Philip Perkins

This sounds like a great setup. Philip Perkins

Tough call. Did you tell them upfront that you would be needing to subrent some gear to do the job? How specialized or oddball was that gear? What was the rate discussion you had before the job? Producers rarely ask me about what's in the package they are renting from me for short relatively simple jobs--there is an understanding that having the info about the format being shot, the number of characters in the scenes, maybe a peek at the script and boards should yield a package adequate to the job for a certain rate. They also assume that you will have some degree of backup on hand in case of changes or problems. A recorder of x #of tracks, mixer, boom mics, lavs and wireless and the ability to feed Comtek and video assist would be considered basic I think, and after that it's a matter of negotiation. But subrentals usually have to be cleared ahead of time if you are expecting the production to pay for them above a negotiated "channel" rate. This is how it's always worked for me anyhow. Philip Perkins

I'm still waiting to hear how you will record audio onto the 35mm ArriCam. Think of it.....single system 35mm! Philip Perkins

Well, we got a request 2 months ago for an HD monitor to plug into the video tap of a super 16mm camera. We pointed out that the tap camera was standard def and that no additional resolution was available even if the monitor they got COULD display a SD signal. We were told that the director was insisting on it for checking focus and it had to be HD sharp. When we told them that was unlikely they asked how the director could check the focus of the (film) camera. We said..."look through the viewfinder?" Philip Perkins

Unless this person starts to send emails about mic choice, windscreen type or other audio minutia then I'd take it as a good sign that someone farther up the food chain is concerned about the audio on the project. She is right--having some sort of sync locked playback is preferable to just playing a CD for many reasons. I'd send this person an email directly, introduce myself, and ask if she had any other audio concerns she'd like to bring to your attention, and spell out how you want to deal with the concerns she's already brought up. It might make you a friend "above the line"--always a good thing for the sound dept.. Philip Perkins

In this situation we try to get ref audio to at least one camera, get the onboard mic on on the rest, and put a clap slate out so they an be aligned in post. Rolling your own recorder is a great idea, even if there is no TC except what you generate yourself. Inevitably there will be some setup where you can get audio to NO camera (say across many lanes of traffic) and still record the actors on your own rig, or someone screws up and the camera hookup doesn't happen etc etc.. For the rest, well, this is how you learn your craft--by solving problems as they come up on a project. I hope the folks you are working for are grateful for your efforts. Philip Perkins

I vividly remember hearing this song for the first time, and wondering HOW HE GOT THAT GUITAR SOUND! Philip Perkins

My first Denecke's were among the first batch of TC slates, and all of them had B/W stix. Later, when having the reed switch on those early slates fixed Mike Denecke asked me if I would rather have colored stix. He had no pretensions towards his colored stix being any sort of real color reference, I think he just thought they looked cool. I do too. Later, the camera-assistant-turned-shooter Peter Litomiski sold some very nice miniature clap slates for a few years that had colored stix as well (wish I still had it--stolen). Philip Perkins

The Venue is so nice and small it seems like you could remote it to the set pretty easily, maybe in one of those little sack-racks like musicians use? Philip Perkins

It opened fine (and automatically) in "Numbers", the cheapo Mac spreadsheet pgm. Philip Perkins

I have it from some broadcast/RF engineers that the VHF band we used is promised to land-mobile and emergency. Philip Perkins

I think you mean VHF. I still have one 185 and it works quite well for TC tx and backup....but they're gonna sell those bands too (the old VHF "Traveling" bands). Philip Perkins

Sharing your pain, bro. I have to buy some new wireless gear this year, a big deal for me financially, and a roll of the dice technically. Philip Perkins

My recommendation would be to have nothing to do w/ TC re: the EX1. If you send a feed to the camera and clap slate the takes while taking decent notes it is just as fast to sync the double system sound to the picture by eye and ear and build a new multiclip as it is to mess with syncing to TC off an camera audio channel, and far more straightforward. Philip Perkins

I'm actually seeing editors doing syncing more and more these days, esp. on indies shot on card-based video cameras. A common scenario is shooting double system with a feed to the camera (if possible) or the cam-mic on (when not), record to cards on both pix and sound, sound makes TC for the audio files and the TC slate, sound UBITS are the date. The editor is there because after a fairly quick xfer and sync (where the visual TC from the slate is quite useful re: sound reports--those sound reports often being the only script note of any kind being taken), he or she does a quick slam edit of the scene so the director etc can not only see dailies right away, but see how the scene will cut. I've done a few jobs this way now, and it looks like the future to me. Philip Perkins

In the SF area there are MANY really good sound people, and we do a very mixed bag of work. There are a few (like 3) guys who do nothing but features and episodics, and a few more who only do doco stuff, but most of us do "whatever comes in on the phone". This makes for some extreme equipment turnarounds for shortish jobs (1 day is common), like from 22-track music etc performance w/ multicam video to whup-ass runaround hard doc to full up national spot w/ a sound cart and iso splits and a huge client presence in the same week....and so on. Philip Perkins

The users of dinkycams have gotten so used to not having TC that they don't think much about it anymore--we use clap slates and scratch audio on the camera to resync double system audio and that seems to satisfy everyone. I think I might have a hard time convincing them that we needed to use the TC out from those cameras now--with cards and on-set xfer and sync-up working well I think they might decide they don't care. Philip Perkins

I think the nerve that Stephen Pruitt has touched here has not much to do with whatever technology is in fashion this summer for indie filmmaking--there have always been "mavericks" doing things their own way in that regard. What people here don't like about his approach is his "de-professionalizing" of crew positions, and the taking over of all choices made about equipment etc.. These both have serious economic consequences for most of the readers of this forum. I just had a discussion with another filmmaker on a different forum that took a similar tack--she believed that crew people, esp. grips and electricians, were just a video version of rock and roll roadies or construction laborers, and since she had no experience with real pros doing that work (and never will, with that attitude) she felt that people like us were just part of a conspiracy to keep our unjustifiable rates up for easy work. And of course, as always, unions and their supposed control of the movie business were brought up. People without much experience making movies very often don't understand what all the people on crews do, or why they get paid what they get paid--I think it is like me wondering what all those highway-crew workers are doing that always seem to be standing around where they are fixing a freeway. If I knew the highway repair business then I'd probably understand what all those guys did, why they were there and why there had to be that number of them to get the job done well, on time and as cheaply as possible. Video gear has now gone the way of the musical instrument/home recording market--and many people are being told what they want to hear, those somewhat uninformed attitudes are being reinforced by people who want to sell them a lot of gear, which they figure is simple enough that anyone can operate it well enough. There is some truth to this notion, but only some, and only in situations where the filmmaker has a really good idea of what they can do well with those people operating that gear will the results be good. There always seems to be a lot of parroting of Apple-esque marketspeak about "new paradigms" or "freedom to create" or destroying the "established order"--concepts that appeal to people to whom our world seems a monolith with no entrance for them. With a little self-education and talking to people outside their usual acquaintance hopefully they will see that the situation is not really that way at all, but that they "don't know what they don't know". Philip Perkins

On the cart, for movie jobs, no (using direct outs from mixer). On music location recording and multitrack video shows, yes. In general I've been very happy with the pres in the MOTU boxes I have--lots of headroom, neutral, clean. The pres in the newer 8Pre I have sounds slightly better to me than those in my Travelers, so they seem to be steadily improving. This new box is cool...but no 12VDC or bus-powering, and it looks like it is a whole rack space taller. MOTU stuff has been a tremendous bang for buck for location recording, but for studio recording under more pristine conditions I think I'd probably go upmarket. (I have several friends doing very high level music work w/ MOTU boxes and outboard pres.) One plus w/ MOTU (and its competitors from RME and MH) is that their software apps allow me to be able to solo inputs and make several different monitor mixes w/o bringing along a console. The Traveler has good TC and ext.clock features as well. Philip Perkins

Just did another job for Apple, at the same store we shot at 2 months ago. Last time in this store there were Macbook "Airs" all over the place, on 2 or 3 whole tables. This time there were maybe 2 in the whole (big) store, and their place on the tables had been taken by lots of regular Macbooks. I know its grad-time, so MacBooks will be selling big, but there had been so many complaints about the lack of ports etc on the Air that I wondered how well they were selling. Philip Perkins

Look out re: freq.s 700 MHz and above for the short run, although exactly how that spectrum sale will play out in terms of use is not clear in every locale yet. I'm keeping my Lectro block 27/28 stuff for now--it's old enough that I'd rather have the use of it until it is literally run over, but I'm not buying any more gear in those blocks. For later on in the indefinite future it seems like most of the UHF band will get sold off to someone for something--but how that will work is still science fiction. Philip Perkins

I'm not a nay-sayer, and I am very interested in new modes of production. Please send a link to your film's website so we can look for it--I'm sure I have something to learn from how you are making your movie. Since you bought so much gear I'm guessing you have plans to make more films this way, and I'd like to hear about them. Philip Perkins

This kind of rudeness didn't start w/ the iPhone, but that technology has made it worse. On several jobs I've been on recently there has been at least one person who refuses to turn their phone off. Period. Either they are a star, and everyone is too intimidated to ask, or they are crew or posse and just lie about whether their phone is off or not. One sound mixer I know has resorted to walking around the set after a hit mid-take and demanding that everyone show him their phone so he can see it is off. I had an instance just recently where I think someone left their personal stuff on or near the set and left. The set was inside a big building so the phone was "searching for the collective" all the time. We never did get that scene clean all the way through, despite harangues after ever take. Philip Perkins

I guess because I do a good deal of audio post myself I want to keep my karma clean. I've been too often in situations where I'm handed off a big pile o' files w/ no docs or labelling, and have to do a huge amount of soul-destroying detective work just to be able start the real work of sound-cutting the film. That experience made me much more meticulous about backups and record keeping and organizing my deliverables with an eye towards making this less painful for the sound editor. Philip Perkins

My recent low-budg drama experience matches this pretty exactly. Often in those situations the sound mixer is one of the very few real professionals on the set, and usually the editor ends up communicating with the mixer about record keeping and coverage etc.. In that case, as mon ami Phil says, your sound reports my be the ONLY reliable log of what went down during shooting ("what camera reports?"), so scene/take/file # and TC are all info very gratefully received by editors. If you are double system show the camera a TC slate w/ audio TC, and try to get them to establish a sequence of "roll numbers", new for each time a set of cards goes into the camera. This will help organize the material for later re: uprezing, conforming audio etc.. Philip Perkins