Jeff Wexler

I will weigh in on this but I'm not able to recommend brands or specific gear other than what I used to use. I will say, personally, having done these sorts of scenes many, many times, I always had really good results using my Zaxcom gear. Whenever we did car to car stuff, I would go wireless from the picture car to a follow van where I would be with all my equipment along with usually the Director, Script, etc. Never felt the need to do the "bag drop" routine since I had rock solid backup recording in the transmitters. For IFB, usually it was just my usual Comteks for other people in the follow van. I do remember once having to have 2 follow vans, and in these cases I had to have IFB to 2 vans (which I did usually with additional wireless). One thing I would recommend highly when doing any of these sorts of scene is to work out a way to have all receiving and transmitting antennas positioned outside the vehicles --- this makes a bog difference. For the talent wireless in the picture car I would remote the transmitting antennas for wireless plants and on the follow van, remote the shark fins outside the follow van.

Beautiful! Loved his music. He will be missed.

Thank you for posting. A truly great human being I was fortunate to meet as he was a friend of my father's --- used to sing along with the records and I know Pop was involved in several of the social and political activities that were so much a part of Belafonte's life.

Agreed. I would never want to put that amount of gack on the mic end of the fish pole. My boom operator would never do that.

Looks great!! It's true your website needed some updating -- the new site is certainly welcome and will help to get the word out about your beautiful creations. Everyone, take a look!

Thank you Jim Feeley! I'm going to give it a listen. Every time I get to hear anyone talking about working on "Almost Famous" it is pretty amazing -- Billy Crudup and actually everyone in the cast and crew were so happy to be on the set, everyone gave it 100%. It is a credit to Cameron as a Director that everyone washable to do some of the best work of their careers.

I feel blessed to have worked on a movie that has become my favorite of all time --- this scene specifically, my favorite sing-along scene that I have ever done. Thank you Cameron Crowe for the joy of working with you.

Glenn Sanders let me know that the Zaxcom Facebook group is down and they're working with Facebook to get it back up and running. In the meantime, feel free to use JWSOUNDGROUP for your discussions. Hopefully the regular Zaxcom Facebook group will be back soon.

The Stereo Nagra (Nagra IV-S) was released I believe in 1971 and was used for many years before the IV-STC (timecode) model came out. For most all of its use, primarily music recording, timecode was not needed. I used the Nagra IV-S in production in 1975 on "Bound For Glory" for some of the musical scenes. I remember that the transfer facility (I believe it was Todd-AO) required advance notice that I would be using the Stereo Nagra and they had to rent a Nagra IV-STC to do the transfers for those specific scenes. Again, timecode not an issue as the majority of film production had not yet utilized timecode or smart slates or any of that stuff.

Fascinating -- I love this history (had no knowledge of the early SQN or the connection to the Nagra SN). The model I was familiar with and used a few times (never owned one) was the model C pictured below.

I had an Astro van for several years that I used as my work vehicle. My daughter read some crash reports and immediately told me I had ti stop driving the Astro and get rid of it. At that time I wasn't really using it for much anyway (doing mostly big movies with transportation department taking care of all my vehicle needs) and so I did sell it eventually. Never got another van though I did consider briefly the Ford Transit (and I might have gone for the Mercedes like several of my friends doing commercials had -- but it wouldn't fit in my small garage at home).

Thank you "The Documentary Sound Guy" (sorry, I don't know your name) for taking the time to post your thoughts on this subject. I agree with much of what you are saying here, but I also strongly disagree with you on certain things. Thank you as well for painting out that "Iron Film" lives in New Zealand, something which I had not considered with some of my comments to him. I would take the time to respond to your post, point by point, but I feel that it might be something that doesn't really interest that many people, I would not want to dominate the site (though I would rather not have you have the last word.)

Apple had to settle with Creative Technology (a company that had an MP3 player with a user interface it had patented) for $100 million (US) to allow the Apple iPod to be produced without violating Creative's valid patent. We can all debate whether Creative should have been allowed to patent their user interface, but they applied for a patent and it was granted. -from Wikipedia: Apple's application to the United States Patent and Trademark Office for a patent on "rotational user inputs",[93] as used on the iPod interface, received a third "non-final rejection" (NFR) in August 2005. Also in August 2005, Creative Technology, one of Apple's main rivals in the MP3 player market, announced that it held a patent[94] on part of the music selection interface used by the iPod line, which Creative Technology dubbed the "Zen Patent", granted on August 9, 2005.[95] On May 15, 2006, Creative filed another suit against Apple with the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. Creative also asked the United States International Trade Commissionto investigate whether Apple was breaching U.S. trade laws by importing iPods into the United States.[96] On August 24, 2006, Apple and Creative announced a broad settlement to end their legal disputes. Apple will pay Creative US$100 million for a paid-up license, to use Creative's awarded patent in all Apple products. As part of the agreement, Apple will recoup part of its payment, if Creative is successful in licensing the patent. Creative then announced its intention to produce iPod accessories by joining the Made for iPod program

So, are you the one who decides whether something is patentable or not? Are you aware of all the abuses of the patent/copyright procedures that have been tried over the years? Do you know that Microsoft wanted to patent the use of a "window" in computer operating systems? All of the "look and feel" litigation that went on (Apple, Microsoft, etc.). How about the famous Betamax lawsuits where the motion picture studios tried to get Congress to allow personal home video tape! Regarding our industry and the gear we use, do you know one of the primary reasons the Nagra recorder was the only recorder used for sync sound for picture (Kudelski patented the neopilot sync system that was introduced with the Nagra III and became the standard to which all recordings had to adhere other manufacturers were prohibited from producing recorders that utilized this patented system). I could go on and on but I won't. If you have a problem with the patent system, do something to try and change it -- don't attack the companies that are obeying the law and give a free pass to those companies who break the law.