Every film, every TV show, every serious video production uses shotgun microphones. They look like long metal tubes, they mount on boom poles or cameras, and they’re built to hear what they’re pointed at while ignoring everything else.
A shotgun microphone is a long, tube-shaped condenser with an “interference tube” — a slotted metal tube extending in front of the capsule that mechanically rejects sound coming from the sides. The result is a microphone with a very narrow pickup pattern, like a flashlight beam: it hears mostly what it’s pointed at and rejects everything else.
The shotgun is the standard mic for film, video, and television production. On a movie set, you’ll see a sound recordist holding one on a long boom pole over the actors’ heads, just out of frame. On a YouTube video shoot, the shotgun is mounted on top of the camera. On a sports broadcast, parabolic dishes use shotguns to pick up cleat impacts and player chatter.