Matthias Richter

and your cap reads BBI. The „Berlin-Brandenburg-International“ Airport. The embarrassing ongoing disaster here in Berlin. Should have opened 10+ years ago. Still under construction...😂

bought the CS208 used in 2007 right before Andy went for retirement I believe. The moment I opened the Pelicase and had that board before me is still very present in my head. It was the first real invest I did back then and it felt soooo good. Not a single hiccup in all those years. And as mentioned I even managed to get 2 more inputs on the mix-bus faders. But having to link my mobile setup (Nomad12&Mix8) for those big scenes was doable but no fun. Having 16 faders right in front of me now feels much better. I think I will keep the 208 anyway. I might even build a 2nd unit cart together with my Fusion 12 and the 4900 RXs. Prices for this kind of gear are so low I rather keep it. A used F12 went for as low as 1077€ the other day. Unbelievable. Jeff please feel free to put the pic in the gallery.

it’s with a heavy heart but I have updated my cart and therefor lost my beloved analog Cooper mixer. Deva 24 with Mix16 is my new setup with a RX12r joining them in the near future. It still amazes me what this old mixer was and is still capable of. Need additional outs? It’s there: every channel got DOut Pre AND Postfade. Ideal for any playback scenes. But 8 faders just wasn’t enough any longer. Cedar and Comms-mixer found a proper home now. And reducing some weight on the cart is a welcomed plus. While working on the cart I noticed some minor cracks on the upper case. Will replace both cases this winter. Found a good deal on 2 original SKB cases (100€!!). Since the design / setup of my cart still serves me well I will keep it as is.

thats what I have heard too. Stereo is half the range than in Mono. I have a SKP100 for Director‘s IFB and had the rack for the Booms - the BoomOps were complaining more often about range. Switched to SKP ...

we can’t select ext TC in the menu no matter what mode we select. Any ideas?

or record your voice as a guidetrack and do a clean VO later matching the GT. Doesn’t have to be dead sync.

yes. You got a line? You‘ll get a lav! Sometimes even for breathing. Specially Jonas. He used to express emotions by his breathing.

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed the show! It’s amazing how Dark as a German show was received by an international audience. Our Director Bo is the coolest person you will meet in this business. Season 1 was a lot of pressure on him and sometimes it would get heated on set. Season 2&3 were much more calm. We shot by locations and actors availability. Script got changed and tweaked every now and then. No set was stripped down in case we needed it again. That’s the advantage of a studio shoot.

it was either done with a double or when using a motion capture cam we‘ve played back the chosen take on loudspeakers to get the timing right, muting the PB for the on cam lines obviously.

more teasing

Official trailer for season 3:

First teaser for season 3 (th3 3nd)

Maybe you swapped the M and S signals? Plug them in the other way around to check

get some B6 too. I found the 6060 is still too big to hide behind a button. It’s fine for a wide shot. But nowadays with 2 cameras and different sizes you get f...ed pretty quick.

after a software update the DNS2 got a HPF. But in my experience if you‘ve got dialog on top of a low freq noise you‘ll still get those pumping / gate effects

the Kelly had the same stream coming out. And the waterproofed material didn’t hold too well. It sounded very good. Nice and transparent but could not cope with the heavy SFX rain. After 45 Minutes max of being in the rain I‘ve noticed the first drops coming through. Booming from underneath didn’t sound as bad as we thought but obviously wasn’t first choice either.

Canford has solved the issue. have a look @ my testimonial:

way over 300 shooting days and 3 seasons of "Dark" are done and the "cycle" is complete. It was shot in and around Berlin. Even what looks like countryside or small town / suburbs - all within 1-2 hours drive from Berlin. A lot was shot in the studios in Potsdam-Babelsberg which of course gave us a lot of controlled situations. But if you think a studio is dead silent - wrong. Totally wrong. To create daylight from the outside of the set in a normally dark studio that still would give enough power to light the interials needed loads of HMIs and / or sky-panels. Heavy fan noise!! That´s where the Cedar came in to play and would give me (and the Director / producers) a sense of what can be done and solved in post. I don´t really use the Cedar for exterial noise like street noise, wind etc. but static fan noise is what I really love the Cedar working on. My gear for the show was pretty straight forward: Cmit or MK41 on the boom for interials MKH 60 (8060 in season 3) for exterials dedicated rain-setups with MKH60 for all the heavy rain scenes. I had to learn the hard way: if you got heavy (sic!) SFX-rain you need a bullet proof setup. We had a scene where the mic would fail mid take because over time some leakage went down the jumper-cable from the basket to the plug-on into the XLR-connector. It was all sealed with cling-film and tape but still came through. Now the jumper cable ends inside a waterproof box. There are no connectors in the open. Another problem (to be solved) was the rainman / Cinela Kelly. Problem again: heavy SFX rain which fills the rainman within 30 seconds. After that the water will run what looks like a thick stream from the front of the rainman. When booming from above the actors that stream is visible and looks very different than the rest of the rain. Even with 2 rainman altering between takes it did not work. In the end we went for booming from below (using the rainman the wrong way around). Rain again: when micing the actors for a rain scene we tried all the common tricks to avoid the lav getting hit directly by the water. When shooting the follow up in the studio the actors had get wet again which was done by our helpful wardrobe department. You gotta watch this procedure because them spraying water doesn't come from the top like the rain - it will spray from bottles from any given direction. One direct hit - and we would need to rewire. Even with the B6. They still work afterwards but if a single drop is directly in front of the capsule it sounds like under water. On the cart I´m using a Cooper 208D into a Zaxcom Fusion 12. Wireless is all Zaxcom. Using the Fusion knobs to adjust the TRX gain via Zaxnet is a blessing. Comms for the Boom, another for video and live-IFB and a third for video-playback. Director and folks behind a screen using EK1039 receivers so they could switch between those two with a single button. Another comm input section gives me the option to receive PL from the Boom (if they wire themself) and to listen to 1 or two walkie channels. This comes in handy when we had actors in a decomination suit and they needed to hear themself, each other and the Director on the walkie. Quite amazing what this oldschool mixer from Cooper is still capable of. For run and gun situations I´ve got my bag setup. Zaxcom Nomad 12 with 3 QRX200 + old 1 RX900. A Mix8 would attache to the Nomad if I had to be mobile but still had 5-6 actors + Boom´s. Speaking of the Boom´s: unfortunately our main crew was only 2 persons. My Boom Ops Ben Dunker (1st season) and Hunor Schauschitz (S2&3) did a fantastic job. It´s not only the booming - but you have to survive as a couple of the two of us for this long period of time. Only on some days did we have a second boom operator. This was unfortunate but since we managed to achieve a good production sound with only 1 Boom Op in season 1 we couldn´t convince production to make for an even better sound by using a 2nd Boom permanently. The shooting style with 2 cameras all the time wasn´t to difficult. Most of the time our beloved DOP Nik Summerer would give us almost matching headroom. The blocking wasn´t really action-style. But the more static your actors are the cleaner you want the sound. If they run all over the place you accept a certain level of clothing noise. If the walk really slowly or just sit on a table - you don´t wanna hear a single rustle. Sometimes this was a challange. "Dark" got most of it´s audience in foreign countries but still a lot of this audience prefered the original German spoken sound mix. That´s not to often I think - specially in the US. Hope you got an idea of how we worked. Any more questions - ask! Matthias

well I should have said: my Boom Ops first choice. I‘ve got Quickpoles too but my Boomers tend to go for the Panamic. I guess it’s because those poles feel really stiff like a rigid pole. Another difference are the end stops. Over time one can readjust the sliding mechanism. Although I‘m not sure if those end stops are not the reason for it in the first place. With Ambient all you‘ve got (to replace) is some velcro. Conclusion: there are advantages to both and again it comes down to personal preferences. So I got both brands and it’s up to the Boomer to pick and choose. Best, Matthias

I have to give the Canford service dep especially Laura and Gavin a big Thank You for their ongoing support and service! I had some trouble with a brand new Panamic Maxi 3seg. There was some handling noise that could not be stopped no matter how we adjusted the end stops. Although Canford could not recreate that noise at the factory they sent me a new replacement. Unfortunately this new pole showed the same noise under certain circumstances. After another trip to the factory with the support of me recording videos and audio clips they finally found the culprit: a small defect in the bore of the carbon fibre. They even cut the handle segment in half to identify the problem. Now I am confident as before and all my Panamic poles will be our first choice! Thank you Laura and Gavin!! Matthias

thats my findings too. Low end noise opens and closes the gate which leads to this monkey business. The DNS2 works perfect on noisy fans from cameras, ballasts, Sky panels etc

Thank you! We have finished season 3 (final one) 1 week ago. Now it’s Christmas and family gets the deserved time from me. So please forgive me that I have not written anything yet. But I will. Promised. Merry Christmas!!

I will do ... Don’t expect any crazy stories like Simon Hayes on „Cats“ though 😉

Waking up after another exhausting week it’s nice to get a positive feedback! We finished day #83 and day by day we say goodbye for good to characters and locations.

2 Sennheiser TXs (me & VV) and EK1039 for Director, script etc. They can switch between Live and Playback/VV with a single button