Butter

Ahh... Nestlé's Butterfinger. Big name. Big candy bar. Tiny budget. Say what??

Yes. This is one of the lowest paid gigs I've had. It's a scheduled 12 hour day, plus an additional two for those going on the last minute tech scout. The budget for the entire sound department (the sound mixer, the boom operator, and the equipment) was a whopping $300. *Gasp* We pulled favors from three other places to complete the sound package. We wanted five microphones out there: 1 boom, and 4 wireless. Sy's kit so far is a 4 track recorder, a boom, a bag, and the necessary cables. The 2nd A.D. lent us his 3 input mixer, the 1st A.D. lent us his little buddy, and our Alma Mater lent us the other three wireless kits. I bought a roll of snot for $4.25.

Since my last job, I really felt the deep need to be uber-prepared, so I decided to go up to location two hours early for the tech scout. There's not much I could do as a sound guy on a tech scout (since the location is already locked down) other than advise against noisy spots and try to stake out my boom operating territory. However, I liked the idea that I'd have plenty of time to scan Griffith Park for open RF frequencies (the tip of the Santa Monica mountains overlooking Hollywood on one side and Burbank on the other sees a lot of radio-TV signals). The Sennheiser G2's are much less convenient than the Lectrosonics, in this regard. See, the Lectro receivers can scan the 256 selectable frequencies in it's block of UHF and present a graph on the little display screen to give you an instant idea of which radio frequencies are cleanest at your location. It takes about 30 seconds. The G2 receivers can only scan 4 selectable frequencies per bank at a time (There's either 7 or 8 banks plus a customizable User bank), and it only tells you which of the four is best at the time you scanned, at your location. The only indicator of the strength of radio energy on or close to the frequency selected is a row of 7 bars fluttering on and off as a miniature peak meter, and a green LED labeled RF which will be on when receiving strong RF. So, it doesn't scan the area and report back which frequencies are open, it only reports which of your four channels with the least interference. This becomes a ten minute task now, as I go through each bank of four channels looking for the one that is least evil. Stop. Okay, as I am writing this blog, I've been referring to the online manul to make sure I got the facts straight, and I discovered an error in my thinking. Actually, the SCAN feature tells you how many of the 4 channels are free. Boy that would helped to know. Jiminy Christmas. Alright. Well, the only times I get to play with these is when I'm on set, since I don't any, and only when I'm having issues. However, if none of the banks have enough free channels, you're still going to have to find freqs by trial and error through the User bank. There's 1440 different choices! Needless to say, it's not a quick fix. That's why I wanted to be there early.

But that didn't happen. I hitched a ride from the A.D.s that day, but they got held up at Budget because the 12 passenger van they reserved was not there. Had to go to the downtown office to pick one up, holdiing us back about an hour and a half. Got to location about a half hour early, but my partner in crime had volunteered to pick up walkies from Wilcox, fire exitinguishers from another place, and make a stop at Location Sound for adapter cables. The poor guy showed up about 20 minutes after call time, (missing breakfast) with most of our gear, including the wireless. The D.P. was going to use natural light during the day, so with no lights to set up, the whole crew had to wait on us for about 30 minutes. Luckily, the mixer brought a print out of L.A. TV stations' frequencies, so I knew which channels not to even try. The snot tape worked great on the ME 2 lavs. I never had to change the tape, and they stayed put under the talents' shirts for the whole day. I just left the wires on them and removed the bodypack transmitters during breaks. We had just a bit of drop-out at one spot on one actor, but otherwise, the wireless worked perfectly. Good thing, too. Booming was another story.

Normally, on a shoot that's been prepared, a scene will be covered from several angles (wide, medium, close) and there's plenty of chances to get the best sound, which is always from a well-placed overhead boom.* This shoot was so run and gun, that the D.P. operating the camera wouldn't know what his frame was supposed to be before shooting. That makes it a challenge. I want to get in close but I have to keep one eye on the camera and guess how wide or tight he is, so I can ride the frame without dipping in. The focus puller had it bad, too. It was all guesswork for us during the day.

*Lavs can save your soundtrack sometimes, but they don't have the same response, and they often must be placed on the chest, making actors sound a little bassy. It's like putting your ear on someone's chest and listening to them talk. Booms sound amazingly clear and natural comparatively. There are techniques to help this trouble with lavs, but generally you can always tell which track is a boom and which track is a lav.

After lunch, and our transition into night shooting, the rest of the day went swimmingly. Great sound. We won. There was a fun moment on one tracking shot of feet running through the woods. The Gaffer took a china ball on the end of a pole and boomed the feet for a little extra fill. Naturally, I'm doing the same with a microphone on the end of my pole. We ran together on opposite sides of the tacks as the dolly glided alongside the running actor. Just before the take, with our arms up in a mirror image I looked at him and he looked at me and we smirked.

Rough

7 wireless on a dead man's mixer...

This job was a quick response to a request from Richard. I got a call just after 5 PM Wednesday for a Friday morning shoot, covering a room of advertising folks talking about the creative process. Seven actors, seven lavs. What are our options? Got it. I immediately called Coffey Sound to figure this one out.

I could have rented a Deva 5.8, and had 8 isolated tracks (7 lav, 1 boom) and a stereo mix. That was the most expensive option at about $150 for the Deva. I could have gone dirt cheap and rented an 8 channel mixer ($50) and 7 hardwire lavs ($20 ea.). Instead, I went sort of middle of the road and asked for wireless lavs and a mixer. That may have been a mistake.

On Thursday, I was still waiting to get confirmation of the shoot. Once that was greenlit, I coordinated between the producer and the rental man to make sure our rentals were covered with the credit card authorization and the certificate of insurance. It's part of the biz, although not my direct responsibility if a producer is renting the gear. On my way to North Hollywood from Long Beach I still didn't know if I was going to be walking away with rentals or nothing. It all worked out. I walked away with Lectrosonics UCR411As, UM400s, M152s, and a Mackie 1604VLZ-Pro. I was so excited I had to drive to Pasadena to show Shahin. Beautiful stuff.

Friday morning traffic was exceptionally bad. I left at about 7:15 and did not arrive until 9:15 AM in West Hollywood. There was only about 30 minutes to set up. Normally, this is not a problem. This time, however, I had to wire seven people, each taking about 2 minutes. The boom had to be placed, the cable had to be run out to the phantom, and then to Shahin's 744T recorder. Seven outputs from the receivers needed to be connected to seven inputs on the mixer, and the main outputs of the mixer had to be connected to the recorder as well. Sounds simple enough.

"Complications arised when..."

1. One mike clip was in two pieces.
2. One antennae was not the right length.
3. No signal from lav #5.
4. No output from lav #'s 1, 2, 3, and 4.
5. Overload on random inputs, weak on others.
6. Main out did not sound as clear as Control out (used for monitoring).
7. They want to shoot right now!

All I could do was attack each problem one at a time, following the signal flow. Shahin carefully reconnected the two microphone clip pieces. I attached the only antannae that was left and hoped the discrepency of 2 or 3 millimeters* would not matter at such close range. I went over to the man wearing the #5 transmitter and checked what the dials were set to: 1 and 4. Sure enough, the corresponding receiver was not set to 14, it was set to 88. Fixed that. All of the receivers had different output levels in their menus. I set each of them to +4 dB, which I was told would be standard line level. It wasn't quite right for the Mackie, as I had to turn the trim pots down almost all the way, but the seven inputs were consistent and I didn't have time to fuss with it. No output from the first 4 lavs had me stumped for a few minutes. Mind you, at the same time I'm doing all this troubleshooting, I'm getting distracted by the producer asking me questions. I hear "What's going on?" and "I need solutions." The solution, without allowing time to explore fixing the signals, is to go with the boom only. The line is direct, clean, and will get everyone in the room. Not what he or the executive standing across from me wanted to hear. The executive said he wanted that close-up sound, "That's why we have this here." He walked off, and I told Richard, "I understand where he's coming from--" and he cut me off with, "He is the vice president of this company," and "He's my boss." I was attempting to get across that I acknowledged the demands and was working towards getting them satisfied. The pressure to go even inspired me to offer this alternative, "Would you like to take a look at it?" Daniel told me to try swapping inputs to determine if the cables or the jacks were bad. A good troubleshooting idea that had not popped in my head just yet. Lav #1 did come through when I plugged it into input #5. Then Daniel pointed out the routing buttons beside each fader. Aha! The little grey rectangle labeled "L-R" had not been pushed down to route the signal to the main output (stereo). One at a time, I quickly pushed each fader up while the others stayed down, to be sure each line was loud and clear. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Suddenly, Richard is calling for picture up... but I'm not finished yet. There's still the matter of the muddy sound we hear from the mixer via the recorder.

People were too anxious. The executives wanted to just document a casual, seated discussion about some of their successful advertising campaigns. However, they did not really know what they were going to say in advance. So, tape would just roll and hopefully, some little gems would pop up in the staged casual conversation. They didn't want anything fancy, which hindered Matt from creating a Rembrandt with every frame. Poor room choice, flat lighting, and improvised content. One thing they were decisive about was getting done by 2 o'clock. Did they even care about what they were making?

I bet if one of the cameras was off color balance, they would wait.

The next 3 hours Shahin and I pulled at our hats for a rabbit. New problems surfaced. The main outs: one line was definitely louder than the other, the other crackled a couple times from a bad connector or cable, and the sound was still muddy compared to the clarity of the phones out. I did, of course, try plugging in to that jack but it caused terrible distortion. Looking back, it may have worked had I turned down the monitor volume. There was just not any time to experiment. We were shooting 15 minute takes. A strange intermittent buzz showed up about halfway into our session. Shahin discovered it was coming through the 744's power cable. Once detached, and on battery only, the intermittent buzz went away. I chalk it up to dirty power from the office building. To put a Band-Aid on the muddy mix, I boosted the highs from my end so that more would come through to the recorder. What a mess.



*We needed an antennae for a block 21 transmitter (brown tip) and we had an antennae for a block 22 (red tip).

Guessed Alumnus

Friday I got a call from Drue Metz inviting me to be one of the guest alumni at the first ever Film and Electronic Arts Orientation. The event was designed to introduce the department to students of the major and incoming freshmen. The courtyard of the UTC hosted a hamburger and hot dog cook-out with a few tables set up as booths for the Equipment Room and some other program information. The big reference monitor bought last semester was out, showing the promotional video Gol and Alexis put together. I rather like that video. I can be spotted briefly on the Balloons crew, and so is a clip from my movie. Shahin was the cook, grillin' burgers! I got to know Trystan Savage-Tate, the dependable teenage grip on Charlie, a little better. He is an entering freshman to Cal State Long Beach and he asked which courses he should take. I like him. He's quiet and bright. Moments after three o'clock, guests were shuffled in to the University Theater to hear the Drue, the Dean of the Collage of Arts, the Chair of the FEA Dept. speak enthusiastically about the future of our film school at CSULB. Generous contributions have enabled the department to upgrade the facilities and purchase new film gear. The latest installment of $500,000 was just deposited in May from our favorite anonymous donor (*cough* Spielberg). The faculty present was asked to come down to the foot of the stage to be introduced. Then came my turn. Nathan, Alexis, and I were called out from the seats to walk down and give the students an idea of who we are today. Nate and the lovely Jew on my right went first, answering the three questions quite casually with a bit of humor. Here I come. "When did you graduate, how was your FEA experience, and what have you been doing since?" Public speaking never feels as natural as a conversation between friends, even though I should have been at ease here. I had an empowering introduction. Drue naturally called attention to my long hair, and my fun name is always received well. Did he call me studly? When I spoke, I felt that I must not fail to get the words out at a normal rhythm, to combine candor and optimism, and punctuate the end with an entertaining statement. I can't remember what I said. It all blurred together and soon it was done. Here's what I know I mentioned: "Be cool with everybody," A quick anecdote that I was probably one of those guys Nathan mentioned who just came to class and watched movies until I got to talking to the boys in the Equipment Room, and put up a sign. An affirmation of the importance of networking, as had been stated earlier, and a testament to my experience: I've worked on forty four projects and, except for two, all have been from referrals. I just pick up the phone and say, "Ya, let's do it!" I guess I could remember most of it. The rest of the afternoon was filled with smiles, hugs, and many new faces approaching me to compliment my words and ask for advice. That's a nice feeling.