Signal processing on location (from Jeff's pic w/ his "BFG" rig w/ Gain Brain et

[Philip Perkins]

Jeff--I was impressed that you were using those devices on location as far back as BFG.  I had a pair of Dynamites on my cart from the mid-1980s until 2000 when that cart was put out to pasture-- and was thought very odd for having them on location through out that time.  They were really great for camera noise and some HVAC (in expander mode) and non-SP Betacam video (and early DVCAM etc) levels in peak limit mode.  I basically wore mine out--haven't really found a modern successor I like as well that is that compact.  (Tried the FMR Audio "RNC"s for a couple of doco series--cleaner+quieter than the old Dynamites but not really peak limiters .)  Nowadays many mixers have pretty good limiters in them

(even small mixers), and the digital boards have all the signal processing you can eat, so maybe no need.  Some big network live mixes I worked on as an audio footsoldier (not the mixer) were using

TC ELectronic Finalizers for stereo bus limiters in front of the DA for the VTRs.

Philip Perkins

[Jeff Wexler]

Jeff--I was impressed that you were using those devices on location as far back as BFG.  I had a pair of Dynamites on my cart from the mid-1980s until 2000 when that cart was put out to pasture-- and was thought very odd for having them on location through out that time.

I basically wore mine out--haven't really found a modern successor I like as well that is that compact.

Philip Perkins

I knew you would get a kick out of this (and I also suspected that you too had done some of the ever so risky processing of the production master recordings). It was after BFG that I really stopped all that but a few years after I got interested in doing it again but I was seeking better devices than the Allison research Kepex/GainBrain setup. When I was in England I found a small unit from Audio Designs called the Compex Limiter. I bought that, brought it home and had it put in a portable box with battery power supply. Never used it a lot but it was a very flexible and good sounding unit.

-  Jeff Wexler

[old school]

Risky work method indeed. Would you ever consider something a like that in this day and age on a second system and a clean master recording as back up? Or are your daredevil days over with?

CrewC

[Jeff Wexler]

Good question, Crew, and I think we have sort of come full circle as Philip suggests, where we could easily run multiple tracks, multiple systems, and create all sorts of tracks to turn in to post --- the fact remains that the sort of work we would be doing on all those varieties of tracks is still the sort of work that SHOULD be done in POST. The original motivation for me, beyond just wanting to play around, was the fact that there was going to be very little post work (in the low budget non-union projects). Later, I was seduced by this idea that we have to impress everybody at dailies, way before anyone in post is going to get their hands on the tracks, and we all know this is a trap as well --- the sorts of things you do to make the dailies sound nice might be exactly the wrong things to help in actually putting the movie together.

So, the simple answer (am I even capable of a simple answer?) is that I would not play around with these things on the production track. I know there will be good, competent and creative post work done on the projects I am working on, so that I don't feel the need to do post work in production. I have abandoned quite a long time ago trying to impress anyone at dailies and quite frankly I don't think I could even do it now --- no one watches dailies anymore and those that do, do not have any particular interest in the production sound ("don't they do all the sound later ... what are you doing on the set?")

The people who matter, and DO listen on a daily basis, the picture editor, possibly the sound editor or sound supervisor, the director, they listen, they understand, and for the most part appreciate what we are doing.

-  Jeff Wexler

[old school]

Figured I knew your answer as I typed the question, but I thought I would hit post anyway because you are always thinking of ways to do the job better. It is kind of tempting to do, but post is the best place for such work as we know, but..... if they could use it to their advantage, then I would be willing to try. I would certainly never do it without a clean master which is job 1. Have a good weekend, mine starts Sunday. Early call Saturday in the Valley. Hot fun in the summertime.

CrewC

[Philip Perkins]

I knew you would get a kick out of this (and I also suspected that you too had done some of the ever so risky processing of the production master recordings). It was after BFG that I really stopped all that but a few years after I got interested in doing it again but I was seeking better devices than the Allison research Kepex/GainBrain setup. When I was in England I found a small unit from Audio Designs called the Compex Limiter. I bought that, brought it home and had it put in a portable box with battery power supply. Never used it a lot but it was a very flexible and good sounding unit.

-  Jeff Wexler

We had a rented Compex on a few jobs, but they were too expensive for us to buy back then.  Nice modules--I remember A+D had a whole rack of stuff that was popular in studios then.  I did do a lot of location processing of master recordings back then, mostly light expanding and or peak limiting, but we were working in an era in SF before sophisticated audio post for most video projects was possible or even available and video editing was all linear tape-to-tape with little or no ability to change anything about the audio tracks except levels.  Thus if signal processing was going to happen, it had to happen during recording.  Now that audio post is now available to pretty much anyone with a computer and picture editors have access to audio plug-ins that do work that only feature re-recording mixers could do back then this kind of live audio repair isn't advisable anymore, unless you really ARE going out live (broadcast).  (In addition to Gain Brain/Kepex and later Dynamites, we often brought UREI "Little Dippers" to the set to notch problem frequencies--the editors had no time or gear to do anything like this in those days...)  Thanks for showing us that stuff--

Philip Perkins

[Marc Wielage]

...no one watches dailies anymore and those that do, do not have any particular interest in the production sound...

Jeff, we get calls in post all the time about the production mix -- "hey, did you guys change the levels on this?" or "was the background traffic noise really that bad?" Or "what happened to character X's off-camera dialog?" They get the answers very quickly when they check the original sound roll files.

So somebody's listening. On the last major studio feature I did for post a few months ago, I think we counted about 14 people getting access to dailies. Some of the execs get very anal about the most minute details, and sound is still of great interest. I think more people scrutinize dailies today than ever before.

The main complaint I've observed from producers and editors about dailies concerns low levels. Once in a blue moon, we get the opposite: some rookie dailies kid combines channels and fails to notice that the mix is clipping every 10 seconds or so. I can think of several cases where we've had to redo dailies sound -- done by other facilities -- for this reason, usually done in NY. As long as the levels are reasonably loud, balanced, and consistent, any comments from editorial and the producers are pretty rare.

--Marc W.