Jump to content

View From The Office:


Philip Perkins

Recommended Posts

Here's the view from my position last night for a multicam doco shoot of a performance by Scottish fiddler Alasdair Fraser at a venue in Santa Cruz CA.  Great show, crowd went nuts during the encore.  The producer had wanted me to cover both doco/verite audio and music recording for the all-day shoot, but she not only listened to my concerns about that and hired a 2nd sound person (Ray Day) to do the doco stuff, she rented good cameras (HDX900), Lockits for all and let me roll my multitrack rig and deliver as files, with the cameras free and untethered to anything.  Really nice change from either miles of audio/genlock/TC/video cabling or dinky-cams that can only be approximately synced.

Philip Perkins

post-15-130815080044_thumb.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sounds like a fun gig. How many tracks were you rolling? What was the mic ing set up? What recorder or was it Metecorder or BoomRecorder? I love music recording is why I am so curious.

CrewC

The venue was the Rio Theatre, the converted old Art Deco movie theatre on Soquel Ave.  Nice folks, good sound system, no bad smells.  I used my Metacorder/MOTU rack rig, at its widest it was 18 tracks, and eventually down to 13.   I split everything I shared w/ the PA before their console, so I could record straight off the mics.  We had small DPAs clipped on the string instruments, these guys play a lot of festivals so this is a form of self-defense even though they sound kind of nasal to my ears (being on the bridge and all) but it's what they know.  Otherwise, Neumann LD for close instruments when we could get it in there,  Neumann stereo and Oktava hall mics,  a stealth CS3e to get off-mic chatter between players, the usual suspects for vocals, a stereo pair of Schoeps MK4s on one stand for surprise guest players...

Philip Perkins

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am so impressed with hearing about these set-ups.  With my recording experience being limited to production, with the occasional "live" music situation on set, I would be truly overwhelmed trying to figure out how to properly record a live event such as this.  If the situation ever arises, then an immediate call to Philip, et al, would be my VERY first priority.

Sounds like a fun and enjoyable gig.

Robert

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I toured with Willie Nelson in the late '70s thru a bunch of Texas radio stations and "pikniks".

most radio was AM mono. I had the "large" music board - 16 CH Stevenson (?) and the great luxury of an early IV-S no TC but blooplight. ended up in Austin where Courtney did the intercom... we shot+recorded 3 days and nights straight thru ( I got some shuteye in the "press" - trailor).  Bob Primes and others shot film... (never released)

Today Willie still does the same thing with 2 REDs fueled by lots of "herb" traveling in a caravan of buses thru the South and the rest of the USA.

go Willie

wolf

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Philip, did you monitor in headphone land or were you behind glass?

Mike Psanos

Headphones--for these kinds of jobs I use the Remote Audio high-isolation version of the 7506s--a sound I know with shells and headband that is Geneva Convention legal.  (For years I used some I made myself out of aircraft hearing protectors--I swear the side of my head still has indentations from those.)  I like being in the hall (can see w/o video monitors)--its one reason I've worked at getting the rig so small.  I try to setup next to the FOH console--it keeps the split short and communications are good.

I did a lot of this sort of thing in the old days too (Nagra, then DAT), live mix from a battery powered mixer in the jungles of Cambodia to the hotel rooms of China to the churches of Europe etc. etc..  At the budget level I was/am at, multitrack in the old days was just too difficult and expensive to deal with both in production and in post.  Setting up my van for a similar kind of doco-music shoot in the early 1980s called for a decent sized 8 buss console, two 8 track analog reel-to-reel decks tag-teaming (7 tracks of audio only, #8 was for TC, so lots of submixing) and a Nagra w/ the 10 1/2 inch reel adapters running as well (and some cassette machines for demos), etc etc would take a whole day, and there would be endless negotiations over where I could park to be within reach of my snakes.  For the gig I described above I got a 24 track recording package including mics, cables, snakes, some stands etc onto one load of a standard MagLiner with a top shelf.  And this is nothing unusual--there are people with far more compact setups than that.  I had worked with some of the shooters on the gig I was describing above many times over the years--we were all wishing we had had that camera/TC/audio setup for various past gigs that had been serious back-breakers with what we had then (even though we were all younger and spryer.)

Philip Perkins

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is my view from the office today. Not as exciting as Philip's or as trippy as Wolf's, but Willow Jenkins is one of the best video guys out there so that is good way to spend a work day. We are shooting in a mansion in Bev Hills. Used to be Art Linkletters crib. Barry Levinson is the director. Jeff did 2 of his films that I know of. Good guy on this 3 day gig. Thanks to jwsound for a good way for me to spend the considerable down time.

Crewc

post-7-13081508005_thumb.jpg

post-7-130815080059_thumb.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey Sergio. Willows rack has 4 monitors on top, switcher, intercom, 2 Raptor X recorders, then a 1 rack space screen and keyboard unit.

CrewC

I thought it was some kind of strange home made laptop but its the raptor's controller right? So I take it you are feeding stereo program to the raptors or does his cart features an audio distro box? I also have one of those old mBox's, what PT version are you running with that? mine(v.6.x) stop being compatible with MacOs...

Cheers!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I feed Willow, and all video monkeys a mono feed from my aux out because they all seem to need different levels. Willow and I assume most bring it in through their routers to their different record decks. He has a 16X AV router. The old Mbox is PT6.9.2, the last version for that box. I am just waiting for the day the G4 1.67 dies and I can upgrade these units. The OS is 10.4.11, the last that works w this box. This also keeps my FCP at 4.5 Oh well, they still work well for me.

CrewC

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Unless I'm missing something this 1st generation box stopped at 6.9.2. They make many newer versions that can use up to PT8.0. The picture is not very good, but these old boxes only stand in this position with little winged feet up front and a wider ass end of the unit. As I recall I got that info from Digidesign.

CrewC

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You're still both right about nothing past 7.31 working on Leopard (10.5x). I have yet to update the Mac at the Local --- I need to do that soon. ProTools 8 is out and works fine with Leopard AND the MBox we have at L695. I don't know what the upgrade costs.

-  Jeff Wexler

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...