestra Gypsy Swing Revue, setting a high benchmark for Foley and dialogue. Although he had the option to use longer running MPEG files, Evans chose to use the FlashMic to record industry-standard 48kHz/16-bit audio files. Combined with the transparency of its Sennheiser omni-directional microphone capsule, the final sound for the project was honest and beautiful.

With the video in the can, having taken three hours longer than expected, there was barely an hour left to trim the music tracks and add Foley. “The music editing took longer than we expected,” says Evans. "Since we recorded the Foley with the FlashMic, it dropped right in and was one of the few things that actually took less time than we planned. Unfortunately, we had put off recording two cell phone rings that were critical to the story, which didn't make sense without them. So I gave the FlashMic and the cell phones to my assistant director, who is not an audio person. Two minutes later, I connected the FlashMic to the computer, downloaded the 'ring-ring' sound files, and dropped them into the timeline. The FlashMic saved the production, literally."