Hey all,
Just came in from day 3 of a 4 day shoot and wanted to share some new lessons with you (see my other posts for other lessons, these will just be the new ones):
1. I love Countryman even more than before. A Tx I had on an actor had slipped out, so he decided he could just slide it back in the back of his pants. As he did this, he broke the lav cable (a B6) at the connector. Fortunately I had a spare EMW (see below about the EMW and why I didn't have a spare B6). Called Countryman and they had it fixed in less than 24 hours (they are on the way to and from the shoot). Everyone in their office is so nice and friendly and helpful.
2. I love Countryman (con't): I recently purchased a B6 on eBay that was already (supposedly) plugged for my G2's. Well, went to go use it on a shoot a couple of weeks ago and it didn't fit. Arrgghh! Dropped it off at Countryman with the other B6 (see above) and they re-plugged it FOR FREE! Said it was still under warranty (keep in mind this was a used B6 I bought on ebay - and told them I bought it on ebay). (BTW, got a great deal - $175, so clearly it was worth it.)
3. Okay, so now some lessons learned. With the EMW, you have to be careful which way you face it if you're hiding it under clothes. There's no clear front and back on the mic head, and I had put it on the talent 'backwards" and was hearing what I thought was awful clothing noise - then flipped it over and it sounded great. I forgot how nice the EMW's sound for the price.
4. I have always used the 3M paper masking tape (the blue kind) when taping mics to actors (seems to leave less residue than gaffer tape). Well, I recently picked up a copy of the stronger sticking green kind of the 3M tape, and it is working so much better with sweaty actors (who thought it would be 85 in San Francisco in March?). Stays stuck all day.
5. I used my new wireless video senders for the first time on this shoot to drive my monitor. Well, again, they work as well as can be expected for the price. They are 2.4 GHz, so they are legal here in the U.S. (many of the video senders that are used on large budget productions are not technically legal since they broadcast in the "protected" ranges of frequencies). I haven't tried tuning the channel on them (you get four options) and there was a bit of flicker, but overall they are a good solution - again, especially for the price: $20 on eBay.
6. The more I use my ListenTech's, the more certain I am that I will never buy Comtek again (I will be selling my Comteks very soon...will post here first). The audio quality is great, they use AA batteries, and are tunable (though I have not had to re-tune them from the B channel but once, but that one time made a difference.)
7. Boom Recorder is still holding up like a champ. I discovered two new cool features on this shoot: The spectrum analyzer, and a file naming feature. The spectrum analyzer helped me identify and eliminate a hum in the background. Very cool. The file naming thing came up when I had not advanced the scene before starting to record a scene. So, I changed it to the correct scene and waited with bated breath to see what would happen (when you hit record, BR automatically creates the files at that time). When I hit stop, the files were all renamed with the correct scene and take information. Very cool.
8. I'm getting a little tired of essentially doing the script supervisor's job on low budget shoots. You'd be amazed (or maybe you here wouldn't be amazed) at how reliant they are on me to decide when to rev the scene number. I'm sitting 50 feet away in another room, there right there next to the camera and they still have to ask me what the scene number is. Oy.
9. One thing I'm ordering as soon as this shoot is over is those mic pack holders Trew was advertising a few weeks ago. On this shoot more than any other, I've had mic packs falling out of people's pants way too much. And, given that I have scared the poop out of the actors, they are afraid to do anything to them when they do fall out, so they have to call me in to fix them. (Better than a broken mic, especially when I tell them the replacement cost of a B6).
10. The person running the slate today was a bit confused. When I told him the slate had to be opened before putting it in front of the camera (so the numbers are rolling) he thought I meant it should be open at all times other than when it is being clapped. Fortunately I caught this early so I didn't have to change batteries on the slate.
11. Oh, the new sound blankets are working great. We had a window and a fan that opened to the street (very busy street with a Bart air vent right in front of the location) and we were able to block much of the noise (some day I will work on a production where they bring sound out on the location scout...oh well, I dream...)
And finally, with this shoot, every piece of equipment in my current kit is paid for. Yay! Now I have to start thinking about what my next set of "toys" will be. I'm leaning toward the Lectro venue system at this point, with new Tx's. Maybe pick up a couple of COS-11's (yes, I'll let you know Oleg ;-). Or maybe upgrade my hyper (Octava now) - Schoeps or AKG or ???. More memory for my Mac is certainly on the list (for when I run Windows). Any suggestions????
Let me know if you have any questions...
Phil
Just came in from day 3 of a 4 day shoot and wanted to share some new lessons with you (see my other posts for other lessons, these will just be the new ones):
1. I love Countryman even more than before. A Tx I had on an actor had slipped out, so he decided he could just slide it back in the back of his pants. As he did this, he broke the lav cable (a B6) at the connector. Fortunately I had a spare EMW (see below about the EMW and why I didn't have a spare B6). Called Countryman and they had it fixed in less than 24 hours (they are on the way to and from the shoot). Everyone in their office is so nice and friendly and helpful.
2. I love Countryman (con't): I recently purchased a B6 on eBay that was already (supposedly) plugged for my G2's. Well, went to go use it on a shoot a couple of weeks ago and it didn't fit. Arrgghh! Dropped it off at Countryman with the other B6 (see above) and they re-plugged it FOR FREE! Said it was still under warranty (keep in mind this was a used B6 I bought on ebay - and told them I bought it on ebay). (BTW, got a great deal - $175, so clearly it was worth it.)
3. Okay, so now some lessons learned. With the EMW, you have to be careful which way you face it if you're hiding it under clothes. There's no clear front and back on the mic head, and I had put it on the talent 'backwards" and was hearing what I thought was awful clothing noise - then flipped it over and it sounded great. I forgot how nice the EMW's sound for the price.
4. I have always used the 3M paper masking tape (the blue kind) when taping mics to actors (seems to leave less residue than gaffer tape). Well, I recently picked up a copy of the stronger sticking green kind of the 3M tape, and it is working so much better with sweaty actors (who thought it would be 85 in San Francisco in March?). Stays stuck all day.
5. I used my new wireless video senders for the first time on this shoot to drive my monitor. Well, again, they work as well as can be expected for the price. They are 2.4 GHz, so they are legal here in the U.S. (many of the video senders that are used on large budget productions are not technically legal since they broadcast in the "protected" ranges of frequencies). I haven't tried tuning the channel on them (you get four options) and there was a bit of flicker, but overall they are a good solution - again, especially for the price: $20 on eBay.
6. The more I use my ListenTech's, the more certain I am that I will never buy Comtek again (I will be selling my Comteks very soon...will post here first). The audio quality is great, they use AA batteries, and are tunable (though I have not had to re-tune them from the B channel but once, but that one time made a difference.)
7. Boom Recorder is still holding up like a champ. I discovered two new cool features on this shoot: The spectrum analyzer, and a file naming feature. The spectrum analyzer helped me identify and eliminate a hum in the background. Very cool. The file naming thing came up when I had not advanced the scene before starting to record a scene. So, I changed it to the correct scene and waited with bated breath to see what would happen (when you hit record, BR automatically creates the files at that time). When I hit stop, the files were all renamed with the correct scene and take information. Very cool.
8. I'm getting a little tired of essentially doing the script supervisor's job on low budget shoots. You'd be amazed (or maybe you here wouldn't be amazed) at how reliant they are on me to decide when to rev the scene number. I'm sitting 50 feet away in another room, there right there next to the camera and they still have to ask me what the scene number is. Oy.
9. One thing I'm ordering as soon as this shoot is over is those mic pack holders Trew was advertising a few weeks ago. On this shoot more than any other, I've had mic packs falling out of people's pants way too much. And, given that I have scared the poop out of the actors, they are afraid to do anything to them when they do fall out, so they have to call me in to fix them. (Better than a broken mic, especially when I tell them the replacement cost of a B6).
10. The person running the slate today was a bit confused. When I told him the slate had to be opened before putting it in front of the camera (so the numbers are rolling) he thought I meant it should be open at all times other than when it is being clapped. Fortunately I caught this early so I didn't have to change batteries on the slate.
11. Oh, the new sound blankets are working great. We had a window and a fan that opened to the street (very busy street with a Bart air vent right in front of the location) and we were able to block much of the noise (some day I will work on a production where they bring sound out on the location scout...oh well, I dream...)
And finally, with this shoot, every piece of equipment in my current kit is paid for. Yay! Now I have to start thinking about what my next set of "toys" will be. I'm leaning toward the Lectro venue system at this point, with new Tx's. Maybe pick up a couple of COS-11's (yes, I'll let you know Oleg ;-). Or maybe upgrade my hyper (Octava now) - Schoeps or AKG or ???. More memory for my Mac is certainly on the list (for when I run Windows). Any suggestions????
Let me know if you have any questions...
Phil
