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About Wyatt Tuzo
- Birthday January 1
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Generally, it's so that if a lead actor "sweats-out" a mic mid-performance, the Mixer has something to fall back on. Its typically used for lead rolls which don't allow for downtime to switch mics
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Here is what worked for me filming in Northern Iceland a year or so back: Firstly, NO COTTON (this means no jeans, no flannels, etc). This was impressed on me quite urgently by the locals. So much so, that I had to go out and replace half of what I had packed. Feet: Silk or poly liners, followed by wool socks (or electric socks *which I'd only turn on to their lowest setting half-way through the day, as not to get so warm that I would sweat), followed by suede sneakers, followed by insulated Neo's overshoes with gaiters (then often followed by crampons on account of the ice). I liked this configuration as I could go down to the sneakers if commuting or going indoors for a bit, without concern of overheating. Legs: 100% wool thermal bottoms (bought locally...not cheap, but worth every penny), followed by poly blend heave yoga pants/sweats, followed by a fully waterproof shell. Note that Goretex isn't fully waterproof and won't cut it in these conditions, IME. Torso: 100% wool thermal top, followed by fleece, followed by electric vest, followed by heavy down-filled parka Neck/Head: Balaclava or neck gaiter, winter hat of your choosing, occasionally ski goggles for when the wind would pick up (or just to knock down the reflection off the snow/ice). Again. No cotton. If it gets wet, it stays wet, then it gets cold, then you get cold (very cold) and you have big problems. Water is the enemy. Wool and synthetic materials are your friends. I never had a single issue with gear
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I don't have time for a long response at the moment, but don't forget about one of my favorite features of the SX-ST, the 12/24dB over unity switch. For scenes like you mention, I would frequently switch over to 24 and use this to push the quieter passages to the mix (gain at the fader) while allowing all the headroom needed for the louder passages in the ISO. I miss this feature an awful lot after moving to a control surface. When I encounter this now, I mult the input to two separate channels and give each their own gain ranges... This gives me a similar effect, but across two faders. I track each of these two ISO's, so in a way, it can be even more flexible. As I'm using Axient, I don't have to worry about gain at the Tx stage And RE your outputs... The Sonosax has an awful lot of internal headroom. If you're bumping up against (a lack of) output limiters, try to adjust gain staging to your busses. You can also dial the output bus masters down a bit and apply the appropriate amount of makeup gain at your recorder. Hope this all makes sense. I will forever miss my Sonosax, but adapt or die, as they say
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Agree with Patrick above ^^^ What kind of work are you doing? I generally cable to VTR via Canare A2V2. Sure there are other ways, but this is pretty foolproof and allows for sending playback return to Comteks (or even just for my own QC monitoring of playback.
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Oh, for that, sure! Sometimes, If I'm questioning an annoyance that I really can't do anything about, I'll open an instance of Rx to see ho well I could manage it, were I stuck with it in post. I do not, however treat anything for delivery (I'll make a note in my sound report, and maybe flag it in an email). I do realize though, that there are many here doing different kinds of work than myself. As far as latency with Axient/A10 racks/dante: I don't have any numbers for you. Honestly, I rarely worry about these things with the work I do. I remember many years back when there was a lot of talk about system latency of the Lectro and Zax gear... while certainly aware of these processing delays, I never truly felt an impact in practical use. To your question on DAW integration on set: There was one time, just back from the pandemic, where I was shooting a scene of someone addressing a large crowd from a concert stage... Because of social distancing considerations, we had to tile the crowd many times over. Because of this, our lead actor wasn't getting the energy he wanted from what was supposed to be a very large group. The best we could do to help, was to record several passes of crowd murmur and cheering, layer those with some canned crowd sound, and play them back through the FOH system while we shot his side of the coverage (and overs). I did this by hooking up my laptop, running Pro Tools, into my dante network- grabbing crowd reactions during all of the separate audience tiling passes (while simultaneously tracking into my main recorder for delivery). This made for a REALLY seamless way to grab performances on the fly for playback. It was really wonderful to have the tools to make a last minute pivot like this. It made us look like magicians 😄
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On “movie sets”, our primary goal is, generally, to minimize the issues so that these tools aren’t needed. Maybe I’m in the minority, but I feel that our tracks are scrubbed a bit too eagerly (and aggressively) these days. I hear what you’re saying, but in my opinion, the logic is backwards. Fix it IRL > fix it with plugins (whether on location or in post)
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If you were buying new wireless today...
Wyatt Tuzo replied to Jon Mendel Sound's topic in Equipment
I would guess that there are maybe 10 or so (myself included) narrative mixers here in NYC who are using Axient. I had personally finished my transition to the platform a few months before the Nexus was announced. Fully expecting I would experience some buyers remorse, a few colleagues and I took SD demo stock out to run tests against my setup. Both systems sounded great, but I personally have to give the edge to Shure in terms of range and remote control. Obviously, external conditions are always a factor, so I wouldn't feel comfortable making any hard declarations. Suffice it to say, I left feeling assured that I had made a good choice for my own needs. The thing that I find enticing about the SD platform is the potential for further development. We've seen this just recently with the extension of the system down into the VHF range. I believe they'll continue to refine their system leading to improved performance and an increase in features. My Shure hardware, on the other hand, is probably locked into it's current feature-set. I'm okay with that (because it's a rich and high performing feature-set), but maybe there will come a time down the road when I look into the SD offerings again... I dunno -
Sorry for the confusion, Derek. I was referring to the second posted article (the one from protoolsexpert). I feel the author did a really good job pointing to all the contributing facets of the problem. Maybe the strongest (or at least most through) I've seen on the topic. An small excerpt, acknowledging our side: Pre-existing Knowledge - Those Involved In The Production All Know What Is Being Said Another big issue at play as to whether a particular line is intelligible or not, is that everyone involved in the production knows what is being said, they have lived with it through pre-production, script editing, shooting, and post-production. This means they probably know the script as well as the actors, if not better! What this familiarity with the script means is that they can hear the words even when they are not clearly intelligible. For example, this can happen when the drama is being shot, the director knows what is being said, and even if the sound team asks for a retake it is likely to be received with a hard stare and "I can hear it what's your problem"! When we get to the dub when the director comes to sign off on a scene, again they know what is being said and so may well be asking for the FXs and/or music to be lifted to increase the sense of drama in the scene to a much higher level than they would if they were new to the production and hearing it for the first time. Changes In Production Techniques - More Multi-camera, Less Use Of Boom Mics Shooting a scene using more than one camera means that your use of a boom mic is compromised at best, as at least one of the cameras tends to be a wild-shot, meaning the boom mic cannot get in close enough to pick up a clean sound. Consequently location sound teams end up relying on the use of personal radio mics. As we learned in our article Speech Intelligibility - The Facts That Affect How We Hear Dialog the spectrum of speech recorded on the chest of a person normally lacks frequencies in the important range of 2-4 kHz, where the constants are, which results in reduced speech intelligibility. In fact in this article, we also learnt that just over the head, where the boom mic would normally be, is a great position for getting the best speech intelligibility. All of this means that the growth of multi-camera shoots results in a double-whammy, we lose the use of a boom mic and replace it with personal radio mics often in the chest area, which don’t pick up the consonants as well as the boom mic and as we learnt, speech intelligibility is all about the constants.
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I actually felt this article, while true that it was written by someone with more experience in post, was quite thorough. The author spends a good deal of time highlighting the very issues listed above. He specifically discusses the boom mic’s ability to more faithfully capture frequencies in the range critical to intelligibility, and how it’s use has been compromised by the proliferation of body mics, multi-cam shoots, and lighting choices. Also of note, the phenomenon of directors not heeding our advice, borne of their familiarity with the script. This is a point that I’ve personally had to make numerous times on set.
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Amphenol makes 50-ohm panel mount sockets, if it helps. These are what I've built into my patch bays.: https://www.amphenolrf.com/031-3220.html or: https://www.amphenolrf.com/000-47025.html
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Best practices for solid RF when shooting car to car
Wyatt Tuzo replied to BAB414's topic in Workflow
Just, just did this. I agree that you’re going to want the base station in the hero car. In my case, we ended up switching to a tow rig on the day. I rode on the back of that, took PB into my recorder, and transmitted via UH/411 to my base station in the car. I was prepared to do the same from a command van, but again… last minute change, as they wanted a frontal 2-shot. I’m rambling a bit here, but bear in mind that if the performer is singing along to a known song, you can also have a speaker playing at a reasonable level in the vehicle. They are going to have to cut around the song anyway, and this will just worldize the track a bit. For car to car, I generally try to get my Tx high in the hero vehicle, and rig my antennas to the top of the follow vehicle. With an ultimate arm, you may not have that luxury. Are you sure they dont plan to shoot conventional coverage as well? -
Thanks Patrick. I remember when you and I first opened one of these up to assess a plan of attack for this. While you’re right on the drawback of not quite having the control in one convenient place, my tablet will generally be positioned in front of the Rx rack, giving me even more complete control and feedback. That said, there are more potential points of failure. In the pros column, I get: modularity, a more shallow and lighter rack, and greater channel density/rack Cons: more potential points of failure, and less integrated networking capabilities. An example on the last point… in order to use showlink to control all of this, I have a wifi access point and separate PoE injector built into my cart. One nice aspect of this, is that either myself or my Utility can have access to settings through WWB and/or Channels on our individual devices. A downside, is that I have to keep a 610 in range of my cart or I lose showlink connection to the Rx. There is a slim possibility that this will drive me to get an additional 610 to position close to set for Tx control in the future. This will iron itself out with time.
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Long delay here, but I finally got some downtime and was able to integrate everything. All is working well, and as hoped. Racks are communicating over Dante, with Showlink intact.