Randy Hall

I'm interested in hearing the answer to this too. I have an indie feature coming up in SF and renting is entirely likely.

I've purchased Sugru as well, and it does work pretty much as advertised. Unless you keep a small dish of water handy to wet your fingers and you wipe the Sugru down as you work it, you should expect that whatever you craft with it will bear your fingerprints. I've done quick and dirty earplugs that work reasonably well. I've seen people make "in-ear monitors" with varying success by using earbuds and sugru to seal them in. Stuff makes your ears itch and burn a little while it does its 30 minute cure (though you really should man up and stick it out for 60 minutes to let the stuff dry out more and firm up). Sugru makes really effective strain relief on cables, though unless you're OCD or seriously anal, the end result will look very, um, organic.

I'd bet that the wooden camera XLR thingy will weigh less than whatever RED's Pro IO module ends up weighing... I think its undeniable that the image sensors going into the Scarlets are ones that for whatever reason are not fit for the Epic series. It may also be that they've skimped on the input stage in other ways in order to save money (read: cut corners). As for SDI audio, I was getting channels 1 & 2 on the Ki Pro I had connected between the Scarlet and my monitor (that is, the levels were moving on the Ki Pro meters, and when I played it back on my monitor I got sound -- from the Ki Pro, anyway).

No kidding. I convinced the Scarlet owner to let me borrow his expensive box fan for the night, so I could troubleshoot (after a fashion) hooking it up over SDI to the AJA Ki Pro that I also have on loan. Call me Tom Sawyer. Anyhow... Turns out patching the Scarlet and the Ki Pro is not too bad, and if properly configured does an automatic record when the timecode record flag goes off over SDI. Works even when you under and overcrank it, except 12 fps, for whatever reason. Has anyone ever bothered to send audio to a Ki Pro before? The little suckers have 2 XLR inputs and will also record 8 channels of embedded SDI, in case anyone rolls that way around here. My biggest problem is just that the damn Scarlet is just a big noisy box that needs to be used in really good light. Having had to boom and lav an actor who was being filmed up-close with a wide lens on the Scarlet, I remember thinking to myself, "Sh*t, even when it's recording the damn thing blows like a hurricane."

+1

Strong looking build, though I was immediate wondering if a lot of other folks used steel as the basis for their cart frame, or if they went with extruded aluminum, or just bolt onto an existing frame (i.e. Magliner, Cosco and the like).

Fabulous thread guys, I'm totally on board and following this. I was wondering if there was any way, like hobosoundguy did, of going through the trouble of listing the gear in the bags. Many of you have done this in one form or another, and I'm deeply grateful. I get that the gear in the bag is in large part dependent on the gig that you're doing. However, I'm still working up to being comfortable with IFB/Zaxcom/timecode/boom talkback and so on, and want to figure out a good setup that will get me through the month of June on an indie feature.

Such uplifting stories. I can hardly wait to get phone calls from producers who offer Subway Tuna as payment. What the hell industry have I gotten myself into?

I should probably go grab my DR-40 from my associate producer and do this. Better yet, I should have HIM do the damn upgrade, but then I wouldn't know that it was done correctly... Sometimes, the help you have is worse than no help at all.

I am working with a guy who just bought a RED Scarlet and he pointed to the two 1/8" jacks on the front (which apparently comprise the default audio offering, because he was not up for buying the XLR add-on) and indicated that they were "mono inputs" (which made me scratch my head). He had been using a Radio Shack 1/8" stereo to mono adapter to get scratch sound onto the camera when he shot. He would usually take the stereo output of some signal (and yes, he has a battery powered hot-shoe "scratch audio mic" that he really liked using) and plug it into the adapter to <ahem> mix it down to mono (I can only assume line level) into the camera. This made me think that they were unbalanced line inputs, which REALLY made me scratch my head. I actually get home and read the manual and discover that they are each 1/8" TRS balanced inputs. Damn camera guys.

It seems that just like everyone else who isn't into doing production sound, they figure it's magic pixie dust that makes the wireless mics work. Or that the wireless mics actually use WiFi, Bluetooth, or CB frequencies, for all that it matters. Perhaps getting a WiFi-capable, 802.11e QoS-enabled wireless mic might be worth someone's time to create. Of course then you stride into the 2.4GHz jungle along with the unwashed masses...

Nice! A lot of my opportunities for sound just multiplied as I can boss my kids around and talk to me while I figure out how to make the boom sound consistent from anywhere in a given room. Does anyone else use the notion of visualizing the sound waves while they're working: where the waves emanate from, bounce off of, and how they land on the mic diaphragm(s), or is that perhaps overthinking things a bit?

Matthew, biting off more than you can chew is a lot like asking how do you eat an elephant. I think what's useful is that this thread teased out some bullet lists that the trade believes are important basic things to know. Someone should put that list somewhere useful so that those who come along later to this vocation all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed can flatten their learning curve a bit.

I won't argue with that. I will say, however, that knowing what gear a sound mixer should have on set, without having experienced it first hand either as an apprentice or just being observant, is damn near impossible once you get beyond the obvious (mixer, wireless lavs, boom and one or more mics to fly on it). For instance, building a sound cart was something I hadn't even considered until I traipsed in here and saw photos of these gloriously organized (or disorganized) stacks of expensive gear. I was mostly in the ENG/if-it-don't-fit-in-the-sound-bag-it-isn't-used camp. But how does one arrive at the point where a sound cart is the logical next step? (I know this is thread-jacking, so don't answer it here) Further examples abound: smart slates, timecode generators/readers, IFB, shark fins, SMQV versus SMV versus <insert Lectro part number>, 442, 552, 744T, 788T, FR-2, BDS, NP-1, yada yada and so on. Don't you freaking guys ever NOT use initializations and acronyms for your gear? I am not so old that I can't learn a ton of stuff about the gear, what it does, how best to put it to use, and how many of each I need. But having a community of people who are able and willing to pass that knowledge along with no strings attached is more valuable to me than countless hours of sifting through Google results.

Speaking as someone who has fallen into production sound work, I'd say that I was able to leverage a lot of my knowledge from studio-based audio production and basic troubleshooting techniques over knowing the n-th degree of sound reinforcement/theory. That said, I look at the bullet lists above and measure up pretty nicely, though I wouldn't consider myself an expert at all of them (except perhaps the "craft services location" part). The other stuff on the list are things I'm actively learning and researching. Sad thing for me is, I have neither the time nor the personal network to spend on apprenticeship/internship. I have to make a living, and as I said, I find that being in production sound is almost always about solving problems. My two cents.