Richard Ragon

Here's what made the show bearable. We only filmed for a max of 3-4 days each week. It gave us time to re-coup, re-gather, and sleep. Yes, a few days had difficult turn around times, but we had 5 days off again. At first I thought this schedule was kind of ridiculous, but after working it, it became a godsend. Each Monday I was able to do nothing but check my backups and transfer files. Tuesdays, I worked on my time cards and invoices, Wednesdays I took a trip over to Coffey to go buy stuff they broke, by Friday I was re-organizing and recovering things I lost while on the set, and at the same time I would be charging the mountain of batteries, and formating DVDs. My big beef was that the production simply just didn't have the money to get the right equipment needed. But were hoping for next session now. @Cloud Wang - 40 days without stopping?? My gawd! Was your sleeping bag under your mixer? Jesus. -Richard

Went over and talked to Forest over at Coffey about converting a Onix Mixer to 12vdc. Wow.. 800 bucks and sometimes a 3-6 month time period? Guess thats not going to happen.. Anyone recommend a good (quiet) inverter then? -Richard

http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=6927766 That Dumb money ran out.. Dam. Now ABC posted the secretes too.. Dam. I hope none of these dumb money providers are watching this. -Richard

Don't get depressed when the "good" ones don't email back. Think of it this way.. They are trolling on CL looking for newbie mixers who don't know any better. When you respond, they quickly check you out, they see that they can't scam you because it looks like you have some experience, and quickly move on.. thus NOT contacting you. It's supply and demand. p.s. But how about this one to blow your brain.. What if, there are other sound mixers posting ridiculous ads on CL for fake jobs, for the sole purpose of seeing who responds.. humm.. -Richard

@Whitney - I actually loved the total chaos. By comparison, a film set is now going to feel sooo slow. I think thier biggest deal is they believed they could cut cost by NOT having sound mixers on set, or by just hiring assistants, and some how it would get fixed. I actually walked in this one during talks, several times too.. Each time, it took them about 1-2 weeks to realize that I wasn't blowing smoke up their a##. When it came down to the final week, I think they started to panic. @Rob - They are currently going though the mountain of footage, kicking themselves right now for cutting those corners. -Richard

I did this more for the challenge of it. It's something that I've never done, and I like to rise to the challenge in order to learn as much as I can. They let me pretty much run the entire sound department, and I called the shots on how I handled it. They didn't care about mics being seen, and I did the best I could given the limits I had. @stacysound - limited scratch feeds to the cameras. Basically, I just plugged in an IFB to a few cameras.. But this was short lived because of the cameras NOT being dedicated to a single team. They kept moving around all the time, so anything in my mix was screwed feeding to the cameras. More then likely they will be using the ISO's for a lot of the sound. In knowing this, we had a dedicated script super that was making notes about our sound, TC's were were at, and even file names at the times. Slates were used a few times for the directed scenes, just to help with the TCs and syncing. Remotes were covered via us changing to ENG style where both mixers could change to. We mostly moved the whole carts to a new location though.. worst case, they had to send a boom op connected with an XLR/boom straight to camera. This happened when we split a few times.. don't know if that worked or not. I would say no on fair rate for the gear. Another learning experience. Oh yes.. they were totally shocked on how much it cost for the sound department. There's a certain level that you won't budge, because it simple doesn't make it worth my time. This is why the negotiations took weeks. Too little money was budgeted here. Lunch was shall we say, "screwed up" more than once. After a few days filming, you learn to go get it or loose it. Labor rules were blatantly violated! And turn around was only about 4 hours sometimes. More learning experiences.. Definitely putting that into my next contracts. I can sneak those items into my contract, then reap the hell out of that so I won't feel bad about it next time. @Philip Perkins - Not sure if I want to do it again.. I actually liked the CHAOS of it in which I thrived on it. I sure do long for a film project though! I can't wait to get back to do something where I can concentrate on doing the job right, and not doing the job fast. They have been talking Session 2 now. So, I'm a shoe in for that project, but I have to tell you.. I can't take a loss, and now it's time to get paid for my hard work. @graham - making kids cry was even tougher! Felt like the set of Foxes Kids town! -Richard

As far as the broken things.. Yep, it was never a problem when things broke. I just turned the receipts in, and they replaced it, no questions asked.. That was one great thing, they were fair as I tried to be fair. I won't say this was worst. We had a great time, even though..

Curley, I recently had a similar situation too this.. I had to get tough on the phone, and eventually got paid. We should start a web site for 'deadbeats'. Some where we can look up to see that they own money to another film company. And.. What cracks me up is that the film industry in general is having a really great year! If it weren't for the pending strikes, the film companies would be doing even better! Film (and TV) does great in recessions, so to use this in as an excuses to NOT pay is outrageous. -Richard

Ok, I worked on my first large scale Reality TV show, and we just wrapped up. I won't name the show, because of a few reasons. But here are my highlights of things that I learned... - When they wanted to hire a sound team, they f*#@'d around for weeks trying to get someone to do it for their near no budget attempt. I was first pick because I live in the OC (close to the show location) and one of the most experienced sound people they interviewed. But they waited so frekin' long to hire me it was a sure miracle that I was able to gather up the equipment needed for the shoot. - We had production meeting after production meeting, all trying to figure out how to get sound done, when it was impossible without the equipment. I had to put my foot down, and tell them no more production meetings, unless they figure something out. You can talk about it till your blue in the face, but sometimes theres just no way around it. You gotta spend the money. - 7 roving cameras on the shoot, all covering 2-3 teams. But what they don't understand is why we keep missing sound when the teams go separate directions. I kept telling them they need a full sound ENG guy for each team, and they keep saying.. "no were just going to have you, and several assistants." Oh well.. I told them. - First week, We had to fire the sound guy they hired. He lost ALL of the sound files including all the backs and ENG outside files too for the whole weekend!! I don't have an idea on how they expect to recover from loosing all the sound files on one whole team. - I found another Sound Mixer to replace the one fired. He was a boom op for me on a film a while back. I had to warn him, "Your going into the Fire here". - 6 Producers all quit by the end of the show. Many of the people that have quit, have been replaced, and those that are left are some of the most awesome people that I have met. - For the first 2 weeks, there were NO breaks.. Food would sometimes come, but we're expected to keep rolling. There were NO cuts or called lunches, and when someone told us there was food on the set, by the time we found it, it was all gone. I overheard several camera crews saying, "f#$*.. I'm going to brown bag it tomorrow". This was fixed eventually though. - In pre-production, I told them that the cameras they are using 7 Sony Cinealta EX-3's had TC built in, but it is NOT reliable and drifts. They synced to my master TC on my recorder, but drifted after 30+mins with wavering degrees. They refused to buy Gen syncs. We've since rigged up a wireless TC sending system using cheap Azden wireless receivers connected to the cams. Looks like it's working, but a limited range of 200-300 feet. - Filming mostly in a Mansion in Riverside, the property is just too large to have the wireless reach all over though. Note to self.. never use G2's for anything else again.. ebay perhaps? - I personally witnessed several people have mental breakdowns worse then the one the "Bale" breakdown while on the set. Happens. - We have over 15 wireless mics in use at the same time, 8 shotgun mics on cameras, 3 booms roving for interviews, 4 multi track recorders, 2 12 track mixers, 3 IFB systems, and multiple antennas around the house. I'll have to take some photos of the whole thing. Wow. - The iPower and Enegizer batteries rocked! - When we go on road trips with the actors, we go ENG riding either in buses or vans to locations. We're expected to get all the footage of the actors getting into the van, and out of the van at the same time. humm.. - We've learned now to never really cut when they say cut. Something always comes up, and we have to grab the gear and run again. Same goes with "it's a rap".. - Not only do I use all my own equipment, but I had to go out and upgrade another 10K's worth. And, I've got tons of equipment now on loan to other departments too.. I'm putting it on my invoice as "loaned to set". - Lost a set of Headphones, 5 wireless mics broken, 1 wireless transmitter broken, several cables damaged beyond repair, a power supply too. Broken my lectro di-pole, powerbook power connector, and even my chair. but other then that.. it could be worse I think. I still have items that are missing, so I'm going to have to bill back. - Since the actors are ALL under 18, it makes it difficult to "wire" them. Some of the girls come to set wearing very little. I can't believe there parents let them out of the door with that outfit sometimes. The production doesn't care if you see mics.. Awesome. Went out an got those neoprene belts for mics. - Several accidents involving driving vehicles (golf carts and scooters) involving the kids. Can we raise the driving age to 18+? - As you can imagine the production is way way over budget. Insane hours combined with my insane personal life. - The actors (all kids) keep treating the mics badly. They rip them off at the end of the day, even after we've warned them about the cost. They keep talking into there mics saying, "Do you hear me mr sound guy?". Plus all the kids don't seem to keep a constant level of sound. They are either talking in a whisper or shouting.. annoying. - The talent has been warned to NOT turn off the mics, but continue to do so when they don't want to be heard talking. Producers have warned them, but it's an empty threat. - The sound team alone is generating over 20 Gigs of sound files a day. I can't imagine what the camera teams are producing! - The camera crew thought that a camera was lost due to a silly string attack, but they were able to recover it. - We're kept in the dark a bit due to the secretes... oh well. Maybe I don't want to know. - Since there is so many people staying at the mansion set, it's become one huge party after wraps now.. This includes the kids, who keep sneaking in alcohol too. I seriously know why people say they don't work with kids now. - Editing is sooooo far behind. If they can get it done before it's premiere, I'll surprised. Keep hiring assistant editors! - Several editors have also quit too. Not sure of the back story. - Budget cuts forced a change in filming days during the last week, including a short week. Sucks for people like me who dedicated their last week, only to be let go early. I had several other jobs that I could have done. - Once after driving home after working 20+ hours, I got home and I don't remember the drive. No seriously, I don't remember driving home.. This takes things too far beyond just tired driving. I should have taken a nap somewhere. Defiantly, not your average film shoot. But either way.. we pulled it off. After 12 weeks you get used to it. I have a fondness for a lot of people on the set and I'll miss the excitement of behind the scenes as much as the excitement in front of the camera. Perhaps next session, we'll have a larger budget. Here's a shot of Me (Sound Mixer A), Mike (Sound Mixer , and Lamont (Sound Utility) on one of the remote locations. Take Care everyone. -Richard

http://good4sound.com/images/Solar_HomeLess_small.jpg I was on my way over to Electronic City in Burbank to grab some small items, and I ran across this homeless guy. I noticed a simple awesome cart set up, and a sign posted to his shirt that says, "FLAT BROKE". So I had to stop and ask him some questions. "Where did you get those solar panels?". He says, "The Internet". So, then I asked him, "How many watts do you generate?". And he says, "about 65 watts". Then he added in ".. it powers my laptop, cellphone, and wireless iPod headphones". Ok, I guess I got my answer then!! Wow.. Only in LA! -Richard

http://www.noiseaddicts.com/2009/03/can-you-hear-this-hearing-test/ I'm over 40.. I'm scared. -Richard

Correct me if I'm wrong.. But isn't a cell phone dampening system, however justified, illegal? At the very least, it's illegal to buy in this country.. So, they much have purchased that system outside the US. -Richard

Yes.. a horrible sinking feeling it is too.. And, another mixer on this same shoot was fired in the first week for loosing all his audio. I would have joined him on the unemployment line. The show is low low budget, but I have a overtime clause... and since the show made a calculated move to eliminate a production day, and go way way overtime on purpose.. The way that I'm looking at it is that I'm entitled to the overtime. If they wouldn't have tried too shoot for 18 hours, I wouldn't have made the mistake. Marc, I downloaded and did Data Rescue II, but it didn't work. It basically found NOTHING. Found it kind of a sham too, as it supposedly found a bunch of generic files that it had listed it found.. obviously made up file names. I have a very large external drive for my laptop too. I'm dumping everything on to it as a second production backup drive. Were generating near 30+ gigs of sound files a day! There's only so much you can do. -Richard

I had a very very close call on Saturday. The kind of close call that gets people fired. You know how they say that after 12 hours of working on the set, people get stupid, and sometimes make stupid mistakes. Well I'm no exception thats for sure. I'm working on a Reality TV show as the Senior Mixer. In our crew we have a Jr. Mixer (Mike) and a sound assisant. We're recording over 18 wireless mics to 4 recorders. 2 PD6's, 1 702T, and 1 744T. The PD6's are simply recording ISOs, and the Sound Deivces are recording ISO's with 2 master mix tracks. Each week the editor hands us a master hard drive to put all the audio onto. Friday when we got the hard drive from the editors that we're suppose to dump the audio files too. They gave it too us without a power cord. No body could find it, so I just copied all the audio from all 4 recorders to my laptop hard drive, and closed up with "we'll copy it over tomorrow... it was late". Saturday came around and we were pressed for time to pack up and get on the road, we got the equipment loaded up and moving and we spent the longest day we ever had, rolling for some near 12 hours using over 32 sides of the DVD-RAMs. I had to even open up more DVD-RAM blank disc, and make copies of the Flash cards in an effort to try to keep up. We had to stay much later that night dumping all those disc to my laptop, and to make matters worse we were short another laptop for a while too. After getting many more files copied to my laptop, it started to run out of space. I usually erase the day before files to make room, because I've already copied over the files to the master audio hard drive. Well.. I deleted ALL of Fridays work. EVERYTHING, and it took me about 5 minutes to just realize that I hadn't copied all those files over to the master yet. Talk about a sinking feeling in my stomach. I just about went out to my truck and cried. All I can think about was trying to explain to the production teams. You don't recover from this kind of thing on Reality TV shows. Anyways.. I calmed down.. and remembered that we don't format those RAM disc every day. We start at disc 1 on Friday, but go till we run out for the week. So, all the files were still there for the ISOs. But the flash drive master mixes get erased daily... However, I remembered that I forgot to erase my flash drive Saturday.. And, because I ran out, I moved onto other flash drives. Good Gaud, how lucky was that to have not followed procedure that day for formating the flash drives. However, Mike formated his drives.. So we were looking at the Master mixes gone for Mikes stuff.. However, I remembered that the 744T has a hard drive recording at the same time.. Sure enough, I looked in the hard drive on the 744T and there they were, Mikes masters!!! Holly c%*&, I was able to recover every single file. It took some time capturing all those files back to the hard drives, but I did it. Total time for the work day? 22 hours! A very very close call indeed!! -Richard

Anyone notice this? The Senn G2's just don't seam to work in schools? I'm working on a doc ENG at the moment, and I noticed this about 2 months ago. The Senn G2 trans/recv set ups are nice for my ENG kit because they are small, but for some reason.. They just don't get along with school buildings. Take them into some classrooms, and they quickly get overloaded with RF interference, and then start dropping out like crazy. Once I notice this, I have to run out to my truck and get the lectros. I've tried to change freq's, banks, channels, to no avail. Is it the Rebar in the building? Perhaps the labs computers? A certain way schools are built? Or certain classrooms? I can't figure it out. -Richard

Ok, I have a Hosa (female) cable that I got from Location Sound. So, I'm going to make a small adaptor with L/R XLR plugs, and a return 1/4 stereo jack to plug back into the mixer. I'll just get a splitter for L/R mono 1/4 jacks too. This will let me use the same Snake Cable that I use with my 442. But, I'll also look into both MUTE/3/4 ALT and the TAPE route, see which one works better. -Richard

I'm going to attempt to make a snake cable adaption for making my Onyx work like that of the SD442. My question is.. do you know how you can 'listen' to whats coming back from the camera on a Onyx? Is there an ability to feed the camera return back to the mixer, and have a way to monitor it without conflicting with the main mix? Here's my thoughts.. I'm thinking of sending the camera audio back to Line-In 15/16, then hit the MUTE on channel 15/16 so that it doesn't go into the mix again.. When you hit the MUTE, it sends the audio over to ALT 3/4 (I think) There's a jack for you to monitor ALT 3/4, but it would be nice to be able to switch monitors back and forth from monitoring the main mix or the ALT 3/4. And I think that you can do this without unplugging the phones, by using the CONTROL ROOM/PHONES SOURCE buttons. Just some thoughts on using this mixer for return monitoring.. does anyone monitor returns from the camera? Or do other mixers just watch the recording to a separate source only? Thanks. -Richard

Living in LA all my life, I've become a master at getting around traffic.. That said, I've watched the traffic get so debilitating bad that you just can't get around any more. -Richard

I thought you guys might like this.. http://www.navigatehollywood.com/ Shows real time street closures, real time traffic, parking lots (including open/close times, cost, days, ect). Wow.. someone spent a lot of time on this one.

Greetings guys (and perhaps girls too), I'm surprised that this hasn't come up sooner. It's that time again.. Taxes. As a sound mixer (and I'm sure you guys are allot like me) I'm very very organized. Each year I do a complete spread sheet of every single small experience, every single write off that I can come up with, going over a mountain of receipts and invoices, just to see where the money all went. This year I've been somewhat surprised at "the sound biz" once again as I bought a ton of last minute upgrades to my kits including a new computer and van this year too. I consider this biz to be somewhat different then most other businesses, and the amount of offsets (or losses) are pretty large too say the least. I've only been audited once for a business I had 15 years ago, but I'm looking at this spread sheet and thinking to myself, Wow, how did I spend that much cash? So, here's some questions realating to the biz and taxes: 1) I have a tax accountant because they pay for themselves in the long run, their fees are again another write off, and they back up their work and take the blunt of the IRS if they come asking for cash. Do you guys have "people" doing your taxes? 2) Talking to another few crew members on the set yesterday, and they said they take write offs like "movies" as study or learning fees? Anyone do this? Never done this before I would think that raises a red flag. 3) Does anyone expect to get an IOU from the state this year? 4) My goal is to pay ZERO taxes again this year. Anyone study how do this? My account has made it an art to get back large amounts of cash back each year for me.. effectively paying in large, but getting it all back legally. 5) Anyone have any odd things they write off? Been red flagged on items? I would like to know what to weary of regarding our biz. 6) Do you set taxes for each job aside? Thanks -Richard

Ok, Carts been filling up over the years, and I've always looked out about converting over to a 12vdc system, so that one day I can run 100% off of pelican batteries. Currently, I have have a massive amount of "wall warts". So I have several power strips all plugged into an APC backup. This system works great and I can loose power on location, but only for about 60-90 minutes. The trouble.. unsightly and untidy. So, I just bought a new PSC Cart Power, and I'm going to begin my conversions. The PSC cart power has 6 12vdc/5A outs. However, I noticed that allthough most all things on the cart are 12vdc, they have a wide verity of amps. Most all of the wall warts do 12vdc, but under 1A. The mixer can be converted, and I have a Fostex thats works, but my Lectrosonics Quad box has an odd way that it's wired.. using an adaptor with 15VDC/2.5A wired to pins 3 and 4. Can I create a special wired plug for that Quad box using the cart power? Does it matter with the Amps on these low voltage chargers? Would be awesome if I can get these items on the Cart Power. I can then remove the UPS system, and think about a battery system instead. Thanks everyone. -Richard

Lets throw in one for "the TV show" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0473709/ Funny, funny, funny... "A place where dreams are canceled ". -Richard

Shows Sean Penn on the list of actors?? Watching the trailer, I didn't see him.. But, I think your right... boring to the civilans. In fact, movie making in general is NOT a spectator sport thats for sure. I get a kick out of people stopping on the street (cameras in hand) and standing there for 20 minutes trying to see whats going on on the set.. Only to get really board, and then move on. Apparently, most people believe movies are filmed in real time.. Another really bad train wreck of a show, was "The Lot". A reality TV show based on directors compeating for a spot along side of Spielberg at Dreamworks. But due to the slow slow nature of filmwork, they didn't have any busy work for the contestants week after week, and that show dragged on forever while they tried to fill over 5 weeks of "dead air" with sob stories from the wannabe directors. The only good part of that show was the dynamics between Fisher and Marshall. -Richard

Did anyone go see this movie? http://www.apple.com/trailers/magnolia/whatjusthappened/ Seams a movie about our industry would be pretty funny.. Had A-list stars in it too, but it seams to have come out in October, no theaters, no advertising, and I never saw it.. Anyone? -Richard

Take a look at this.. It might change the face of how movies are made. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/first_feature_film_created_via.php -Richard