Even more lessons from the field... 1st feature.

SouthBySoWhat

SouthBySoWhat

Well-known member
Hello all,

After many shorts, industrial stuff and years of being an in-house corporate audio-video resource, I'm embarking on my first feature length project (SAG ultra-low comedy) as sound mixer. Production begins tomorrow and goes until the 30th.

If you guys are interested, I'll use this thread as a sort of daily confessional and I'd really appreciate your two cents on any topics of interest it generates along the way. I've always enjoyed reading about Tim, Phil and Matt's forays into production and hopefully something of use could come of this.
 
Please do! Could you start out with a good post showing what you're going into this with? Breakdown of all your gear, what boom op you are using (if any) and what his/her skills are and how that figures into things, what type of locations you are going to be filming at and any kind of problems you are ancitipating, issues you are paying attention to, etc.
 
Geez, what a 1st day.

Let me back up and list the key gear I'm going in with:

  • SD 442 w/50' breakaway
  • R-4 Pro
  • Lectro 200D/UM400
  • G2x3
  • EMW 2 for G2, 1 for Lectro
  • B6 1 for G2, 1 for Lectro
  • 416 - sometimes wireless w G2 plug on
  • Oktava hyper w/BBG and Windjammer
  • Ktek and Gitzo poles
  • SD headphone amp, using cat 5 baluns to run to it
  • Rolls PM OB and Denecke phantom power + G2 plug for Boom Op
Boom op isn't a complete novice but not really an audio guy, great to work with, however, and very sharp.

We were mostly indoors today in a large home. Kiiled fridge and AC and it wasn't too hideous acoustically, which was good as we couldn't drape much. They are doing a two cam approach (JVC HD110s) which makes our job considerably more difficult as it's tougher to get the boom as close as I'd like and the setups don't leave much room to treat the acoustics.

Timecode is freerun as the JVC's don't have timecode ins. I'm using the R-4 pro for the 1st time, recording 4 channel wave files: boom, lav, lav, lav and keeping record of what's on the channels/filenames, etc in the sound report. And we dump via USB at the end of the day along with the firestore data. I'm also sending a 2 track version to cam: boom on 1, the rest on 2. The other cam moves so much that we are just keeping a shotgun on it for wild ref audio.

Not an hour in, one of the actors managed to snap one of my B6's near the connector, and an EMW I had loaned out had a short at the connector that was intermittent and wasn't discovered until this morning. So right out of the gate I'm down two of my "go to" mics. I put one of the short bus stock G2 lavs on the B6 assasin for the rest of the day. That same actor is also allergic to adhesives, making getting wired up a challenge.

Successfully used the 416 wireless using the G2 100 plug, with a Denecke power supply in the chain prior to transmitter.

Mostly got good results using pecs/cleavage and Rycote stickies, although one of the costumes was pretty noisy so I had the costumer make a hole in the back of the neck and ran a B6 up the back and out the collar, terminating under the lapel and that helped a ton, although it sacrificed a little, being a bit under the chin.

Ran into some weird hum at the last setup, china balls and crappy dimmers were most likely the culprit , but my attempts to run the prob down were outgunned by the production needing to wrap by a certain time.

I'm beat, early call tomorrow. I'll post again asap.

S
 
Day 2

Day 2

Day two:

All exteriors around a very nice house in a very nice lakeside community. Very hot day too.

All of the pre-lunch stuff involved following someone skulking around the house, so just wireless boom and one lav. No biggee, although we had some intermittent leafblowing, lawn stuff, etc., going on that was irritating.

After lunch things got a lot more hectic as we were doing more complex stuff involving multiple actors, golf carts, a police car, plant mics and hideous frame lines that often didn't allow the boom to get much reach. At one point I needed to have 4 wireless lavs, a plant mic and the boom simultaneously going, and as I mentioned earlier, I'm using a 442 and a 4 track. I wound up whipping out my 302 and my Tascam HD-P2 to accommodate and record the additional two channels.
The next setup involved two lav'd females in a cop car, two detectives outside (only one wired) and one guy interacting with all 4 of them (wired, but sharing a transmitter with the wired detective, we played musical transmitters a bit for the CU's. Had I been serene and rational, I wouldn't have continued to use the transmitters on the gals in the car, I would have run an XLR EMW into the cop car as it and them were stationary (they werent in the shot before, so the wireless were needed then). Bam, one less ISO and it would have freed up 2 transmitters for the other two actors. We got them fine on the Boom during CU's, fortunately.

One of the biggest problems workflow-wise for my Boom guy and I, is lack of hard info shot to shot. We have lists and such, but the real nuts and bolts of the setup isn't clear until the last second, giving us very little time to devise the best workflow, and common sense occasionally takes a backseat to harried brute force.

The Director and DP do listen to my concerns but when we get really under the gun daylight-wise or some other holdup, certain problems just have to remain.

That being said, it's a good bunch to work with and I'm sure the snap problem-solving will improve.

My feet hate me at present. As we're off tomorrow it's time for a tankard of Vodka tonic and nite nite.

More later,
S
 
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Thanks! I enjoyed this. It seems weird that you'd sacrifice the quality of the 416 to go G2 wireless, I'd like more thoughts on what went into that call.
 
shawneous said:
Thanks! I enjoyed this. It seems weird that you'd sacrifice the quality of the 416 to go G2 wireless, I'd like more thoughts on what went into that call.
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There have been a few setups where it was vastly more convenient to boom wirelessly and unless I'm mistaken, no dialogue, just getting natural sound of someone skittering down a bunch of rocks or running around a house. Indoors and for dialogue its mic cable time.
 
shawneous said:
Lol, you posted that second one as I was typing.

Sheesh, thats quite a dual setup you ran. What bag/harness are you using?
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The Eargonizer 2. I can get the 442, R4-Pro and the 302 in there just barely (plus my BDS/NP-1 setup). The Tascam had to be in it's own bag. On the six channel dealy, I would have preferred to do the mix in thing from the 302 to the 442, but as I am using the direct outs to the R4, the additional 2 channels woudn't have been recorded, just summed to the 2 track camera reference. I'd love to hear thoughts on other methods.
Frankly I'd like to use Boom Recorder but I don't have a cart setup just yet (getting a Rock-n-Roller cart tomorrow and will be putting a more serenity oriented rig together over the next few weeks), but I love the portability of the R4-Pro.
 
hehe. Another configuration would have been 302 in the front pouch, 442, R4-Pro, and HD-P2 in the main compartment! That would be one nice looking bag, except for the weight. Glad you're going strong on this shoot. Keep it coming.
 
Thx. That would be crazy! The dang SD direct out cables barely reach the R4 XLR inputs and I don't want to gin up a 4 cbl snake extender for the bag so there's very little play. If the 442 direct outs were on the right it would be a snap.

I'm not doing the harness thing as I want my back to work. Right now, I just roll the bag around on my toolbox or I just plop the thing down out of shot near camera A. It will be nice to be at a location where I can just set up shop and stay put for more than a few takes. Like I mentioned, it's a two cam deal and that requires a lot more zipping around. A buddy of mine just started working for Friday Night Lights and he said they run several cameras at times and really depend on lavs a lot.




Alan H. Chang said:
hehe. Another configuration would have been 302 in the front pouch, 442, R4-Pro, and HD-P2 in the main compartment! That would be one nice looking bag, except for the weight. Glad you're going strong on this shoot. Keep it coming.
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Quick note to restate what a big fan of Countryman I am. My snapped B6 is being repaired at no cost! My EMW ended up having a broken connector but that's only going to be $47 with expedited shipping. I will be without them until Wednesday :( but I have another EMW arriving today and I'll most likely be OK. I have noticed that the stock G2 lav (while not being terribly great-sounding) isn't all that horrible on the right talent with good placement.
 
SBSW-

I whole-heartedly agree with your love of Countryman - they are the greatest. Of course the fact that they are 2 exits up the freeway from me here always helps when I need something fixed - drop it off in the morning, pick it up on the way home. :-)

When you get your Rock N Roller, order two shelf kits. When I got mine I was hoping to take the second half of the kit and use it as a second shelf - you can't do that. It isn't the right size for that, nor does it have the correct connectors. So I bought a second shelf kit and now have two shelves on the cart, which is a great help. There are some pictures floating around here somewhere that show my cart setup.

Edit: Found the image of my cart: http://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/1846/1182793736.jpg

Phil
 
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That's great. Where did you find your shelf kits? I scoured a lot of the web and only found a small handful of places that seemed to have access to them. I ordered so far 1 shelf kit and a laptop arm (new gizmo) from midi-classics. Those are apparently being drop-shipped. The base platform was on back order there. I ordered a base-plate from goodmart.com, and I'm already regretting it as my order hasn't changed status on their site since Monday and they haven't returned my call.
My cart showed up today. I went with the R12 and got it for 229 from Zzounds.com, no tax, no shipping.

Cheers,
Sean




ptalsky said:
When you get your Rock N Roller, order two shelf kits. When I got mine I was hoping to take the second half of the kit and use it as a second shelf - you can't do that. It isn't the right size for that, nor does it have the correct connectors. So I bought a second shelf kit and now have two shelves on the cart, which is a great help. There are some pictures floating around here somewhere that show my cart setup.

Edit: Found the image of my cart: http://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/1846/1182793736.jpg

Phil
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I'm laughing my ass off at this... but WITH you... I assure you.

Standard fair so far... really how it usually goes. "So that's what he's wearing? That's it?"... "yeah, that's it".... "well... I guess I can try to hide a lav under his collar then"... "yeah that should be OK"...

*right before shooting guy puts on jacket... completely burying lav*

Dude this is so on the money... and I hate to tell you this, but it doesn't get any better. :)
 
Howdy Matt. Enjoyed the DVD, btw.


MattinSTL said:
I'm laughing my ass off at this... but WITH you... I assure you.

Standard fair so far... really how it usually goes. "So that's what he's wearing? That's it?"... "yeah, that's it".... "well... I guess I can try to hide a lav under his collar then"... "yeah that should be OK"...

*right before shooting guy puts on jacket... completely burying lav*

Dude this is so on the money... and I hate to tell you this, but it doesn't get any better. :)
Click to expand...
 
Day 3

Day 3

Day 3 breakdown...

I really dig the Rock-n-roller cart (I got the R12) and I don't even have the shelves and stuff yet. I had a Three Stooges moment at a gas station on the way to the location this morning. I was able to air up the larger rear wheels with my bike pump no prob but the valve stems for the front wheels weren't reachable with the type of pump I have. At the gas station I plunked in 75 cents and successfully aired up one of the wheels and then couldn't get the valve cover off the other one, as they're kind of recessed and I was flailing through my boxes to find some small pliers before the compressor quit. It quit of course, right as I got the cover off and I ended up blowing $1.50 to air up 2 small dolly tires.

I was able to roll into the location today with everything on there (with it fully extended). I shrank it down and made a good place for my bag on one of my tool boxes and found a nice corner to call home.

stuff.jpg


fatmax.jpg


Had to start the day with some political awkwardness as one of the higher ups pulled me aside to inform me my boom op was rubbing some of the crew the wrong way and it needed to stop asap (I was completely unaware there were any issues, but I suspect he was making unsolicited observations about some folks work styles). As I am completely aware how the slightest dissent can poison the "morale well" on a project like this, I assured them I'd address it, and we'd make it right. I got with the guy, who I like a lot, and laid it out. He assured me he didn't want to make waves and agreed to do any venting to me alone and let me decide what hill we're prepared to die on. He wanted to apologize to the affected parties but I suggested we just shake the Etch-A-Sketch clean and just really focus on doing our job and not worry about what doesn't concern us. By mid-day it appeared that bygones were just that and I think we're gonna be fine from here on out.

1st location was a multipurpose room at a civic center that was being used to create 2 locations (small ER and Police interrogation room). Lousy acoustics and one entire wall was a dance studio mirror. The gaffers/grips did a great job of the ER setup and I had brought 2 4x2 rigid fiberglass panels that we clamped onto C-stands and setup strategically with the lights. We also found a rolling clothes rack that we draped a couple moving blankets on to make a makeshift rolling wall. The combination of those, the gear and everyone in there helped a great deal and we managed to get good use of the boomed Oktava. I had to fight a bit to get a passable frameline for it as usual, due to the 2 cam thing. Everyone was wired as well. No big surprises with the lavs this time, but one gal's EMW was having probs staying on the stickie (it was not a great initial wire-up, due to her button up shirt being sorta pinned shut by the costumer and I was horseshoe/hand grenading into her abundant cleavage. After a couple adjustments and just replacing the sticky altogether, I decided then and there to make allies with the makeup gal to teach her to wire up the female talent before their shirts/etc are on properly to get it right the first time and keep the Keystone Cops/Uncle Pervulous factor to a minimum.

absorption.jpg


The next location was a 3 million $ home that's the house of the villain. We'll be there on and off for a couple of weeks. It's spectacular but also an audio nightmare. Luckily, the stuff we were doing today was him dragging a body down some stairs and stuffing it into a freezer in a huge garage. Hideous acoustics but not a big issue yet. I'd like to recommend getting the Remote Audio belts for transmitters. The star today was wearing running pants that were ill suited for the weight of a transmitter and as he was doing pretty physical comedic stuff, the pouch/waistband combo was essential.

The frequency gods have been very kind over the last three shoot days (knock on wood), btw. I'll admit I've been naughty and haven't been doing freq scans upon arrival, but I do send the boom guy for a circuit of each location using every transmitter to look for probs.

Tomorrow involves some vehicle stuff so I'll report in asap on it.

Vaya con dios,

Sean
 
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Thanks, very interesting. Good the boom is settling in, looks/sounds young. Is that a wall outlet in the mirror behind your seat.. and which model cans are you both using?
Cheers.
 
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