BVS

Excellent Jason.....you are right in there with the musicians.....

You might like to have a look at the DPA 4088...its used for vocals on stage..it is directional and needs to be positioned correctly,but it is the best solution....nice sound. http://www.dpamicrophones.com/en/products.aspx?c=Item&category=116&item=24062

I held out for a fee on a very low budget feature where others were getting $100 a day including the DP...it was a complex shoot so they needed me...I got my normal fee for the job...the post production supervisor said my department was the only one to get it totally right.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/travel/news/article.cfm?c_id=7&objectid=10617835

If you think its bad now.....there are many more measures that are possible...not very practical but that went out the door some time ago.....strip searches of all passengers BEFORE getting on planes for one....and if you think thats not feasible then go back 10 years and see how free it used to be. EL Al,the Israeli airline is the most secure because of the measures they adopted many years ago...and it works....perhaps if others had done the same then there wouldn't be the problems we now see. Its like the work we do....its all in the preparation....too late when you are on location and you discover that you haven't done blah blah blah................. Its tackling the problem before it gets to the plane...so you can be absolutely assured that there's nothing or anyone on board that is going to cause a problem. Then we can have the freedom that we all like to have. People in general are cautious when it comes to their lives so it is all understandable. Airlines that can travel their passengers across the world without coming across US borders will do better as time goes on.....there's only so much inconvenience people will put up with especially if they have a choice of a different route. You may find in the not too distant future people only traveling to the US if they absolutely have to.

Season's Greetings to all from a New Zealand summertime..... Travel safely.... BVS

Love my glossy 24 inch iMac screen......

Have a look at this New Zealand made gear...seriously good.... http://www.swazi.co.nz/

Transparent...I have an AD 146...6 in 4 out...used on lots of drama over the years..still sounds great.

You should call your Customs Department and check the requirements...it could be difficult getting it back into the US on your return.....a Carnet is expensive,perhaps letting Customs know you are going privately might help...but sometimes they don't differentiate. I have done a list that gets stamped by our Customs...but there's no guarantee it will be accepted in Europe.....We nearly had our camera confiscated because the true market value wasn't displayed on our Carnet,we had put down the rental cost as the value....a close call and some fast talking needed....The French can be very difficult with gear if you get the wrong person...but then again you might get lucky...

Last night I went to our monthly local Audio Association meeting ( the Christmas Party). This is a group formed from all the people who work in any form of the sound business from Film and TV mixers,Live sound mixers,radio,hire people,the odd DJ...lol..and some who work in the scientific side of sound and development of products for commercial and scientific use. A great bunch of people who are all willing to share their many years of experience. So I asked a scientist and an analytical troubleshooter who gets called all over the country to solve problems like we have here. They said "hmmmmmm thats difficult,especially when you are dealing with trying to measure and quantify subsonic sound." We discussed several scenarios that I could go down......all of them look difficult. The woman whose house it is, is doing door to door polling at the wooden houses in the area to establish the extent and nature of the problem as the residents hear or feel it. One of my colleagues has offered a vibration measuring device that he uses for very low frequency problems....it'll go down to 1hz....but the problem is as he sees it..trying to get a measurement not affected by me holding it or mounting it so it doesn't pick up other extraneous low frequencies that are part and parcel of everyday life. The other thing is to try and define where it is coming from precisely,and that ain't easy. He also suggested that a large solid flat surface would be needed to propagate the amount of energy required to affect the houses in the manner we are seeing in this small sample. So I drove behind the factory we suspect on the way home from the meeting. There,adjacent to the factory is a tall,solid concrete block wall running for maybe 75 yards....the propagating flat surface?? It all felt a bit surreal late at night in this out of the way side road...lol.....but I could hear the low frequencies emanating from their plant.....and could imagine the wave developing out into the local community. He suggested calling in the experts..an acoustics firm that is very experienced in these matters....they have all the right equipment and knowledge to gather the data. He also suggested approaching it from a different angle...getting an attorney involved before too much longer and proceed with it as a Tort of Nuisance.... To be continued.......

I've even mentioned the anti-noise solution,which we are all familiar with the principles. Here's something from Tomlinson Holman. http://www.good.is/post/inventions-anti-noise/ This would be difficult to incorporate in their house as there's not just one wall but a series of windows across the back of the house. But there are other anti-noise type setups which could offer a solution although I'd prefer to deal to the original problem as there are many houses involved. As I said in originally,this all started in June of this year. The factory has been there for many years and not caused the low frequency,just general broadband noise typical of many factories. I do have a secret weapon up my sleeve ( always have another way of tackling your problems).... I have a lifelong friend who is a Technical Director for the City Council that governs the operating parameters for all the factories in our area......so we'll see what happens when that avenue is activated.....if you get my drift....it's complicated......

Been away for the weekend...and excited to see so many interested in this ELF situation....yes they have earplugs in at night...but that only takes out the higher frequencies not the subsonic ones...when they put their heads on the pillows its at its worst......they told me that they hear it most at night after 11pm but that may just be the daily activities subsiding...they can feel it and are aware of it all the time...I was in their house for about 2 hours during the day and my take on it was that it was subsonic but with higher harmonics coming through with resonating rooms adjacent to their bedrooms. The small bathroom next to one of the bedrooms was a hard surfaced room with a newish rectangular skylight with 4 panes of glass slanted obliquely towards the factory......a perfect pickup.... I said they should try and raise the bedframes off the floor as a starter by putting some high density foam,Spenco (its used in the sports industry as a high impact protecting foam under sportswear) under the 4 legs of each bed...they sleep in separate rooms.... The other thing I suggested was, when it is at its worst, open the doors to all the rooms that face out onto the courtyard. This will then make these rooms less resonant...my guess. There are 3 rooms like this all between their bedrooms and the factory. So there could very well be rooms resonating,all with slightly different frequencies as they are all different in size. The term Sympathetic Resonance seems to fit here.

Thanks for that guys..I know the Auckland Hum very well...its been well documented here...and I've heard the recording...this one is more modulated than continuous though. so I suspect a man made source.

I have any earlier Schoeps Mk41 and CMC 5U and I also put up the Schoeps CMIT as well so as to get a comparison and its much newer..no bass cut anywhere in my system.....the low end is there.....like very low...I do recall the reason for the Cut 1 being explained that the MK41 could go down to 20hz but the Cut 1 eliminated the sub sonics...I have not measured the bass response,but as I say its only comparative measurements. The rotary woofer sounds interesting...I read an article back in 1960....when I was 15....the French Army had developed a high energy horn with compressed air that resonated at 7 hz and put out 300 acoustic watts.... apparently it killed everything in a 5km radius...I wondered at the time how they managed to turn it off.... it never became a weapon... The bedrooms back onto three other rooms that are small but reverberant, so collectively there may be some thing to look at as well... But it is not just their house...its a general phenomena in the area..some houses are worse than others...

Thanks Phillip and Jason...yes I have suggested that they put a high density foam..like Spenco under the beds legs to isolate the bed from the floor.The other thing that I have tried at home but not there yet is a large wok filled with water and placed on a 4 point wok stand on the floor to see if the noise is structure born.If there's any movement it will show up at the edge of the wok particularly if there's a reflection on the water to highlight it. The other thing that they may have to do is build a bass trap in the ceiling...there's no space under the house. I have checked there heating and they have no pumps or swimming pools in the neighborhood...its summer here so no heat pumps or boilers going. Whatever is making this ELF is big....the energy is there.... Yes I'm aware that the comparative readings I made won't amount to anything in court...but some spectrum analysis by environmental acoustic scientists will. The sound is heard by the two people in their house,but they have talked to neighbors and those closer to the factory where it is very strong.....they are beside themselves as they can't sleep either and it will affect their property values. They are wondering if a new all night shift has been put on since June as well....its at its strongest at night understandably as the daytime traffic and activities subside. The factory will close at Christmas I suspect, so it might be a good time to check again then.

I was asked by a Director friend of mine to see if I could help some of his friends discover what is happening in their immediate neighborhood. In June this year, they started getting extremely low frequency sound getting into their wooden house. The effect is that they can't sleep at night as it is at its loudest then. When they put their heads down on the pillows there's a constant but with slight variations,very deep rumble that goes most of the night. They suspect that a battery recycling and disposal factory about half a mile away have installed some new equipment that is causing this. The factory has been there for years and has some bad environmental history. Also they recently installed a new smoke stack that is quite tall. Underneath their house is an aquifer that is common to the area and as they very close to the sea,is affected by the tides. I had had a walk around their property and nothing seemed to be amiss.I had also had a listen across the road from the factory and noticed quite a large bottom end to the sound coming from it. So I set up inside their house with a SD 302 and my Mk41 without any bass cut on a mic stand in a PSC mount. This was during the day and heard the usual traffic and heavy trucks etc. I closed down all the windows and doors to eliminate the higher frequency sounds and was then satisfied that the only constant sound there would be, would be the ELF if it was there. I turned the 302 on and set it to my normal dialog setting and the meters were flicking along fairly low but constant.....so I upped the level to full on the gain control and adjusted the fader to give a constant mid range reading on the meters. I did several tests around the various rooms and found some variations in their lounge where a solid double chimney wall was blocking any direct sound. The readings here were significantly lower.They were at their highest where there was a bathroom with a skylight with hard surfaces...a real resonant chamber.It was at its highest here and in the 2 bedrooms. The beds were wrought iron frames and I placed the Mk41 against them to see if they were resonating,but no they weren't. This sound has been keeping them awake since June....They have been to the local council that controls the permits and zoning but they can't do anything...the factory is correctly zoned and is about to come up for its resource consent to be renewed soon. Other neighbors with wooden houses notice the problem too,but the neighbors on either side of them are in solid concrete and brick houses that do not exhibit this problem as far as they can tell. I think.... 1. The factory is generating ELF from its new equipment that is activating the smoke stack and acting as a transmitter (not RF ). 2. This ELF resonates the older wooden houses but leaves the concrete and brick untouched as far as I know at this stage. 3. The ELF may travel underground by means of the aquifer but primarily through the air where the wave has a chance to develop over the longer distance from the factory, hence not so noticeable close to it. The tides may affect the aquifer and thus the underground path. So there's a great deal of work to do yet to so solve this. The first thing will be to hire a spectrum analyzer and determine some real readings rather than just comparative ones. Then there will be measurements in other houses and at different points around the neighborhood to establish whether its the factory or some other place generating the ELF. This could all take some time....I have been offered payment...we'll see how big this gets first.... So any thoughts on this would be good from you. And...do you have any problems the same in your area or house...ELF can cause serious long term damage to your health and those of your family. Thanks for reading this...its a world away from what I do in the film and TV business...but strangely akin in some ways. It may be that I pass it on to sound environmental scientists to look into.

Here's a rig I use for jackets.....make a heart shape out of some really soft fine foam...the sort that is used in foam mattresses or cushions, about an inch thick and it can be about the size of a human heart....you know the type of stuff that is soft...not the stuff you get for camera case inserts ....now in the V of the heart cut a line through it down to the lower point of the heart shape but only cut halfway through the thickness. In the V sit the lav capsule,so it is sitting in free air but contained within the V shape...it should protrude just enough to see a little of the cable at the base of the V.The rest of the cable sits in the half cut-through line going to the bottom of the heart.....it can be held in by any tape you prefer. Place the heart on the heart of the talent and secure front and back ...inside the jacket.If they are wearing a soft inner shirt like wool...don't stick it..only stick the outer part of the heart to the inner side of the jacket...this way any movement is the soft foam against the soft wool. This rig leaves room for a small fluffy on your lav for really rough weather.

Just an alteration pointed out to me by one of my more learned colleagues... There are no tax breaks for screen production in NZ. The Large Budget Grant Scheme is a cash grant that has nothing to do with the tax system. The threshold to receive the grant is NZ$15M expenditure in New Zealand. Thanks Dave, BVS

Yes that post production sounds very long....unless there's a lot of CGI material being added...like trying to wipe the smile off the NZ cows faces..... I can remember back in the early 90's when a US production house came here to make 2 x 60 sec. TVC's for US use only for a big coffee company. They were here because the story line went that the best coffee comes from the top of the mountains in Colombia.New Zealand was chosen because it was safer and had all the scenery in a compact area.The shoot schedule was for 10 days and the budget was so big we could have made a feature film with it. It was by far the biggest commercial shoot to come to this country.

Thank you for clearing up any confusion on my part guys...if its just the money then they could have shot it locally or closer to home than NZ.....your local production houses need to be able to put in competitive quotes for these jobs. So what does this tell you about the quotes that are coming from your side,if they can fly their team to NZ,accommodate and feed them,hire vehicles....hire a studio and NZ crew and equipment and still be within their budget....your production houses should be able to slaughter our quotes with the overheads involved in relocating to another country. Now I don't know how you go about your pricing,above and below the line costs etc...but your quotes need to be more realistic in these recessionary times. There's been a seachange in the industry...competition is everywhere in all facets of business...just because thats the way its always been done is no longer valid. We have learnt through bitter experience over many years that to survive you need to be able to give competitive quotes that will attract overseas companies...nothing outrageous,just realistic. And I'm sure Mike's comments were very much tongue in cheek....a NZ specialty... .

Just a few thoughts...they may have decided to film here in New Zealand because it is the opposite season to you..its summer here and the light and color intensity is stunning at this time of the year with sufficient daylight to film for 12 or 13 hours...also New Zealand produces the best quality milk products from beautiful lush green pastures....if you were looking to film anywhere in the world at this time of the year,this would be the top choice..... Our rates downunder are surprisingly similar to yours so i doubt if its the crew rates that have attracted them.....and you only get tax breaks down here if the budget of your film exceeds $50 million....so again..the TV commercials are not in that league. The film and TV business is a world wide business with skills that equal those available in the US.....the equipment is first class with technical skills and infrastructure right up there. You may have genuine concerns and that is perfectly understandable....on a world market though they have gone for where they can get the best value for the tax dollars....and no I won't be working on the project. BVS

Absolutely correct Jeff......it doesn't matter as much about your hardware and where everything is set in comparison to the main thing...Your Ears.....this is where it has to sound right...and as has been said, consistent level is critical or it changes where your perception of where your day to day levels are. Also remember,when you start each day,when your ears are fresh,this is when everything sounds its loudest for the day...and you think..am I really monitoring at this level? Human hearing is a wondrous thing....but be careful, there are many variations that have to do with the physical make up of the ear. Have a look at the Fletcher-Munson Curve. http://www.webervst.com/fm.htm You'll notice the 55db difference between the low frequencies where we are less sensitive, to the area around 4 to 5K where we are most sensitive.So there are good reasons why they make headphones for us mere humans with a higher apparent level of bass end.It compensates for our less sensitivity there. Now the other thing you can all try is this....get a small set of speakers that you might have for your TV or bookshelf and have a listen to them at the level you watch TV and at the distance you would sit from them...then move them close together on either side of your head as though they were your headphones...if you can arrange to listen to the same material....notice the difference that you can now hear with the background levels,noise and general system noise...the corollary of this is to just plug your headphones into your TV set and notice all the background stuff you don't hear in your armchair.....so its how close you are to the monitor that determines the detail. For feature films and the cinema presentations, this all changes especially with the levels that cinemas are set up to...so you will hear a lot more and this is why you listen at the relatively high levels,to hear any extraneous material before it gets to be recorded.... Having spent 20 years as a rerecording mixer,you get to appreciate the difficult job that is faced by the Production Mixers of today...and the fidelity of the current systems...a far cry from the Academy Curve that hid so much, including all the high frequencies....lol...

I tend to run it quite high on my 302...it gives me better and earlier recognition of extraneous noises...it also gives me a bigger dynamic range....and I just love the richness of my Schoeps mics......worth listening to them at the best sounding they will ever be....hey but thats just me.

Has anyone had the chance to try this new all in one surround mic array from DPA? http://www.dpamicrophones.com/en/products.aspx?c=Item&category=122&item=24312