Shawn Philip Nelson
Veteran
I have found a magic device: The Sound Devices MM-1. Get it!
I bought it to solve one problem, but then found a totally different cool use. The first problem was when you have two sound people (boom+mixer), and you should always have at least two sound people, how can the boom op have headphones on too? Some indies simply forgo it and the boom op is "flying blind" so to speak.
Bad idea.
The boom op needs to hear what's going on to know whether he/she is doing a good job. On my set we were letting the boom op listen off of a y-split off my SD302. This is still a bad idea, because it tethers the boom op to within a few feet of the mixer. Anyone with bigger sets knows this is a problem. There's often what I term "the huddle", that is, the actors, the lights, the crew, etc. It's VERY nice to place the mixer 20ft away, ouside of this huddle.
This is where the SD MM-1 comes into play. It's a single channel "mixer" that takes in one audio single, has preamps, cut-offs, limiters, etc and a user-adjustable headphone port. AND, it has a belt clip. So, the boom op can listen to what's going on, then you run a cable from the MM-1 on the boom op's belt all the way back to the mixer. Voila!
Originally I was skeptical that the MM-1 would have the same quality of preamps as my SD302, since the MM-1 is only $350. But, while at NAB this year, I talked to them as the Sound Devices booth and they assured me that it's the exact same components.
But besides all this awesomness, I discovered a new purpose for this nifty device: in place of a mixer for simple one-man operation stuff!
This week I found myself needing to rapidly do a short video for my company. I had loaned my mixer and acc out to Norm Sanders for 'Berlin'. Now he had offered to get it back to me if I needed it, but he's like an hour and half away and so I thought, "hmm, I'll try just going with the MM-1". It was perfect! I was only using one mic (CK93 on boom) and only had one person for audio. So...we dialed in where it should be and went from there, it was perfect! Crisp clean audio. I paid attention to levels on Z1u camera (Red was in the shop) and if we clipped, I turned down the MM1 and we did another take.
So in conclusion: everyone get this!! For anyone not owning a mixer who only has need of powering a single boom mic, this is perfect! Then when you grow into a bigger operation, your boom op has headphone access. Win-win!
I bought it to solve one problem, but then found a totally different cool use. The first problem was when you have two sound people (boom+mixer), and you should always have at least two sound people, how can the boom op have headphones on too? Some indies simply forgo it and the boom op is "flying blind" so to speak.
Bad idea.
The boom op needs to hear what's going on to know whether he/she is doing a good job. On my set we were letting the boom op listen off of a y-split off my SD302. This is still a bad idea, because it tethers the boom op to within a few feet of the mixer. Anyone with bigger sets knows this is a problem. There's often what I term "the huddle", that is, the actors, the lights, the crew, etc. It's VERY nice to place the mixer 20ft away, ouside of this huddle.
This is where the SD MM-1 comes into play. It's a single channel "mixer" that takes in one audio single, has preamps, cut-offs, limiters, etc and a user-adjustable headphone port. AND, it has a belt clip. So, the boom op can listen to what's going on, then you run a cable from the MM-1 on the boom op's belt all the way back to the mixer. Voila!
Originally I was skeptical that the MM-1 would have the same quality of preamps as my SD302, since the MM-1 is only $350. But, while at NAB this year, I talked to them as the Sound Devices booth and they assured me that it's the exact same components.
But besides all this awesomness, I discovered a new purpose for this nifty device: in place of a mixer for simple one-man operation stuff!
This week I found myself needing to rapidly do a short video for my company. I had loaned my mixer and acc out to Norm Sanders for 'Berlin'. Now he had offered to get it back to me if I needed it, but he's like an hour and half away and so I thought, "hmm, I'll try just going with the MM-1". It was perfect! I was only using one mic (CK93 on boom) and only had one person for audio. So...we dialed in where it should be and went from there, it was perfect! Crisp clean audio. I paid attention to levels on Z1u camera (Red was in the shop) and if we clipped, I turned down the MM1 and we did another take.
So in conclusion: everyone get this!! For anyone not owning a mixer who only has need of powering a single boom mic, this is perfect! Then when you grow into a bigger operation, your boom op has headphone access. Win-win!
