Pretty clean though I’d worry about the mic flopping around on the arm and all non-Arri matteboxes at some point in the day will fill me with irrational rage.

Yeah exactly, the battery just isn’t on in this photo. That was the only free place I could find to stick the lav receiver without being in the way. What you don’t see in this photo is on the other side of camera, I also had to velcro a Zoom H4 so we could go XLR into that and that line-out from the H4 into the Mini audio port for sync sound.

We had to set it up this way because the director/operator said he noticed the quality wasn’t as good when going straight into the Mini’s A-box. But ended up making the build pretty cumbersome, and the H4 has its own host of issues that made the process of recording sound pretty annoying (like that it doesn’t send audio line-out unless you’re recording, so we had to hit record every time we wanted to get audio even though it was being piped directly into the camera, and then had to remember to format the audio SD card before it filled up otherwise it would stop recording and we’d lose sound. That’s why you always hire a sound guy…)

To address your other comment, yeah the boom mic ended up being kinda pointless since we just lav’d all the interviews. Used the boom occasionally for ambiance/b-roll, but the arm was pretty sturdy for the most part and didn’t flop around. And yeah I agree, Bright Tangerine matteboxes can be a pain (don’t even get me started on the cheap one that doesn’t have filter trays, you just drop them in the front and they’re held in by the lip. Have had 2 filters fall out and break before, that thing sucks ass)