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Arnold F.

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Everything posted by Arnold F.

  1. Sorry, not really a sound question! Is there a way to block someone from posting in your thread?
  2. Sorry, this is not sound related but forum related! Is there a way to follow another user to see when they post? Thank you!
  3. If that's true then I believe it's different from the camera department equivalent, which I think is 3/8-16?
  4. This is probably what happens when you're 5am job gets cancelled. You start posting and only the people who use Whitworth are awake to answer! With what might be considered sacrilegious intent, I wish to mount a go pro to a spare boom I have so I need to adapt whatever threads they are to 1/4-20. It looks like it's 3/8-16. The boom, btw, is an old LTM.
  5. What is the thread size and pitch on boom poles? Is it 3/8-16? Thank you!
  6. Based on my understanding of the origins of the terms, I believe cameras should roll and audio should "speed" or, more accurately, acquire speed. I don't think sound should be rolling and I don't think anything should be "speeding." While recognizing the positives that came from the democratization allowed by digitization, there have been a lot of negatives as well. That cameras are "speeding" is one, that all sound mixers now have to have a "reel" or "samples," is another, that everyone (except the old-timers like me) who works in post sound now has the sheer brass to call themselves a "sound designer" yet another. I have to admit I'm also not a fan of cute-izing everything: craftie, soundie, etc. Sorry, this has turned into a rant. Apologies.
  7. This is an open, public request to senator to please stop harassing my sales threads. You have posted irrelevant comments in two of them in the span of an hour. It's hard to imagine that you did not know that I find it harassing since I posted my opinions on this subject so publicly in this thread but I think it's fair to give you the benefit of the doubt. If you would, kindly read that post now. Further postings like those that have killed my threads today will be considered deliberate and hostile. I am sending you a PM as well.
  8. Great point that you make about a very different, but important issue. If the seller in question is a scammer then by all means post a warning in the thread.
  9. If someone doesn't like my price then they can move along and not buy the item. Posting "Too much" in my sale thread, while not literally against the rules of the forum, goes against some other rules that we generally accept in society so that we can all get along. It is not against any rule for me to walk down the street yelling profanities at people but if I extend the logic presented in earlier posts to this admittedly more extreme, yet still applicable example, it is therefore absolutely okay. There is much we can do in the public sphere that is not unlawful but is nevertheless rude, insulting, intimidating or just a matter of getting into business that isn't one's own. Further, I reject the argument that posting comments in a sale thread is "helping" someone who might be new to buying gear or whatnot. It's the job of everyone to know the value of things before they buy and, in these days of free, plentiful knowledge, there are ample ways to do that. If there were minors here to protect it would be a different story. I painstakingly research value before I spend $100, much less $2000. My opinion on the value or quality of something is entirely subjective and it's as useful for me to post it in someone's sale thread as it is for me to stand next to a rack of t-shirts at the Gap and tell every interested party that the shirts are too blue. Can I argue that I'm helping the consumer who might not be fully aware how blue the shirt is? I have KILLED, to use Jeff's word, the hopelessly polluted sale thread I started because someone said they thought what I was selling was too blue, and because it subsequently became a thread having nothing to do with it's intent. Even though the moderator has cleared the path for me to post opinions or negative comments in every single sale thread, I will never do so. I don't need a written rule to tell me it's neither useful nor polite. More to the point of this whole thread, I don't use the absence of a rule to justify doing something that I shouldn't. It's interesting to see who here does. EDIT: It's interesting to see who here does BESIDES the "Senator" guy who wouldn't stop PM'ing me even after I asked him to stop, and who deliberately killed my sales thread again today.
  10. Worse even, is "audio tech," which I also see a lot. It sounds like a repairman. I honestly believe that there is an effort, albeit unconscious, to lower the status of the production mixer. I've been thinking about this for a while. I think, and I'm only a little joking, that the title should be Director of Sound. I see no reason why it shouldn't be. Does anyone ever call the DP a "video tech" or "video recordist?"
  11. Do we think the producer who asks for my reel knows that you can't make a technical judgement from it?
  12. Jeff, with where you (and others at your level) are at in your career/s I don't imagine you will be asked for a "reel" and I agree questions should be raised if they did, but perhaps not for the reasons I'm thinking of. No one is going to ask for Haskell Wexler's reel either. However, producers ask non-Haskell Wexlers (which most of us are) for reels every day so they can see if they're a good fit for their project. Why shouldn't a mixer be asked to do the same? A producer would say he has a right to know before the project if you're a good mixer or not (although he'd be more likely to call you an audio tech, or sound tech or some other repairman-sounding name first).
  13. Is it fair to say that you may have won or lost jobs based on your reel? Might a producer have listened to your reel and thought you could have recorded some bit of dialogue cleaner and decided he wanted someone better on his project?
  14. Why do they not have a clue? If a camera guy has a reel so a producer can see if he's good, why shouldn't I so that the producer can judge my work as well?
  15. I am essentially asking the same, somewhat rhetorical question. My feeling is that you are forced to deal with different conditions and people all the time, and that the track I recorded on a studio shoot reveals nothing about the tracks I'll record on a future shoot next to a freeway. I believe that a request for a reel means a failure to understand the process and the production's level of responsibility for the conditions they create and, therefore, the tracks that result. I'm just wondering if I'm alone in this belief.
  16. If the mixer didn't have recognizable credits would a "reel" be more illustrative than if they did? Would the client get an idea of how their production tracks will sound at the end of their project if the mixer gave them samples of past tracks, recorded in completely different conditions, beforehand?
  17. I am doing a little informal research (for a possible article) about the "sound reel." When I started, no one ever asked for a "reel." Now I see it all the time. Is this a new phenomenon? Is it only low budget? How often are you asked by a producer to give them your "reel"? I have a couple of rough theories of how it started if it is indeed recent. They include students being taught incorrectly and getting people to work for low/no pay if they can be convinced that a project is good for their "reel." To go a little deeper about why this interests me, I feel that a "reel" has little value in most contexts. If someone asks for my "reel" I'm just going to send them the best tracks I can find, not those where production chose to shoot next to the freeway or airport, not those where the AD added someone to the scene who wasn't there in the blocking, not one where I didn't have time to lav because the AD didn't tell me when we were shooting, not those where equipment or operator failed, not those with the generator too close (which they refused to move), etc. In addition, so much of what Production Mixers do is transparent to everyone else in the process that it would be very difficult to judge. After having worked in production and post sound for longer than I'll say, including having transferred hours and hours of dailies (back when transfer from 1/4 to mag existed), I absolutely could not listen to raw production tracks and say if a mixer did a good job because I don't know the conditions under which he or she was forced to operate. This leads me to think more about why I don't think camera and sound reels are comparable. They may not always succeed, but productions do their best to create desirable conditions for picture. In my experience they generally don't do the same for sound. The mixer is forced to deal with the conditions that prevail (those they created for the camera), and they frequently aren't ideal. It's different from project to project. All that said, a mixer who complied with a request for a "reel" would send the tracks that reflected the best conditions they were permitted to shoot under on previous jobs, conditions specific to those individual tracks. If the prospective client wants to shoot a period piece about Middle Earth next to the airport, the "reel" is, by definition, irrelevant.
  18. I agree that there are much better resources than I for information. Again, I wasn't trying to be sensationalistic or scare you. More like expressing my own fear. What I don't necessarily agree with, and it's purely academic, is whether or not the cartels care about killing Americans. It's not like here where they have to stay sort of low key in order to avoid a crackdown or the threat of increased pressure. It's already open war with all "rules" already broken. They're killing police chiefs. Killing a foreigner would not increase the pressure for them.
  19. I don't wish to be sensationalistic and I read that you are aware of the situation there, so forgive and ignore what may be paranoia and not minding my own business. Juarez is a very dangerous place for many reasons and the violence is not just between drug lords and the military. There is a lot of violence against the press (and people who look like them?), there is a kidnapping risk, spillover violence and violence that is unexplained. People who are targeted by the cartels, sometimes for the thinnest of reasons, almost never survive and are almost always tortured before they are killed, frequently by beheading and/or disembowlment. I think it is safe to assume that cartel members or informants will not be ignorant to your presence (depending on the profile of your shoot). All of this added to the normal risks of travelling in Mexico, like road men, which usually operate at night. I love Mexico and have been there many times, including Juarez many years ago. For me, the lure of the project, pay and level of security needed for me to take a gig in Juarez at this time would all have to be very high indeed. Again, forgive what may be paranoia.
  20. By "death of wireless" are you referring to the article on Zacuto's website? I'm not convinced that the C300 will take over. As I understand it, despite having a 4K sensor, it only outputs HD. I think we're moving into a 4K world. Didn't someone preview an 8K TV at CES?
  21. The irony is that guys on the RED forums will do just about anything to try to do the sound themselves. They call it Run and Gun, which to them means not so much a quickly-moving shoot, as meaning "no sound guy." One even referred to a Production Mixer as "extra baggage." I'm not clear how any RED, even the Scarlet, could be thought to be appropriate for run and gun style shooting in any case. Now, merely owning a camera means not only that you're a Cinematographer but a Production Mixer as well. End of rant.
  22. I have two SRa systems and I need to get rid of one of them. I'm not sure which to keep for primarily NYC/tri-state use, Block 19 or Block 20. I remember someone saying that one of the blocks has more police and public safety than the other but don't remember which one. A.
  23. Update - Don from Loon has contacted me and sent me the part for my boom I had been trying to get. A.
  24. As of two minutes ago Loon does not appear to be back, at least by phone.
  25. Perhaps I'll now get the service I've waited months for. Was their boom worth it all the trouble they've given me? Absolutely not. A.
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