Here's the problem: You're willing to experiment, and your handle on the subject is "a hard disk recorder of some kind." You're wrong, by the way - if you wanted to do it on the cheap, you could effectively run a boom mic into an iPhone. But that requires knowing a lot more about what's going on than we've been told and there are many, many ways to screw it up between here and there. I'll say this: a non-negligible portion of my income in 2010 was from indie pikers who thought they could do it themselves and then ended up needing to reshoot because, well, they were wrong. Which effectively doubles your shooting days and, therefore, the budget. When someone says "I wanna learn about mixing audio" I have a very different response. When someone says "I'm stuck doing this somebody keep me from totally screwing it up" I have a very different response. But when someone says "help me spend not nearly enough on gear I don't understand to do a task I'd rather not do" the answer will always be "find someone who WANTS to do it and pay them what they ask for."
That's why I asked. Obviously I had no idea what I was asking for in particular the thought of using a professional hadn't even occurred to me. After sleeping on it the idea becomes more and more appealing as then I don't have to be responsible for our entire groups failure because I hit the "Bennett hill" button half way through.But when someone says "help me spend not nearly enough on gear I don't understand to do a task I'd rather not do" the answer will always be "find someone who WANTS to do it and pay them what they ask for."
Good on ya. Everybody on set can look at an image and say "that's too dark/light/blurry/close/far/vivid/dull/etc." Everybody on set can listen and say "that doesn't sound good." Knowing what's wrongis most of fixing it and it takes more experience to identify sound problems.
I guess I misread the situation, I thought mknod might be interested in learning how to do recording themselves, but looking back it doesn't sound like that's the case.