Turn An iPod Touch Or iPhone 4 Into A Mobile Interview Kit

The iPod touch has become a great tool for those needing to shoot quick easy videos. One particularly interesting scenario is: What if you want to shoot an interview on your iPod touch? There are a few things to consider. First, how to get good sound quality, especially in noisy atmospheres. Second, is distance; to have a good looking video interview you need to have enough distance to get two people into the shot. The last thing: you will want something very portable, yet sturdy. I have taken these things into consideration when building my “iPod touch Interview Kit.” The first part of the kit is a simple microphone. The one I bought is a Shure C606-WD and can be found on Amazon for around $30. The microphone was chosen because of its low cost and great reviews on Amazon (currently this microphone is unavailable on Amazon, but you should be able to find something similar). The next addition to the kit is a way to connect that microphone to my iPod touch. To do this I found an adapter at KVConnection called the iPhone XLR microphone and 1/8 inch headphone adapter. The adapter allows you to hook any regular microphone up to your iPod touch through the headphone jack. The adapter also has a line out so you can plug in headphones and listen to audio on your iPod. After shipping this ended up costing around $27. When I connected the microphone to this adapter it worked great. I was now receiving all my audio through the new microphone. One small problem; the adapter was too short. So the next item I needed to pick up was a simple female to male XLR cable. The one I purchased was from MonoPrice, it's the three foot cable and costs less than $10 after shipping. Now my kit had a way to record high quality audio at a distance. The final piece to make this kit complete was a way to hold my iPod touch. The solution I found was from ThoughtOut and is called the NAJA King FORM. The NAJA King is a very sturdy, but flexible dock/stand for the iPod or iPhone. It extends three feet, which provides plenty of space to record the interviews. I’ve found it to be perfect for shooting videos using the front-facing camera. The cost was around $50 after shipping.

When all was said and done the kit cost around $120 (not including the iPod), so it may not be for everyone. But, it is a fairly inexpensive way to record interviews using that front-facing camera on your new iPod touch or iPhone 4. The great thing about using the front-facing camera is you can actually see what you are shooting! Previously you needed a camera man to make sure the videos looked good, but now you can actually be a one man show and produce some great content. Now, I am waiting for a Mophie JuicePack for the new iPod touch. The great thing about the adapter for the microphone is that you can still use the dock connector. This means I can still charge the iPod while I record video. Note that you will want to have plenty of empty room on your iPod touch as video can fill it up very quickly. The iPad (using the camera connection kit) may become a great companion for this setup, just to offload video as I’m shooting through the day. Here is the final result:

Recap of the Kit:

• iPod touch - $229 to $399
• Shure C606-WD - $30 (Currently Unavailable - Any XLR microphone will work fine)
• iPhone XLR microphone and 1/8 inch headphone adapter - $23.50
• XLR cable - female to male - $4.83
• NAJA King Form - $41.99

If you have any recommendations for improving this kit let me know in the comments below!

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