This is an evolving area. You need to decide before you shoot, say, the plaintiff's home life, will you record audio while shooting the video?
Attorneys tell me this depends on if you guess your judge will let you keep your out takes secret, treated as attorney work product.
If you guess your judge will force you to produce all the tape you shot, not just the part that was edited into your finished evidence, then you have to think about what the mic will pick up while shooting. It's possible, with a skilled producer, to end up with a camera original tape that just has the evidence you want on it, but nothing prejudicial. It's called cut in the camera.
I've shot thousands of hours with this mindset, but it doesn't come naturally for producers. They like to shoot everything and sort it out in the edit suite.
If you don't shoot cut in the camera, you eventually will have a shoot where you have case-destroying bits of audio audible on the camera original, things you would never include in the carefully edited final product.
The airtight option is to record no audio. Set the camera's audio input levels to zero, don't connect a microphone, nothing on the tape but hiss.
The middle way is to carefully control what the mic hears. Admonish everyone to be on their best behavior as if the defense were in the room. I like this way.
The unconcerned way, the I'm-sure-my-judge-will-let-me-keep-out takes-secret way, is to just let the mics pick up what they will and decide during the edit what goes on the finished, redacted video.
Case in point: Last week I shot a plaintiff in rehab (WARNING, not safe for the squeamish) who regularly had to have their airway suctioned out. It was very uncomfortable for them and it sounded horrid. That sound will be compelling in court. The jury will cringe at the plaintiff's suffering. No sound, no cringing. But the attorney needed to decide ahead of time, weighing the risks of recording audio.
Audio is the secret weapon of 'video'. You must decide ahead of time about this issue.
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