EQ on set/location

[old school]

I can see both sides of the coin on clean or EQ'd iso tracks, but if I were using them for whatever reason in post, I would want them clean. I would also like the mic and mixer used as info. I would want them clean for many reasons. I may not even be using the word(s) or line in the same scene it was recorded for. Clean gives post the most to work with. Now if I were on a long running TV show and Post for reasons of time wanted the EQ, well thats the way to give them what they want, but other wise I would want it clean. I certainly don't want to give them both versions, but that day may be near.

CrewC

[Noah Timan]

This evolution of providing these isolated tracks, I believe, is to solely provide for the post mixers to have an opportunity to "re-mix" a scene, or to alter the sound of the microphone through the use of their "EQ" and effects to their ears.

This is very true and this is undoubtedly the theory, but in practice I think what happens a lot is that rather than completely remix the scene from scratch, the isos are slugged in for a single missed cue, overmod, etc on what is otherwise a perfectly good mix.  So in this case the matching becomes an issue.  I suppose one approach might be to notate in the sound report what kind of EQ is on a mic in question (eg "slight 5 kHz boost", etc) if one knows that the iso will be needed -- that might take some of the guesswork out of it for the posties.

Unfortunately we are no longer hired for the mixes that we can provide, sorry but that's my take on things as they are.  We are now expected to provide a "mix" for dailies along with isolated microphones on separate tracks, to allow someone else to do a "mix" somewhere else down the line.

I think this really depends upon the project.  For shows like your Ridley Scott movie you told us about last year, this is probably very true, since the nature of the shooting really prohibits a quality mix.  For more traditional projects, though, most of my clients/dialog editors/etc are still looking for a mix and are not very happy if they have to reassemble my mixes from scratch.  They do generally expect and accept a little bit of clean-up and cut and paste but they rarely have the time to completely start over, pore through and listen to a half-dozen isos, and sit there and mix and tweak it all back together.  I've seen enough people lose their jobs due to shitty mixes to really believe the production mix is superfluous all the time and the isos are all anyone is really after.

  I find it crazy but I do provide a separate track of the boom microphone when mixing a scene with only one boom used, as I feel this is expected.

This one I never do unless there is a chance that I might get surprised with a yell, as my isos are generally recorded a bit lower (and pre-mix bus, cleaner) than the mix is.

I don't think that we should suggest to our novice and beginning mixers that you should "EQ" the ____ out of your tracks, and then send that same "EQ'd" mic to your isolated tracks. 

I agree completely.  I think a gentle hand is needed as one learns the process, at least until one has a real concrete understanding of how things sound away from headphones and how things cut and mix together.

.02 nvt

[Mark LeBlanc]

Greetings,

I want to thank everyone for insight into how each approach the job.  The actual genesis of my question stems from the benefit of having an all battery powered rig. My main mixer is a Yamaha 01v96, which looks like having it converted to run on DC Batteries is out of the question.  I know a large/expensive battery-inverter combo would work, but if I cut out the mixer and went all Sound Devices (788t + CL8), that setup has no eq facility. Yea, wish I could afford a Cooper or other high end mixer, not quite there yet.

Thanks,

Mark L

[RPSharman]

Mark,

The Mackie boards are really nice, and not as power hungry.  I run a pure sine wave 125 watt inverter (using about 1/2 capacity for the board and fireface 800 and DVD burner) from a PSC powermax.  Their standard polyfuse trips at about 6 amps, so I had 2 outputs beefed up to handle the addition draw of an inverter.  Before the powermax, i used the powerstation with a similar modification, but with only a 4 amp charger on the powersation I could only run the board from the inverter.  The other AC units were on a UPS.

The Mackie is ONLY pre-fade and pre-EQ.

Thanks for starting this thread.  It has been really informative.

Robert