Philip Perkins

I think you are on to something with having a separate forum for those posts--it would emliminate a good chunk of the stupid vitriol that is present on RAMPS and directed towards anyone from a company that makes gear we might own. Really tiresome. What you propose might be seen as safe zone for those people, and those who object to manufacturers posting cold just stay clear of that forum. You would also have justification for excluding posters who still attack the manufacturers on that special forum. Philip Perkins

I read that the early G5 iMacs had very noisy fans, or fans that would become noisy. I guess this was more of an isssue than on the (very noisy) G4 towers, since the IMac sits right in front of you. Anyhow, these complaints seem to have died down. I was wondering if you'd heard of any fan noise issues w/ the Macintel Imacs? I actually need a new office machine--my location-audio Powerbook is only a few months old so I'll stay with that for awhile. Philip Perkins

This spring? Philip Perkins

Well, there is a whole school of thought that the way to "get through" cheap shows like that is to wire everybody and split out all the mics to separate tracks. The result will sound like a Reality TV show. If the producer and director are good with that, then let's go. If they want their film to sound like the great films they studied in school, then they need to look at a more "classical" approach to their production sound. Some of these people understand this and figure it is just another compromise they have to make to get the film done, others either don't know the difference, or actively like the lav mic sound. Anymore, I often feel like I have to do the "lav on everyone in sight" thing so that then I have "permission " to also record the scene the way I want to (w/ booms and plants). Generally, the booms end up getting used, even if they are maybe a little too far away, unless the situation has made it really impossible for them. It's just so much faster to deal with (and cut. EQ, compress, NR and level) fewer tracks in post. On a big film with a big sound crew, some post people feel that they just need clean words, and they'll do the rest. I can see this for big action movies, but for a more intimate "actor" film it seems like the wrong approach, but it is a popular one. Philip Perkins

24 and 23.976 TC are always NDF. 29.97 can be either. What is the project framerate? Philip Perkins

Cool, thanks. Philip Perkins

Just as being a sound-editor made me a better location sound mixer, I'd think doing some mixing would make boom ops much better, or at least understanding of the totality of the task of location sound. Philip Perkins

Jeff--what do you use for the internal shock mounting of the cable? One of my poles has some softish rubber doughnuts around the cable, but I haven't been able to find them at hardware stores etc.. Philip Perkins

Specialized plant mics: go look for Conrad Slater's recent post on RAMPS about his recent experiences using plants on the huge epics he works on in Thailand ("Suryothai" etc). Conrad's a great sound man, and his solutions to odd camera angles and very noisy period costumes are extremely inventive. My fave plant mic these days is a Sanken CUB-1, usually thru a wireless. It is basically a directional PZM. Philip Perkins

Most doco sound people use the shorter poles these days, internally wired, and usually with an XLR connector built into the "butt' of the pole or somewhere @ the back end. This is often connected to the mixer via a shortish coiled cable with a right-angle XLR @ the boom (female) end. This keeps things relatively tidy while moving around and changing the length of the pole. Philip Perkins

That's not what I said, or at least not what I meant. The 816 would NOT be a great mic for ENG, since that usually means one-man-band, and it's too large for that. It IS great for exterior dramatic dialog scenes in noisy locations, as you would often find in feature films and TV drama shot on either film or video. Philip Perkins

I didn't mean to denigrate efforts of mixers like Jeff to deliver a great full mix of a scene--the sound editor part of me loves this idea no matter how many times I hear that millions of split tracks are a great idea and more important to get right than a mono or 2 track mix of a scene. It was always no easy task to mix all the mics in a scene to a good mono mix live on the set, and to do that successfully AND manage all the extra technology needed to do split track multitrack makes for some very busy sound people. I think a major choice that mixers must make now is how deep they are going to get into the multitrack thing and keep it all together, and how they will justify the expense of doing so. (Hence the discussion of the Yamaha digital boards, etc.) Philip Perkins

Boom mic, followed by maybe 2 boom mics, followed by wireless lavs (probably all the previous together); followed by plant mics if there is time and possibility. Wired lavs practically never, unless for a studio TV interview. There are a lot of specialized mics in the "plant" category. Sometimes wireless boom, and often the plant mics are wireless too. Philip Perkins

The mixer mixes a one or two track recording of everything and that goes out the main L/R outputs to the recorder as what is now called a "dailies mix", for telecine etc.. The mixer either also has pre (or post) fader direct outputs for every input or you use simple Y cables of each source and route those to other tracks of the recorder (or another recorder) so you have recordings of each element of the mix separately, without any of the "ride" moves of the location mixer. I think Jeff said that his MO is to always have track 1 or 1+2 be his dailies mix, and the others be split tracks as needed. There are various strategies for how these tracks get deliverd, on what and to whom, depending on the production. Philip Perkins

I think virtually all of that film was looped or done to playback. Philip Perkins

A long pole would be between 12 and 18 ft, extended. With that much leverage, even a small mic feels quite heavy. Wind resistance becomes a big factor, as does the whiplash of the pole when you cue to follow actors. On docs we mostly use poles 9 ft and under, and don't use long 816-style shotguns much either. Too hard to deal with in a run and gun situation. The long poles and bigger shotguns are mostly for dramatic films. Philip Perkins

You can do it. The key, as you said, is having as big a volume of dead air around the whole mic as you can manage. The problems include making the windscreen quiet itself, re: mechanical noise as it moves, and making it light enough that you can manage it on the end of a long pole. Rycote has done enough testing of materials and mics that they know what they can get away with. That said, look at what a Rycote is: a mesh cylinder with a fabric underlayer, mic mount and an overlayer of "long haired" synthetic fur. I duplicated it myself a few times just out of materials from local hardware and fabric stores while on location, and the result was actually better in protecting the Schoeps from wind than my Rycote. But it cast a BIG shadow, and it was at least 3x as heavy. Philip Perkins

What Doug said--when getting something intelligible is the best you can hope for, like a very noisy set and wardrobe that makes a lav mic impossible. Also as he said, you really need a boom op who is A: strong enough to manage the thing on a long pole and B: hip enough to be able to follow the action. Sometimes it has been really great, other times, with other boom ops, I've had to consider other options. When working and booming by myself I've found that the mic is just too big to manage and mix at the same time, while I often get away with the Neumann in solo situations. Philip Perkins

When the 800 series mics first came out , they were a real breakthru in directional mics, and much smaller, higher output and generally better sounding than previous attempts to make a really directional mic. But since their invention a number of other mics have come out that show up some of the shortcomings of the 816. To my ears, the Neumann KMR82 almost has the reach of the 816, but a nicer sound that cuts better with Schoeps and other Neumann mics in a package that doesn't demand the physique of a pro-linebacker to use on a long pole in the wind. The Sanken CS3 has a very original design using 3 capsules that is quite directional in an even smaller package, and has much less sensitivity to the mic's rear. The later Sennheiser shotguns (MKH70) keep a lot of the good things about the 816, but I like the sound better. The new Schoeps shotgun seems to combine a lot of things I like about the Schoeps MK41 and the Neumann KMR82 in one mic, but smaller and lighter. I think the 816 is a great tool to have around for when things get really hairy--but I think some of these other mics would give you less harsh sounding dialog in less-than-dire situations. Philip Perkins

Nobody knows yet. Glen Trew felt that some of things that PSC left out of the DVProMix 6 could be handled other ways, and that it was a good value for the money. It does have direct outs for every input, but it has no trims. Glen said that trims for wireless RX could be handled by the output level controls of the RX themselves, perhaps the direct out levels could be adjusted on the target recorder. Not perfect, but ok. The 302's mic pres will sound nicer, the 302's metering is WAY more informative (ie avg+peak), and the 302 has SD's input limiters as well as output limiters. It can also be configured to run an MS stereo mic off one knob, and give you decoded monitoring . Do you need 6 channels a lot of the time? Do you need the direct outs? I'm certainly going to take a look at this thing when it becomes available, perhaps it will be a new standard for bang for buck. Philip Perkins

I'd love to see other rigs that people have custom built for themselves. Philip Perkins

No--just seen them at shows. Can it do time code? I wasn't aware that it could record other than compressed files. Philip Perkins

Production sound people are usually pretty independent minded, and a lot like small service businesses like contractors and plumbers etc.. Unions are very much a two-edged sword for us, because on the one hand there is undeniably safety and negotiating power in numbers (as well as info sharing) and on the other having those things requires one to give up a measure of control over one's life and work. I've been very angry with the IA many times about issues both general and those that pertained specifically to me and what they would say I could or couldn't do, but there really isn't a clear alternative for a person who has decided to make a life as a movie technician, especially on bigger jobs. Free-lancers are always looking for ways to connect with other people in their same situtation, before internet forums like this one unions were one of the only ways to network and meet people. There is also the benefit of group health insurance and pension plans. We are approaching a kind of crossroads now, with the IA not being so interested in organizing people who do not work for their major signitors (or so it seems to me), so what the fate of people like me who work mostly outside the studio/TV network structure remains to be seen. Philip Perkins

So do we get a glass of champagne, like we do when we get to camera roll #100? Philip Perkins

That is an amazing thing. I guess all the metering he needed was in the Nagra? Interesting idea, a general lav EQ with more trim EQ by channel. What are the sliders over on the left for? They remind me of the old Langevin board EQs, one for freq and one for peak and dip. This should in the mic collection display case @ Location Sound Corp.. The CAS should put it on the cover of the journal. Did it run on 12V? Philip Perkins