Jump to content

josephduemig

Members
  • Posts

    30
  • Joined

  • Last visited

About josephduemig

  • Birthday 12/12/1989

Profile Information

  • Location
    Austin, TX
  • About
    IATSE Local 484 Union Boom Operator based in Austin, TX.

    TWIN SOUND:
    My twin brother, Erik, and I are production sound guys based in Austin, TX. He usually mixes and I usually boom, but we're both able to do both jobs.

    We both have bachelor's degrees in Audio for the Visual Media from Columbia College Chicago.

Recent Profile Visitors

1,430 profile views
  1. My condolences, Jeff. He made a great impact during his life and was an inspiration to so many, especially in this community.
  2. Congrats, Tom! Super cool of you to throw nods to your team up on stage.
  3. It's a shame that "Location tracking engineers" have so saturated the industry that the post folks have learned to trust the "boom" track over and above the "mix" track, which in my way of understanding it is the location mixer's way of saying to the post people, "Here, use this. I was specifically hired to save you time by giving you a single track that sounds the most like a movie/show." Anyone worth their salt as a "mixer" on set should be knowledgeable enough about the physics of sound to take phase issues into account when forming a course of action for recording a scene. What Erik and I find ourselves lamenting the most on set is the pervasive lack of preplanning. We've worked on so many shows lately where the powers that be (Director, AD team, DP even!) are kind of making up the coverage as they go along, with barely a shred of actual vision or purpose for the scene. We try to ask, "Okay, y'all, how do you envision the scene playing out on screen? Are we mostly going to live in the wide? Are we wanting the audience to feel close with the characters or as if they're watching from a distance? What other sounds do you envision populating and enhancing the world of this scene?" etc. etc. And the worst possible (and more common) answer we get is, "I don't know. We'll figure it out in post." When I boom, I listen to the full mix, because the mic I'm operating is often just one in an array of mics capturing a scene. I think of it like recording a live jazz band in a studio: Sometimes you can place one mic in the room and capture all the players in a good mix achieved through the skill of the musicians and the thoughtful placement of the instruments in the room relative to the mic. Other times you just can't hear a quieter instrument over the horns and the drums, and so you decide to use a ton of mics on each instrument individually, making sure that they are not out of phase with each other, and create a solid mix at the mixing board. Either way, you have to have an idea about how you want the music to sound in the end. If you don't, you're ceding your creative control of the sound to someone else. And 99 times out of 100, that someone else has a very different definition of "good sound" than your own. If you have no pride in your work and you're just doing it to get paid, well...fine. I just wouldn't exactly feel like a bastion of integrity if I charged what I charge and then provided little more than a haphazard mess of (possibly out of phase) tracks for some poor schmuck in post to clean up (or worse, NOT clean up). I've learned to no longer be unilaterally averse to using lavs frequently, because the reality is that we have to use them pretty frequently with the way folks are shooting. And I've learned to assess a scene, form a course of action, and stick to it. If we decide the boom won't work for a shot (a big wide or a scene with lots of reflections, for example), we don't waste it recording an unusable track of far-off dialog. We find a place to position it so that it can record some nice clean, quiet air to give the scene a sense of space and rely on the lavs as our primary means of recording the dialog. Regardless of the strategy, the role of the production sound mixer must be an active roll on set. As active as the boom op's roll. To hire someone who merely slaps lavs on everyone and records only isos is a waste of money. Any PA or camera intern could do that with barely a half hour of instruction.
  4. I use a pole with a coiled internal cable. I have found this to be the most convenient for extending and retracting my pole quickly without having to think about it. Whenever extending one of the sections, I always make sure to leave just a little slack at the end (extend to just below maximum extension) so as to cut down on internal cable noise. I plug an HM transmitter to the bottom of my pole, which acts as a nice counterweight. I like not being tethered to my pole or the mixer. The freedom this setup gives me to quickly and easily set down my pole to transition into micing actors or setting up plants etc. is invaluable. I've never been bothered by the weight of the pole. My Ktek is pretty lightweight as is, even at full extension. Having to mess with an external cable is much more frustrating to me than holding an extra few ounces.
  5. Apologies for the repeat thread, Senator. I figured since we're here now and lookin to catch some of y'all for beers sometime this week it belonged in the "Current" section (as opposed to the Avail for Work section, where Erik posted a thread before our trip)
  6. Hey y'all! My twin brother, Erik, and I are in Los Angeles until July 17. For those who don't know us, we're union sound guys based in Austin, Texas (Erik is a mixer, I'm a boom operator). Would love to grab some beers and talk shop with some fellow sound folk while we're out here. We have our car, so we can get wherever we need to go. Shoot me a text/call: 512.809.1464 We're pretty free all this week. Cheers y'all, - Joseph and Erik Duemig Twin Sound
  7. Oh yes, and you did a wonderful job on that recording, Ty! Loved the shout out to Austin, TX in the song!
  8. I agree, that probably would've worked out a bit better for reigning in that resonator and bringing her guitar up some more. To be perfectly honest, though, she isn't much of a guitarist. The band dynamic is such that she's considered sort of a "lead singer who happens to play guitar" and he's more the "guitarist who sings backup vocals sometimes" - it's not as much an even split duo. I felt the touch of brightness her guitar added to the overall mix of the song was aesthetically pleasing and not wise to bring up to high in the mix, but admittedly it does sit pretty darn low in there. I could've stood at least a little bit more of her guitar. If I'd have had my CMC6-41 back then I definitely would've used that. Would've had a better polar pattern for the situation and also would've been able to get closer, as the mic body is so much smaller. That being said, I'm still pretty happy with what I got.
  9. Funny enough I just bought a CMC6-41 a week after I finished this gig! My original plan was to use my Oktava MK012, which at the time was the only cardioid mic I had with me. But with the Oktava the resonator guitar drowned out her Martin almost completely, and the vocals didn't peak out as well over the guitars. A super/hyper like the 41 would've probably done the best job, but ya gotta use what you've got.
  10. At the beginning of February, I went out to Marfa, TX with a two-piece band called The Wind and the Wave to record a series of acoustic videos to be released on their Youtube channel as they roll out the release of their new debut record on RCA Records. I recorded the song in the above video in a very small vintage trailer with only one mic: a CMIT-5u positioned on a fishpole holder above the band, slightly closer to the girl than the guy (picture provided). She was quieter than he, and his Fender resonator guitar was significantly louder than her Martin. With this positioning of the mic, I was able to bring the Martin out in front a bit more, highlighting its brightness, while simultaneously naturally attenuating the resonator guitar and giving it a nice warmth (it was about 35 degrees off-axis, which on a CMIT doesn't color the sound too intensely). This mic placement also helped to bring out the girl's voice, which was pretty quiet, as the verse of this song reaches down into the low extremities of her vocal range. There's something special to me about recording music with only one microphone. The performance happens the way it happens, and the recording is true to that and can't be altered or remixed effectively. The rawness that this approach produces lends a degree of authenticity to bands like The Wind and the Wave, who tend to spend too much time on their studio recordings polishing away all of the aspects of their music that give it life in my ears. This was a super fun project and wanted to share it with all y'all fine folk here on JW. Enjoy!
  11. Doing some car riggin' today! Got some moving car shots on a hostess tray. No process trailer or tow rig - just two actors driving the thing with the windows down. Got a CMC6-41 rigged to the center console with a zep/dead cat globe on it. Transmitting to our 664 in the trunk. Got the comtek antenna all rigged up to transmit the audio to the director in a follow car (my mixer, pictured, is in the follow car as well, listening to our own T4 IFB feed via an R1a). Been a fun day on set in Elgin, TX!
  12. Very sad news. Bummed I never got the chance to meet him. Such an incredible talent.
  13. My twin brother and I will be coming up from Austin!
  14. +1 There's no job in the world I'd rather have! My girlfriend works a full time job as a preschool teacher and still has to have a second job as a hostess at a classy restaurant to make ends meet. We're both musicians (in different bands), and it's a cruel reality that she has so much less time to devote to creative endeavors than I do.
×
×
  • Create New...