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pverrando

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Everything posted by pverrando

  1. I was b-unit mixer for Peter Devlin on Any Given Sunday in Dallas, 1999. There were 12 camera units and 2 sound units. I had 187 VHF Lectros going in, which immediately proved unusable in Texas Stadium. So I rented 195D's for the show from my boom-op Phillip Palmer, who was gradually gearing-up for mixing. He moved to LA a year later.
  2. Robert Wald's cart on Robocop, 1986. Nagra 4.2, 4 Cetec-Vega wireless. Notice the Nady FM-band transmitter, Sony Headset FM radios were used as "Comteks." Remember the unlimited Polaroid film budgets in the wardrobe & script dept? This was my first feature film, I was a video playback operator. Remember "cut shutter" 144 video playback? Camera lost 1/3 of a stop, and the camera ran at 23.976. Back then, who knew what 23.97 was to become.... This was the "boardroom" set, with 20-odd video monitors in the back wall.
  3. Tod Maitland with his new Nagra 4S on "Talk Radio", 1986. Sister Kim in the bkg.
  4. This is me in 1986 with a Nagra 4.2. Cameraman Bob Tullier, "in the bag", loading 16mm magazines for his CP-16. I am also wearing a pair of 1986 shorts.
  5. Don't forget the R1a's antenna is the headphone cable. So, if the cable is all wrapped up around the speaker, range will be limited (unless perhaps you are in block 29 or 30)!
  6. The Varizooms will take a charge from an IDX charger, but the charger will show a fault after the battery is charged.
  7. Skip a few rungs up the laddder...here's how: Have an endearing foreign accent Have a cool name, like Bernardo Six Costa The first letter of your last name should be A thru M, as many hiring lists are alphabetical Act youthful and be good-looking Any behavior that makes one popular in high school, generally works well in the entertainment industry.
  8. Who the hell is Kortwich?
  9. 75 meters is hopping this week, Cleve (March 12) Spring break paintball tomorrow with my kid! Pete KQ5I
  10. Modified 6+boom Venue rig and SRb 4+boom rig
  11. This was clearly inspired by the "Who Needs A Movie" home-based enterprise, that was posted in earnest many years ago by Fred & Sharon Spencer of British Columbia. Nothing can capture the essence like the original:
  12. The C300 timecode will certainly drift with battery changes, power ups/downs, menu changes, etc. It's even documented in the manual.
  13. Eric, you're probably too young to have worked with these things
  14. I've embarrassed my Fusion with a teardown to remove dirt under the faceplate. I documented the process at http://dfwsoundman.blogspot.com/2013/02/fusion-teardown-to-remove-faceplate-dirt.html -Pete Verrando
  15. Can you make a video of it falling from chest-height to a sidewalk, in full sunlight? Thanks Pete
  16. @ ZippoReel- That's an amazing story. And it's also great news to hear that Schlup is a nice guy. I'm going to pass your story on to sound man Omar Milano, who conducted the last (that we know of) video interview with Kudelski before he died. Omar plans on returning to Lausanne to do more interviews with Kudelski's family. Perhaps he can interview Schlup as well. The difficulty with encountering a brand-new machine is that it's difficult to enjoy it without putting hours on it. For example, I have a brand-new, 1st generation Texas Instruments calculator, still in its original packaging. I'd like to open it, but something stops me! I originally acquired it simply to have a neat calculator for my desk, but it remains unopened and unused. I do, however, appreciate much of the wear and tear found on old, used Nagras I am most familiar with, the ones I've used on sound jobs. These would be the III, the 4L, 4.2, 4S, 4STC, and the X4S. I also used the Sela "under-bridge" mixers in the late 80's, and still have a couple of those. I have an IS, but never used one on the job. It's a very cool machine! The "Harvey Board" X4S time code modification, was a nearly surgical procedure performed by the usual suspects in the early 90's- ASC, Vark, etc. It cost about $4000. The mod often included a large printed label on the interior circuit board, indicating the date of modification, and the sound mixer who ordered it. It reads like a greeting card. The X4S was my primary machine before the advent of DAT, & I have a special affinity for them. For better or worse, I currently have 3 X4S's, with the "greeting card" labels inside. pverrando
  17. I'm always a bit startled, when in confabs with younger sound guys, how most have never had their hands on a Nagra, nor have any experience at all with any reel-to-reel tape recorder. The Late boom operator David Allen Smith , told of an incident while filming Vertical Limit, in the Southern Alps of New Zealand. The production was employing a helicopter to lift palettes of production gear to the top of a mountain peak, when a Pelican case containing a new stereo Nagra dislodged, falling into the unreachable snowy forest below. It was impractical to recover it, and probably remains there to this day.
  18. An owner of MPS Studios in Dallas tells the same story of witnessing a Nagra III demonstration. The machine was set to record, and dropped from a short distance to a conference table... playback, etc. I'll have to ask him for details when I get home in a few days. I collect Nagras, and have an interesting iteration of the Nagra E, labelled the "Nagra BBC." It is an E with with pilot circuitry/flag indicator, produced enough en-masse during the heyday of 16mm news gathering/exterior film production at the BBC to deserve a special front panel. I've always been attracted to the red anodizing of the E, and the extensive documentation printed on the circuit board & case, much like military-issue electronics.
  19. An interesting thread has emerged on Facebook's "Freelance Sound Mixers & Recordists for TV/Film" regarding VER. Interesting dialogue that speaks to the constant flux of our industry. It harks back to the days when the major studios provided equipment for sound mixers, until mixers had the audacity to purchase equipment and charge rentals to those productions. I see the existence of Jeff's forum, and the Facebook forum, as roughly separated by the old guard/new guard. Yet thankfully, both exist in each. However, the mass-production methods of reality TV has drawn a youthful, albeit impressive voice, high in number, as evidenced in the Facebook forum. They face many of the same challenges as the old guard faced 30-40 years ago. If any of our senior members can speak to the days when mixers broke away from the standard of studio gear provision, it may shed some light on today's marketplace, and the distinctions of value and service that we are all obliged to honor. Indeed, please speak to any aspect of this interesting discussion. The mixer forum on Facebook is open to anyone. Look for the recent thread started by Joshua Baggett. -Pete Verrando
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