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Teacher Documents Arctic with Sennheiser

When German teacher Friederike Marie Krüger accompanied the year-long MOSAiC expedition, she took along a pair of Sennheiser microphones

Friederike Marie Krüger
[/media-credit] Friederike Marie Krüger

Marlow, UK (December 16, 2020)—When German teacher Friederike Marie Krüger accompanied the year-long MOSAiC (Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate) expedition, she took along a pair of Sennheiser microphones to create a documentary film and other educational materials.

Normally, Krüger works as a geography teacher. “I wrote my dissertation at university on the global melting of glaciers,” says the former geography student. “But it was entirely by chance that I came across an advertisement for the MOSAiC expedition — they were explicitly looking for teachers to accompany the project. Actually, this is quite common practice in research expeditions, as the aim is to open up additional perspectives to a broader public.”

For indoor recordings onboard the ship, Krüger mainly used a Sennheiser MKE 440 mic mounted on her camera’s shoe mount. The two capsules are in a V-shaped configuration that acoustically cover an area corresponding to the field of view of a 35mm camera lens.

New Studio Microphone Wrap-Up : Fall 2020

For outside recordings, Krüger mostly used a Sennheiser MKH 416, which was protected from wind noise by an MZW 60-1 basket windshield fitted with an MZH 60-1 polyester fleece cover. The short shotgun mic was mounted on an MZS 20-1 suspension with a pistol grip that made it easy to control. “I quickly learned how important it is in an interview situation to point the shotgun microphone directly at the interview partner,” she says.

She also learned how to master the previously unfamiliar video and audio equipment: “I told myself that it can’t be all that difficult to record my personal impressions in sound and pictures,” is how the teacher described her learning-by-doing approach, which turned out in the end to be a positive one. “The video recordings in 4K and full HD resolution came out really well, and the same is true of the sound,” says Krüger.

“The Sennheiser microphones did a fantastic job in spite of the harsh Arctic conditions and I never had any problems with either of the models. The sound recordings were really successful: the MKE 440 definitely proved itself during the indoor recordings on board, while the MKH 416 showed its strengths as a shotgun microphone during the outside recordings. The basket windshield and protective cover meant that wind noise was never an issue.”

Sennheiser • www.sennheiser.com

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