ve7kjr

The video is a bit long, but some cool stuff.

Laurence : this might give you a better view of my montor mount : You can see the hood I made, had it for 3 years now,works great, my crank will run into the bottom right edge of the hood if I were to drop it down any lower.In the "tray" is a 3/4 in: plywood piece cut to fit the tray and clamped to the tray.bolted to the plywood is a Matthews baby plate and bolted to the back of the monitor is a Matthews Monitor Mount for Baby 5/8' spigot. I have since painted the wood black so it blends in better. Fisher should think about a "MT" for these big heavy flat screens, when was the last time you worked with a tube.? Mine is a little front heavy, so on the next build I will solve that problem. Phil

Hi Laurence, I'm running a 21in: flat screen, had to make an adaptor to fit the screen to the "MT". It is set so perfect for me. I made a custom hood for it so it flags the stray light of the screen, even when I was outside for two days, there was never a problem viewing my screen. I have it set as low as I can without it getting in the way and yes it is the highest point on my boom but I never really crashed it. I perfer that I'm the only one that moves it except my pusher on a moving shot. I still can't believe how stupid some people can be, LOOK-UP. I'm really happy with the set-up of the new arms,so smooth, just like butter. Phil

Arm # 293 season 1 Mr.Young. The Arts and Crafts Kit ride on my traveling counterweight, I color ever line, always have, always will and this was a great place to keep the kit, never lost a pen, or had one stolen or borrowed without a return. The view on the otherhand is the best , has to be. Everyday brings a new challenge which I look forward too the most. The new show is doing 32 pages plus a day, and yes Senator Mike, I'm neither bragging or complaining,,,, just saying. Some crazy boom action happening with long scenes and the big set with the glass wall, have not been caught in the glass yet. Then there was the earthquake last Saturday 7.7 on the scale about 500 miles away, yes I could feel it, thought someone was kicking my base but when I looked around, no one was near the base, this went on for about 20: the lights and the grids were moving pretty good as well, we were in a china tea shop set but nothing fell of the shelves Phil (VE7-KJR)

Well "Package Deal" is up and running, we shot two days so far, Fishing like crazy and trying to learn the new actors and how they act. Lighting has not been a huge problem so far but it will need a tweek or two as we go. Happy with the performance of the 2 Fisher 7s "26s" that we have, they got a good workout on Sunday with the live show. I may swap my other base from Mr Young when we rap season 3 .this week. My rise time is faster on that base. "insert your own joke,punch-line" They have these big 600w light on the cameras x 4 so my line of sight has to be even higher, no problems with the huge glass wall yet, but I'm sure at some point it will be a problem. The DP Johnny Walker has been most helpfull as he should. If it were a perfect world and it never is, I would gladly spend a day just with the DP and swing the Fisher Boom on every set to see where the problems with lighting and sound would be before we go to camera. I can't say too much about the show as It has not gone to air yet but it is adult sit-come and very dam funny. I hope it will go for 3 seasons or more. Very good track record with the Creator Executive Producer Writer. Phil (VE7KJR)

Just an update: Two new Fisher 7s arrived at the new studio last Wed., so I put them together , that's always fun, about 4hrs set-up time, till I'm happy, that is 4hrs from crate to ready to be rolling, Extensions on both and a stringing, They feel almost the same, I will bling mine out just a bit. We start our first new show on Sat-Sunday "Package Deal" allways fun to play with the lighting for the first time, and one wall on the back of a key set is all glass that can tilt bend etc. On the very plus side, we have a good team, the same sound camera dept etc. so we will be fine. I will post as to how it goes. Would love to see some more shots of Fishers at work. Today I had my pusher man Ross up on the other boom to do some shots as we had to split the sets up with two booms. He did a dam good job overall but he has a long way to go, he didn't get in any shots much or have a shadow problems but had a hard time with his distane, and knowing where he was pointing, and not following the script right there in front of his face. but he had the work flow down before lunch. Today was a free-bee for someone at the Mr.Young set, what a better chance than to throw Ross into the fire. I now have more confidence in him. Phil (VE7-KJR)

Love the blog Phil, what a great idea. There use to be a site called "camera porn" just crazy camera rigs, don't know if it is still around or not. Do you carry your own carpets or location dept.? Here in Vancouver the locations dept. carry the carpets and we lay them as need . Phil

Someone posted "boom porn" This shot is my rig from season 1 of Mr Young, I was about to derig it and send it back to LA as our season was over, it was a sad day for me,,,,, to see my old friend who worked so well with me. The rig I have now ,I've had for two seasons and no problems with the performance of a Fisher 7 I submitted the photo to the IATSE 695 local and they used it for the 2012 membership directory. Thank You very much local 695. Laurence, maybe you could get a poster size print of this shot at Fisher mothership for me ? Phil

Thanks for posting Kevin, I run the 60 on mine, and made my own extenson, I didn't have to use it after all when I went EXT: for two days. Jeff, You are so right, "what can be done with a fisher and a good operator, but it takes good communications with the other depts, nothing can kill me faster than lighting as we all know,,, it helps being on the same sets 80 % of the time , the sets change but the lighting stays the same overall, by now the operator will know the holes in lighting he can work, if we have a problem at work, we kindly ask the dp to "please fix this for me" which 99% percent of the time they will,but some times they can't so we just deal with it, it could have been much better if I was just a bit closer. Same thing with camera dept,,,,,: so many times I 'm in the wide shot,,,,why,,,, because I can, I know when I can or can't be in the wide shot and have had great success with this method in order to get the best tracks we could,,,,,Our "video village" has about 20 people around it with a quad split of the cameras on a big screen, we feed the audio with a speaker on the village we only use 2 comteks for village people, The village is never to far away from sets but hearing the speaker has never been a problem. I learn something new everyday. Nothing turns me on more as it were, to be faced with a with a long scene, or a difficult shot, it's the ability to do the dance and you go home at the end of the day pleased with what you did that day, we all have those momemts where you play back the scenes at the end of the day, We run two Fisher 7s 99% of the time, today I did most of the work, so I'm a bit sore but I take this any day. I have my coffee cup holder, a fan that I can remote roll to cool me off, It gets dam hot up there, and my ass has been in a nice soft chair, It has been my work station for the last 3 years. Starting a new show and looking forward to the challenges of that. The whole crew is going over, 2 fishers 26fts, I will set them up next Wed. and will be setting up the "studio" have no idea how it will sound but I'm sure we will be fine but will have to do some fine tuning. If anyone is interested, I will post how it is working out as we go along, Phil

Same for me as well, had to go over to firefox. Phil

Take out the tube and guts and put a fish tank inside.

Vin, I bet with a little love it might work again,, imagine if the boom could talk,,,,,what stories it could tell Phil

Laurence,,, did way too much of that, I think it was the fishpole that screwed my back- neck up. Doing the the move over to the Fisher 7 was the best thing I ever did. As to production,,,, bring on as many pages as you want, I will do the best I can do and could do a lot better but for the stupid wide shot !!!!! SO we have really good com with the camera people types and will be in on certain shots some of the time as camera people types know when certain shots will be used or we have shots with the digital painter who is going to paint the whole top of the wide shot. For anyone reading this and thinking of traning on a Fisher,,, may I suggest you take a class or two or whatever with Laurence in LA, IATSE Local 695 It is such a dying art, but really doesn't have to be ! It took big balls to convince production that I could go outside with my fisher,,,, haven't broken it,,, well there was that one time,, but I fixed it. I think My Mixer will chime in here at some point and say something to the effect of "Bringing the Fisher 7 outside for 2 days was GREAT. Phil only got in shit once. "Stupid Crane" Starting a new show, I hope to have some pictures to post from that show, More pictures of Fishers in action would be great, so please post

Fun stuff Kevin, I've had a few of those 20+ pages too, but it's the scenes that are 8 or more pages that kill me.

Cleve, I would hate to think of what would happen to the mother ship when all the stray RF got back there via the mile or two of cables we ran. BTW, I've heard good openings into Califorina on 15 mtr. Phil

Kevin, no monitor for John ? How many cameras ? Phil

Back on season 1, our camera coordinator "Pat", was telling me a story of a show he worked on in LA where the operator decided to ride the model 2 between sets on a new setup. The rig tipped over and the operator ended up with a broken leg. Last week when I was outside there was a bit of a slope in the spot where I had to park, not so much a problem with the platform down but I knew I would would be at maximum platform hight to clear the HMI that was off to my left side. I got 2 pancakes from the grip dept and placed them under the wheel on the low side. With all the counterweights,monitor other gack plus myself the rig weights in close to 800 lbs. (no one touch the brake please !) Gravity can be your friend or worst enemy. Phil

"So how did you end up solving that problem with the windscreen in the Fisher mike mount? And, was that windscreen enough for you? " Laurence: I built my own XLR barrel extension (male to female) but didn't have to use it after all. I was able to mount the MKH 60 low enough in the tilt mount to allow the Rycote Softie to fit all the way on the mic clearing the phasing ports. The additional weight of the softie required a very slight adjustment to the balance of the arm. A light breeze did come up in the afternoon but it wasn't a problem. Jeff: I did have visions in my head of some of the old pictures that have been posted on here of the Fishers working outside. Phil

And Now The Rest Of The Story: Three seasons on Mr. Young and the writers come up with a script that has two days of shooting outside on the old backlot next door to our studio. We had a concert scene with 8 cast members and 300 extras. Sure was nice to have that long reach with the Fisher as our cast were in the middle of the 300 extras. 4 studio camers plus the phoenix crane cam.

Early morning.

From Mr.Young, Two days outside on the old backlot next door.

Hard wire

I have not posted on here for some time, still manning the FISHER 7 and so pleased with how well it performs for me.. A few shows ago with live audience, I had a big ball o string at the big crank pulley 5 min: before rolling on a different set, I did not panic but said holly fuck to myself for good luck,, but I had my boom up and running with a temp restringing of that cord string and a full restringing after the show was over. I just needed to get it up and running ASAP. I knew that day would come, when that would happen to one of the booms, in fact I had many work dreams about it and what to do so I was prepared to deal with it if it ever happened. On Tues. I will go in on a paid day of to lift the arm off and give my boom a lube job at that connection point as it has been on that base for 2 years now. Sometimes a little bit of drag developes there if the arm sits in that spot for a bit, it not enough to stop you from panning but it does throw your brain. Mr Young " the show I've been on for 3 seasons now" might be going outside to shoot an episode, we have a big backlot next to the studio that never gets used so out will come the Fishers to play I will let you know later how that worked out, yes we will radio everyone who has moving lips as we will be fighting highway sound and a flight path into YVR. For those that like RF: and I know there are a few on this board I did a little promo for my local ham club ve7scc. Feedback would be nice,, in the form of text if you like, recored strait into the camera with a Tram and a beachtek dxa-8 no meters on the cam or on the mixer, there is a tennis game going on beside the guy on his right side and a very loud gas powered generator 5KW in the back behind the tent.Wish I had the new fostex dc-r302 to record sound with in this situtation. Also wish it had one eye light at the time I sat down with my friend Craig, we go back a long way. The video is about being a true geak but in a good way that can help when they have to. I even took my sound assistant " JACK" to field-day and introduce him to the hobby. If you can view in full screen high-def,all the better. I did all the work to put this together, too many hats , how about the sound design? Phil (VE7-KJR)

Spent a few weeks in a Hercules, you will need the the cable that was mentioned. There is a nice bench seat in the cockpit where you can set up your gear, may want to think about securing it as the herc can do -Gs. the panel that you patch into has a selector switch so you can choose which channel of communications you want to hear and record. There are several other panels in the back of the plane to plug into as well. Don't be susprised when you hear the 400hz whine from the com system, it is generated from the electrical system on board "This reminds me of the first time I stepped into the C-130 maintenance simulator room at Keesler Air Force Base when I was in avionics school. The first thing we heard (and asked the instructor about) is this high pitched whine that seemed to be everywhere in the room. His answer: 'Get used to it boys, that's the sound of 400/115, and you'll never forget it.' Boy was he right. " Hope this is helpfull and have fun. Phil (VE7KJR)

Same here, use to watch the show all the time, Dick had some great talent on there before they became big stars.Need a flashback,,,, lots of videos on youtube. Maybe Peggy Names is in one of the videos. Phil. (KJR)