JonO

There is a very good auto mix function in the 788t (as long as the firmware is up to date.) There's no reason to rent a standalone unit. If possible, make sure that the PA speakers are in front of the mic's- not facing them. -Jon

1)Make sure that you have your preamps activated (ie not clicked off) 2) Make sure that you have your tracks are assigned inputs in the input routing menu 3) in the input menu, make sure that at least one of your tracks is selected to be recorded with a star 5) try it without the cf card 6) panic because your f'd! Thats all I can think of, good luck. -Jon

Yesterday I put in a request in to production to rent this very rig from Coffey Sound for a surf documentary. I suspect they are going to say no because of the cost- but we'll see. Looks like a lot of fun. -Jon

Thanks for the responses. I stopped by Coffey Sound and had a good conversation. I am going to go with a Sennheiser 8070 with digital capsule- Gary Vahling recommended it. He used it to record waves during the US Open surf competition and said that the super low noise floor and digital clarity helped to cut down on the "white noise" that Tom was mentioning above. I'm also going to attempt to get production the rent a stereo Ambient hydrophone setup with the waterproof 788 housing. I don't know exactly what we would get, but hopefully it will be interesting. In addition I am going to rent a holophone 5.1 microphone to catch ambient waves/ jungle/ village sounds. Senator, thanks for the advice- exactly the type of experiences I was hoping to hear about on this forum. I'll also be bringing a couple MKH-416's as backup and back-up zeppelins, and I'll clean everything off daily. -Jon

The hydrophone would only be for underwater shots and would capture unique, cool sounds like waves breaking onto the reef. Hopefully there will be channels to get me close to the action. We will be shooting at a bunch of different breaks, so I'm sure that some will allow me closer than others. The balloon idea is interesting. I think that the production company has one of those drones that they mount cameras on...maybe I could get a shotgun mic onboard....

"I'm wondering how you're going to keep yourself and your mixer/recorder dry working off of a jet ski. is there anything that you can wrap your gear in to keep it from getting soaked" Yes, this is going to be a big issue. I'm not sure either, but I'm headed to LSC Monday and start talking to people. I'll also try to rent a 816 and mkh-70 from them and bring them to Malibu to test them out. "Schoeps Super CMIT certainly short light highly directional" I'd love to use a Schoeps! Unfortunately I'm nervouse about humidity issues- I think I will have to sacrifice some quality for reliability. " CS3e worked for me on a surfing doc, on a 10 foot pole, it was manageable when I was up to my tits in the surf and pulls out clean dialog much better than anything else of it's size. An 816 or MKH70 will be virtually unmanageable on a jetski." Great! That's good advice-I'll probably ditch the long shotgun for any dialogue. I'm primarily using it for a wild sound mic- the production wants to feature sound heavily as the expedition is sponsored partially by Dolby. I'm hoping to capture some up close sounds of the 10 ft waves crashing around the surfers. Something audiences really haven't heard before. I'd like to use the 816 without a pole and hold it with the pistol grip of the zeppelin. I'm also trying to get production to purchase a hydrophone- anyone worked with one of those?

It's a surfing documentary. We are bringing waterproofed Zaxcom wireless custom made for the production company. They shot some stuff earlier at Mavericks with the radio mic's and I listened to it. At times they sounded OK, but whenever the lav's hit the water, they sounded terrible (and theres nothing that can be done about that). I'd like to get up close wave sounds and possibly pick up some yells and hoots that can be mixed in with the lav's, to make the tracks sound more professional. I'd like them to use the boom for a base sound and then bring up the mic's occasionally when they are clean. I'm going to try and wield this thing from a jet ski- so lighter is better...

I'm going to be working on a project in Sumatra shooting a surf film, and I need to find a shotgun mic (816, MKH-70 or similar) with the longest reach possible. I don't have much experience with the long gun shotgun mics I've have used parabolic mic's before (Big Ears) and didn't care for the sound. Does anyone have any recommendations as to what mic has the longest reach? Thanks, Jon

I just wrapped a show where I was recording multitracks to two 788's on a cart. One was a SSD, the other a spinning drive. 6 tracks on on the SSD and 7 one the spinning drive. When I put my hand on both, the SSD was always noticeably cooler. I would guess around a 3-5 degree temperature difference. Personally, I don't mind the trade off of a hot machine for a large internal hard drive. I like having that drive as a backup in case I have trouble with my CF cards (like forgetting them!). And I have used the 788t in 100 degree weather with no issues. -Jon

Yeah, same on our show- even thought the levels are hitting zero on the VRT's input we aren't getting distortion that I can hear. (keep in mid this is a home improvement competition show, and it is very loud all around and monitoring without bleed is tough). I still feel that it is because the antennas are catching the signal, amping it 10 db, and sending it to the VRT's a bit hot. I'd like to see if it does it if the signal is not amplified, but I can't change the jumpers on the Venue right now because we need the gain for our cable run. We Larry in here! Also, not sure about firmware, I'll check- but it's on 3 different Venues.

We are running about 150-200 ft of R8 from the 1st floor of a building to the 5th floor of a warehouse (hence the powered antennas). I have noticed the VRTs "squaring off" occasionally. All of our transmitters are recieved at 3 venues and also to our 5 eng mixers who have 411's in bags. When they square off on the venues, our ENG mixers are reporting the levels as fine on their 411's. I suppose it would be an easy thing for us to confirm tomorrow if we get a chance. -Jon

Whoops- premature post- we are running venues and 411's on the same frequencies and the venues are squaring out occasionally whereas the 411's are not. I am using the venues with powered Shure antennas with the plus 10 gain setting activated. I'm wondering if it's because the gain is a little too high for the length of our antenna run and is hitting the venue a bit too hot. That's my theory anyway- I'd like to know the real answer... -Jon

I can confirm that it will square out first on the Venue- when you are using powered antennas wthe plus 10 gain activated.

Yes, I've noticed this too- are you running your antennas powered? I've wondered if this is a result enabling the 10db gain on my antennas ( I have a 200ft run). I do not believe that the transmitters are actually limiting...but I haven't seen the waveforms. -Jon

I can tell you that Amazing Race pays 2500 a week flat. A week consists of seven days, 24 hours a day. It is non union and you use the productions company's gear and there is no guarantee on how long you will be employed for. When you team gets eliminated, so do you. (I'm working with a mixer who does the show and he said everyone does it for the experience and not the money) -Jon

One more thing, make sure that you didn't accidentally put your receivers into pilot tone bypass mode...I've done that one before and it has some of the same symptoms that you are describing. -Jon

Make sure that the lav's are not getting wrapped around the transmitter's antenna- this can reduce the transmitter's range. -Jon

Its 29.97- just a typo

<div> </div> <p>Wow, bad advice. There are some cameras that need a 29.98 workflow even though they are shooting 23.98 (IE: a lot of Panasonics). Also, it's not as easy as just changing the frame rate in Wave Agent- especially if you have been jamming slates, cameras, and/ or timecode boxes all day to a different frame rate. </p> <div> </p> <p>You will be the master timecode, therefore you will be jamming the cameras. Supplying the timecode is usually the sound department's job as your clock will be the most reliable and accurate. Most camera's ( other than the Alexa apparantly) timecode drifts after a couple hours or less.</p> <p> </p> <p>Most likely, you will be running a 23.98 timecode, but keep in mind- on a lot of Panasonic cameras- you will need to run 29.98 to have them accept the jam even if they are shooting 24p. </p> </div>

Yeah, your right. When I wrote that I had forgotten where he said he was from.

I think that starting as a production assistant is the way to go. Even if you are just handing out water bottles or locking down the set, you are meeting people and learning the art of production from a side other than audio's. If you work hard enough and are pleasant to get along with, someone WILL notice and give you a chance. Oh, and on my opinion, move to a production hub such as Los Angeles and New York. You will get many more opportunities faster. As for gear, I wouldn't buy any yet. On set, you will meet sound guys who have gear and if you learn from them, eventually they might send you out on gigs that they don't want, or the rate is too low for them to take- and they will get the gear rental. Its a win win for both parties. That's how I got my start. Once I saved money, I bought gear. And top of the line gear, productions do notice imho. And be nice to everyone on set. You never know which one of your pa buddies will be booking you somewhere down the line.

That's cool, on the show that I was working on, I feel that the only ability that I missed from the Zaxcom in comparison to the Lectro, was the ability to record audio on the transmitter. Once the team went to the locker room for half-time, I lost clean audio because they were out of range. ( We picked that audio up on boom with two roaming sound mixers - recording straight into cameras (RED's for this)- which worked well, but could be difficult because of the challenge of booming while staying out of the multiple camera angle's shots. Two questions: how are the range on the Zaxcoms working? I definitely felt the need for 250 mw's vs the 100's. I was using a PSC Multimax with passive batwings and had some issues on my 400a's at probably 70 yards or so (depending on variables such as RF- or blockage). Also, how is the battery life of the Zaxcoms- I felt that having two lithium AA's was a godsend in the player's pads because changing the batteries in the middle of the game was impossible (realistically, an MMa with a lithium usually lasted the game, but it was always close and stressed me out - and more than once I did have to change batteries- but I only used the MMa for the coaches.) " NFL Films is still using Lectrosonics SMQV's on all of there regular player and coach wires" It's funny how they want the transmitters encrypted for the live broadcast, but realistically, anyone with a proper scanner could hang out and tune in to all the coaches and quarterbacks during probably just about any NFL game and listen to the play calls- since I believe that NFL films shoots every game. ( I might just do this at the next Chargers game I attend!) That being said, I was recording audio for high school football and obviously the stakes aren't as high, so encryption didn't matter and I loved the SMQV's. I put those things on football player's pads 4 days a week for 3 months and never had one failure. When I did my audio quote before the show started, I made sure that they knew that we were likely to lose at least a couple of transmitters to L&D....just so production was prepared. What makes a happy production? One that doesn't have to pay for a single broken transmitter at the end of the show, and audio comes in under budget (in contrast to an extremely over budget camera dept!)

Recently, as in about two years ago, realized/ found out that some of the make-up people were making " on average" more than me, and more than the DP on some jobs. Like Whitney, I was pretty flabbergasted, thinking about how much work I felt that I contributed, plus the importance of my job or, the (ability to completely F-up a shoot) compared to them. I felt that I held more responsibility, therefore I should definitely get paid more. The longer that I have been working in this industry, the more i realized why they get paid what they do. Pretty much it's this : when a big name talent is asked how they felt about their experience with a shoot- they are going to mention how much they liked the make-up person or how much they didn't because they have very direct and personal interactions with them- probably a couple hours worth and like was mentioned before, that experience, good or bad can affect their mood/ performance. At the end of the day, if the director or producer were to ask ( not like they would) do you like the sound mixer, they would probably say...."who? what was his or her name...why was the sound F'ed up?....no? Well who cares then? " and that is why they get payed more than we do. It is what it is. But we have a pretty sweet job compared to most on set. I regularly show up later and leave sooner than most...including hair, make-up, and wardrobe. So to sum it up, I got over it. Good for them if they can figure out a way to get payed a thousand bucks a day to sit around, read US Weekly, gossip and then run in as the expensive 35 mm film starts to roll and fix a phantom shiny spot on an actresses forehead! They've got it all figured out!

Interesting... has NFL films moved away from the Lectrosonics SMQV's that they used to use? Was that move prompted by the need for encryption? I was using SMQV's for a football doc I did last year and found the quarter watt setting very, very helpful- not just for range, but also cutting through any stray RF. Do the Zaxcoms have a 250 mw option? Anybody working with NFL Films on the forum? -Jon

I say go with the RE50b. I'm not sure what sort of production audio work that you normally do, but personally I use it enough to make the relatively small investment worthwhile. I have used mine for a talent prompt for an earwig, a director mic, a red carpet mic, for talkback, even for a prop on a skit for the Teen Choice Awards. IMHO If you are going to purchase a mic, definitely don't make it a one trick pony- get something that you will use later. The RE50b is a great, practical mic for the price and you will probably find more uses for it than you realize. -Jon -Jon