Marc Wielage

That's a great idea.

I was very surprised to read this recent news story:
 “Randall Cobb had a serious injury last year in a playoff game and I believe, as I think he would as well and the team, that that was caused from him being mic’d up. Because he fell on his mic pack and he had an injury to his insides that kept him out of the game and probably would have kept him out of the rest of the playoffs. The puncture spot, or the injury spot, was directly adjacent to his mic pack.” 
 While we may never know exactly what caused the terrifying injury to Cobb, Rodgers is certainly not a fan of the mic'd up component of the game regardless, saying, "I think being mic’d up, when I’m mic’d up, it takes away from the authenticity of the game for me. I don’t feel comfortable mic’d up.” http://www.12up.com/posts/3260513-revealed-aaron-rodgers-believes-nbc-caused-randall-cobb-s-playoff-injury I hadn't heard of this specific incident, but I've definitely dealt with issues like it before on shoots. The moment I'm aware that an actor has to take a fall, I'm going to do whatever I can to get the transmitter off their bodies. There's no way you can take a risk like this. Steve Deichen and I did a film a couple of years ago where we had young kids taking karate falls during the shoot, and it was a real battle (90% done by him) keeping track of the mics and making sure they were able to do the stunts without any discomfort, no matter what was going on. Even on a soft matte, if you have a brick on your side, you're gonna feel it when you hit the ground. (My joke is, "heck with the actor! I'm worried about the gear!" But in truth, I'm much more worried about them getting injured because of anything the sound department did. I hope this doesn't lead to the various football leagues banning wireless mics or making players wary of using them during a typical game.

I knew a guy, a high-end audiophile, who lived out near Long Beach and was within about 500 feet of some massive Godzilla-type electrical towers. I asked him if he had experienced any hum or noise, and he told me at the time there were no problems except on the AM radio band. FM was generally good, and unbalanced audio and analog video in the house was good. Then, I had another pal (an animator) who lived in a part of town near an AM transmitter whose place was inundated with interference. Even the (wired) telephone picked up interference by inductance. He eventually had to move. I'd say there's too much chaos theory involved, too many variables. I've seen two TV shows in the last week that mentioned Faraday Cages, so it seems like people are more and more aware of related stuff like this.

I'm having a discussion with a guy on the Red User group who thinks it's a great idea to record 192kHz dialogue so that he can process it with iZotope RX in post to get all the noise out of it. I told him I think it's a better idea to just record the dialogue in a better space with traditional 48kHz/24-bit audio without any processing at all, and he's fighting me on it. It's amazing the number of neophytes who latch on to totally bizarre theoretical approaches that will bewilder anybody who's actually worked on a real set. High on that list (to me) are people who don't want to slate anything.

The report utility that Sound Devices gives away for free (Wave Agent) is very handy for printing out sound reports at the end of the day. Even more so if you name the tracks with reasonable descriptions, enter the Scene & Take information, along with any important notes (traffic noise, airplanes, generator sounds, etc.).

I go through conversations like that all the time on the Red User group. There's a guy up there now who's asking whether it's OK if (basically) he gets rid of the sound department and just hires a boom op to record everything directly on the Red camera. I countered that he's not really looking for advice; he's looking for justification to do things the cheap and dirty way. My point is that he'd be better off finding a way to get an affordable sound mixer, a couple of wireless mics, a boom, and a multitrack recorder just to free the camera operator from worrying about whether the levels are correct. I get a little frustrated when I encounter people who are willing to spend $40,000 on a Red Epic camera (or god forbid, $50,000 on a Red Weapon), plus another $25K-$50K on lenses, but won't spend $5000 on sound. Too often it's just madness and mediocrity over there. I do get that there are doco situations, run & gun situations, and shooting in war situations where it's hard to justify a 3- or 4-man crew. But it's baffling to me where there are people shooting scripted productions and then not budgeting for a reasonable sound crew. And by that I don't mean $250 a day for a guy, a boom, and a bag.

Yep, Patrick and Mr. Blankenship have it it 100% right. Timecode, timebase, and frame rate can all theoretically be different, particularly in varispeed situations. I have had situations where I was feeding scratch audio to a Red camera and we couldn't see it on the meters, and finally realized, "ah! Timebase is wrong." So it was at 23.98fps, with 23.98 timecode... but it was in the wrong timebase. Three possible things to get wrong. It is true that it doesn't hurt to also have external genlock reference when jamming to a timecode box like a Denecke SB-T or an Ambient Lockit. I have had situations where when we rebooted the camera (and Alexa is included), everything worked correctly on the reboot.

Yep, I agree with John above. Note that the camera can be set to the right speed but the wrong timebase, so you really have to have both for rock-solid sync.

You can download all the various Red camera manuals from the Red.com website. I've found it necessary to take along just the pages on sound/timecode setup when I'm confronted with AC's who don't know how to jam timecode or where the menu items are located. In fairness to them, the menu can be a little cryptic the first time you use it.

I worked on Purple Rain for a week or two in video post before it came out. The editor who came in to supervise insisted that the star of the movie "had no talent," "was too short," and "couldn't act worth a damn," and he was convinced the movie would bomb. After the first couple of songs, I turned to the guy and said, "I dunno if the movie will do well, but that's a hit song if I ever heard one." The song was "Let's Go Crazy" and wound up going to #1 about six weeks later. This could've been one of those cases where somebody was too close to the film to judge how good or bad it was. I know of stories where Prince was distant, arrogant, and difficult in editing sessions, but I have no personal experience with that since I never met the guy and don't know the whole story. I do think he was incredibly talented and I think his story is ultimately going to prove to be a tragic one. The tabloids are having a field day at the moment...

It depends on the room and where I can get the mic, but that's often true for me. In a perfect world, you'd control the echo with blankets and/or flags and use a boom to control reflections on the walls and floor, but it's not always possible for various reasons.

If they're this specific on gear, you wonder how they could be so ignorant of rental rates. I'd tell them, "sure, I can give you all that for $200/day. But of course, Batteries and Media will be $600/day, and we can't do the job without those."

I saw this at NAB this week and thought it was a fantastic idea.

They say it's "conceived, designed, and developed by Craft Digital Systems Inc. in Atlanta, Georgia but manufactured outside of the United States." Gee, outside of the U.S. That at least pins it down.

I've got a better solution: don't use a GoPro camera. I think you're much better off using something like a Blackmagic Pocket camera, which will support ProRes, manual video gain, and interchangeable lenses. The GoPro is a toy camera that makes bad pictures. Every time we have to deal with one in post, everybody slaps their foreheads and grumbles.

Great. I did a spit-take on my monitor and now have to hose it down.

I think 10 channels makes more sense, but that's me. Seeing how shallow the Venue is, I think two more rows behind it would be enough to contain 4 more modules to bring it up to 10. And it still wouldn't be 20" deep.

I think that's reasonable. It takes a lot to push me up against the wall. In my post sessions, I've only walked out on one session, and that was when I had a toe-to-toe screaming match with legendary director Russ Meyer. I stormed out and yelled at the boss, "that's it! I quit! That guy's crazy!", but the boss got us to sit down and work out our differences. I wound up doing 8 more films for Russ, and we got along famously over the next year or so. There are some directors who like to push your buttons and find your breaking point, and once they know where that is, they back off. I think Russ was one of those. Very interesting guy.

Philip, one reason they want everything in sync on set is because the editor will initially watch everything with sound in order to decide what bit to grab. It's true that often, the shot they grab had nothing to do with the music in the song, but they try to at least start with the material in some kind of organized chaos before diving into the edit. And you never know: they may use one line or one word from that song that actually needs to be in sync. If the whole take is in sync, they'll know which specific word that was and where it occurred in the song. I also think it shuts the crew up when the camera rolls and allows the artist to concentrate on the moment in the song. If it was all just MOS, it'd be more chaotic than it already is.

Call me crazy, but if this had happened to me, I would've walked. I try to be nice and cooperative up to a point, but there is a line that gets crossed.

Be aware that WiFi will typically add a couple of seconds delay, and it's pretty confusing to hear live audio and see 2-second-delayed picture.

I haven't seen a street price yet on the SRc, but that's good to know. A $200 premium is downright affordable.

I have actually referred to timecode on the previous day's tracks when making up invoices that involve overtime. That's a pretty sure indicator for indie sets where there's no shop steward or anybody keeping track of billable hours for the entire crew.

The SRc to me looks like a real winner. Having the flexibility of three blocks is a no-brainer. Although you have to weigh that against the SRc's price of $3000, vs. $2000 for the SRb.

I have encountered studio execs who have told me they look at the slate just to get an idea of what time of day the scene was being shot. And that's something I had never thought about before, until they mentioned it.