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The Daily Journal
journal:: a daily record of news and events, our community diary
993 topics in this forum
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- 1 reply
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Just got back from a 3-week gig in Mexico. I'm excited to report that in 110 degrees heat, the Sound Devices 442 and the 744T combo held up like a champ. The RED cameras (3 of them) on the other hand kept overheating, which forced the DP to keep the fans on while rolling on the last couple of days. Even pop-ups over the camera and using ice packs to cool the cameras down did not help. Cameras would turn off or give a warning that they needed to be shut down. And even while fans were off during rolling, the camera would emit a noticeable pitch.
Last reply by FSBELLA, -
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Anyone know who the lucky sound guy was on this story ? (Stick with the story to the interview part at the end, and check out what the kid is playing with !) http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/index.php?cl=7757585
Last reply by Jeff Wexler, -
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Traffic was fairly light today so I arrived at work early and partook of some breakfast with our DP, with whom I had worked on a series about fifteen years ago. He reminded me of this story. The scene was inside a surveillance van outside a building inside which the charcters who were wired were gathering incriminating evidence. The producers in their wisdom thought it would be a good idea to have me in the van, Nagra running, on camera while recording the actual dialogue taking place in the scene. So the camera is shooting the two main actors who are talking to each other, and me, pretending to be the surveillance audio tech but actually doing my day job as the producti…
Last reply by old school, -
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I had a call this morning from the transfer house informing me of a ten to fifteen second discrepancy between the time code numbers on the slate and those on the DVD. To cut a long morning's investigative story short, what had happened is that my number three guy who sets up the Deva each morning with relative time code and user bit information had inadvertantly touched the "frame rate" button which on the Deva V is directly above the "enter user bits" button, and had accidentally changed the frame rate from 30NDF to 30DF. On a touch screen these buttons are pretty sensitive. If you set up your own Deva or have someone else do it, a little glance at the main screen which …
Last reply by Marc Wielage, -
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I'm sure we've all seen it happen, or maybe it happened to you. It's usually done in good spirit and although the newbie may have been a little embarrassed at the time, in the end you can usually have a good laugh about it. So let's hear some ! I remember seeing a young PA run around a whole afternoon looking for a the black and white video tapes. Apparently the cameraman had convinced him that he had only brought the colour ones with him.
Last reply by Noah Timan, -
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The father of all our great toys.. Stephanie Holinka of Sandia National Laboratories writes: "We are sad to report the death of former Sandia Labs Director Morgan Sparks. He's best known as the Bell Labs researcher who invented the first practical transistor. His work made possible so many other inventions. Without transistors, one cannot begin to imagine personal computers, cell phones, DVD players and the many other electronic devices we rely on daily. His contributions are pretty humbling to mere English majors like me." Las Cruces Sun-News Article
Last reply by John Steigerwald, -
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Web spots or whatever they are called nowadays for the "Jawbone" noise-canceling Bluetooth headset. Normal low-budg production sound in spectacularly noisy conditions that they didn't really care about. What they really wanted was the audio recorded thru the phone with their headset. This involved finding a landline phone line somewhere near where we were shooting (often blocks away to find a cooperative person who would let us camp on their phone line all day and have 7 or 8 strangers in their house listening), walkie talkie communications between the redoubtable Frances (recording the phones) and me (on the set). Slating thru the phone, 2 recorders and slate jam syn…
Last reply by Philip Perkins, -
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I am down town today as are 8 other companies. If I lived down here I would not be a happy camper/loft liver. Case and I are on 4th street and our company has it shut down from Grand to Broadway, about 5 blocks, and a block each way on the side streets. My brother Moe is on a process trailer driving everywhere down here. The Library Tower is blocked off. It is damn near gridlock. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad so many of us are working, but this might be nearing overload for the residents, they seem pissed off. I hope downtown makes it, but I fear these piss coated streets crawling with film crews is going to have a tough slog of it. CrewC
Last reply by studiomprd, -
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Hi everyone, I feel more and more intolerant to unwanted noise, especially LF from - air conditioner hum, home theater setups... LF is what's disturbing, and obviously. Most people don't have ANY idea what their air conditioners or home theater systems are doing to others in the building. Most people dont have ANY idea about sound and noise. Educating them about the perils of being in a noisy environment is something of a tall order. As i write this, I am experiencing a new LF disturbance in my den - an air conditioner on a floor below me that has started humming as of tonight. I intend to speak to the owner of the flat below me and hope he gets his unit servi…
Last reply by curleysound, -
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RIP Albert Hofman. At 102 years of age, he lived and contributed more than most. While I never had the pleasure of meeting this great man, I feel I know him on a few levels. CrewC
Last reply by old school, -
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I've noticed the 744T is price slashed, can we speculate more than 4 tracks. Sound Devices, what a strong company with fantastic support. If so look out Deva. Ok, forget the price slash and even look out Deva.
Last reply by joe foglia, -
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I heard a very interesting story on the radio this evening, about the history of microphones and a couple who are making mics in the Blue Ridge Mountains. There's a recap of the story and a link to it as broadcast here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89705610 Best regards, Jim
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Here's a shot from last night about 2am--working for state-of-the-art low budg filmmakers Rich Wong and HP Mendoza ("Colma: The Musical", "Option 3"; Rich shot Wayne Wang's 2 new movies in this same mode) working on a NEW musical: "Fruit Fly". Sony XDCAM EX camera (shoot to cards, audio on SD recorder CF; cards to the post supe and his laptop on-set after every scene, hookup to cam when possible (not here), 2 cams a lot of the time). Tiring, but pretty good fun to work with cool EXTREMELY talented young folks on a funny musical drama, no less. Rich Wong is frame left behind the camera (on a $300 jib counterweighted with paint cans and using a little DVX camera as a r…
Last reply by old school, -
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Frances and I just did yet another oddball job, this one for a comedy website on the elections called "Left vs. Right" (http://www.leftvsright.com/). For many reasons too tedious to go into (but fully understood by everyone here) we ended up booming the whole deal, following the (very funny) actors as they improv-ed their bits in front of a (wait for it....) green screen. (Let's just say that "interactive" industry people have different ideas of audio-picture aesthetics than movie people.) After much tantruming I got a boom op, but only one, so I became the 2nd boom, while mixing the show as well. Hence the first picture ("view from penthouse") of the wacky bag rig w…
Last reply by Philip Perkins, -
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I'm a boom op and I recently wrapped a feature with Actor / Director Vincent Gallo called "The Funeral Director." We actually wrapped in early in February but I had to spend a while just unraveling my head from the experience and taking stock in what I learned as well as physically recuperating. I've been involved in alot of different production situations from student shoots to big budget studio features and I must say that I have never seen the production process play out in this way as it did on "The Funeral Director.". Without going into too much boring detail, the shoot started out normally with Vincent just playing the lead role. He was a little intense but it was c…
Last reply by Chris Howland CAS, -
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Has anyone fed the Red camera Time Code ? We're shooting at 24p, recording Audio at 24p, per the Red camera people's advise, and trying to feed it TC, it drifted by about a second, even while staying plugged in, disconnecting and re-jamming.... ? I know 23.98 was initially the only TC that the RED would accept, but we're on Build 15 and since the RED people assured us that it now should accept 24p from Audio recorder, we can't figure out why it's not working.
Last reply by Philip Perkins, -
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Some friends of mine have a video equipment rental business and got their Red camera. I had PSC make me a camera-fan for the normal PSC style snake, and went over to see if it would work. The connections were ok (TA3F, TA5F) except that PSC wired the return backwards. In E to E the camera sounded fine, although as has been discussed, the fan was very audible even in a fairly chilly room. The line input has no trim, so I plugged in my Loft audio test box to see what level the camera calls zero. According to the loft +4 out to the camera resulted in the meter going into the red, to get a zero read I had to back it down to about -2.3. I found that my normal setup from …
Last reply by Chris Howland CAS, -
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A Cinematographer emailed me via my website for a film job flat rate $150.00 a day with gear so here was my response: $150.00 is slave wage for a sound mixer as a "Professional Cinematographer " you should know better than that. Gear rental for your project should be $300.00 by itself. Then his answer: That was uncalled for. I did not list the project as HGTV, NBC or any other of the big companies who can pay up to $750.oo per day for Sound Mixers with gear. Its an INDEPENDENT with a LOW BUDGET. 150.00 equals $15.00 per hour for a 10 hour shoot. Thats better than nothing if there is no work? No? Enough said! Best wishes, I love what pe…
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This last week I was working a reality show about real estate for a very large and well known company. This job was a last minute hire when discussing the job with the producer (who turned out to be the production coordinator more on that later). I explained in the price they were paying they would get 2 wireless 3 channel mixer and boom. I explained to them for most reality shows a 4 channel mixer and 3 wireless should be used since there is normally more than two talent on camera at any given time. She explained to me that this was simple shoot and the 3 channel package was enough. I asked her if I could speak with the producer and she said she was. So I show up at the…
Last reply by Marc Wielage, -
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I have had the pleasure n frustration of teaching others the art of sound recording for film. It is a long process that really only makes sense when one does it a few million times. Doing is learning. When I first started learning,(still learning), the craft, I had an advantage that most of the new generation does not. We had dailies. Shoot all day and on the following day at lunch or after work we saw n heard our work projected to a large screen and over a simi nice sound system. What a great way to learn what worked or didn't. Not just the sound. Picture, acting, story telling, directing, all of it. Better than any film school for learning all aspects of the craft. So …
Last reply by Nova, -
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Todays LA Times Calendar section had a so so rehash of Bonnie n Clyde and its place in history. What I enjoyed was the production photo of the actors and crew watching the Arthur Penn talking to Beatty and Ms Dunaway. The looks on their faces, the body language, only the gear is different from many things I have seen on sets. I think that is the boom op wearing headphones and holding a pole with his back turned behind Beatty. The old Mitchell with the parallax viewfinder and camera op next to it. The simple mechanics of film making and all that is outside the frame. Love these type photos and their capture of one moment long ago. CrewC
Last reply by larry long, -
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Hello friends, I have a hobby of collecting 16mm films. Mostly disney, children's classics, cinemascope etc. I have a few different projectors both here and at my parents house. It is great fun to observe an audience of kids laughing. At the last showing, in December, we had around 30 kids and twelve adult volunteers while the kids parents went holliday shoping (kind of a free community babysitting service). We watched pinochio and aladin as the features, and many shorts in-between. Popcorn, lunch, cookie decorating, games etc. Film is not dead yet! Doug
Last reply by Doug Brandon, -
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I just can't believe our military has done nothing to help prevent hearing loss. It is truly shocking. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23523729/ "Large numbers of soldiers and Marines caught in roadside bombings and firefights in Iraq and Afghanistan are coming home with permanent hearing loss and ringing in their ears, prompting the military to redouble its efforts to protect the troops from noise. Hearing damage is the No. 1 disability in the war on terror, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs, and some experts say the true toll could take decades to become clear. Nearly 70,000 of the more than 1.3 million troops who have served in the two war zones are c…
Last reply by Joshua Anderson, -
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I just got an email from the production company. It seems that one of my first "major" jobs in the film/video industry (done for National Geographic) will air tomorrow night. Ironically right after that shoot, things took off and I can't even remember when we shot the locally (Austin, TX) done video. Wayne
Last reply by wbrisett, -
CAS Surprise
by Mick- 2 replies
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I was unable to attend the CAS awards ceremony on saturday night due to a prior commitment, so I was elated to see this morning that we had won for the "Living Doll" episode that we also won the Emmy for last september. The only reason I mention this is because on both occasions the award went to the production mixer and the re-recording mixers, omitting the efforts of the boom operators who worked so hard on these projects but who fail to receive public recognition for their contribution to the final mix. My boom men on "Living Doll" were Kenny Mantlo, who also mixes our double up episodes, and Brian Whooley, who has since left to work on commercials giving him more time…
Last reply by FSBELLA,
