Laurence

Yes indeed, and gravely missed on cold nights! (That was a "ballast" in Hollywood.)

Good discussion about the contract is what we need but that Facebook page is something different and it worries me. The Vote No folks on the forum represent mainly just 1 Local's minority opinion but they've made it very unpleasant for anyone to express a different viewpoint, let alone a more accurate one. The message that we should stick together and always try to get as much as we can is something we all agree with, but their spin on this contract and their attack on the other 12 Locals and their leaders is anything but a show of solidarity. Bottom line... this contract meets the goals that the 13 Locals set out to achieve... it contains more gains than anything in the last 25 years years... and it gives us a much stronger foundation for our contracts going forward. To blow it up now and put everything back on the table for discussion would be truly self-destructive.

I'll say if you're a 695 member take advantage of the only free one-on-one Fisher boom training available anywhere!

Yes there is but it's definitely limited. Multi-camera sitcoms is the primary place to see them. Local 695 has been running one-on-one training sessions for quite some time and that has actually rekindled awareness of the Fisher and caused some to start showing up on episodic and features but it's still rare. Most of the sitcoms are union so it would take him some time to work his way through that but if he's good, and if he knows both Fisher and fishpole, and he has a cool kiwi accent, he'll probably do fine.

Dave Pullmer... yes! I've been doing that to all of mine since my first pair in the early 90's. Takes a few minutes to rig it up and problem solved. Highly recommend it.

The majority of Brando's lines in Apocalypse Now were done in ADR.

Jeff and Philip offered a good list of reasons that the Fisher was becoming used less going into the 90's. Not mentioned yet as contributors to the increase in location shooting and the need for more nimble production crews with less gear were... faster film stocks (requiring fewer lighting instruments), HMI lighting (which drastically minimized the size of the lighting package by eliminating arc lamps), and perhaps more than anything, the 70's generation of lightweight sound cameras (Panaflex, Arri, etc.) The sound department response to all that was to make more use of early radio mics, spurring that technology to go through significant advancement, too. Add it up you get a lot few Fishers on location and a generation who sound people entering the business with the impression that the Fisher's time has gone. Which it has not. Only it's application has changed.

Most studios built their own booms, different on every lot. A few individuals tried, as well, including Local 695 member Jim Fisher. At the time he was working in the sound shop at Republic Studios (now CBS Radford.) From a rented a space across the street, he set out to build a better boom. Other than for period movies, that boom is virtually the only one in use today. Below is a link to a 2012 Local 695 quarterly magazine with a reprint of an article from an earlier 695 magazine, published 1953, about the history of "the mike boom." At that time, a "boom" was something with a form factor of a Fisher, not the collapsible hand-held "stick" you use. I believe those didn't exist until the 70's, like the re-purposed painter's poles we used at Warner Bros, but that's a digression. Read the 2012 article here http://www.local695.com/Quarterly/4-4/4-4-november-1953-microphone-booms/ and be sure to click the link to the scanned version of the 1953 article. The image below shows two booms built by Republic, the ones J.L. worked on by day while developing the Model 2 Fisher at night.

Not a Fisher.

"Put down some boards!" I remember it well. And it gave the camera a lot more flexibility by not limiting the design of the dolly move to what can be built from sections of straight or curved track.

Some people say they have.

We knew Jeff Wexler was honored with a Career Achievement award a few years back but this is even better. There's now a video store in Los Angeles that only stocks movies that were mixed by Jeff Wexler. Is that cool or what. Congrats, Jeff! Take a look... https://goo.gl/p70CPk

I keep good work records and in my experience, the MPI accounting of hours has been completely accurate. But the other thing you need to watch for is whether the employers are accurately reporting hours. If they don't report, the hours don't get recorded. There too, I've had good luck but from what I understand, that doesn't always happen. Employers have shortchanged hours and whether intentionally or not, no one but you would know or be inclined to do anything about it. So A) Keep good track of the hours you work, and Check them periodically on the MPI website, and C) Whether you suspect that the source of a problem might be MPI or the employer, call MPI immediately if you doubt the accuracy of reported hours.

Everyone wonders how anybody on the crew could go back to work the next next day and face the craziness of that movie... and many crew people did not. On the inside of the Camera Room door they kept a list of departed (but still living) camera crew and it went from the top of the door all the way to the floor and then started another column. Must have been more than 50 who quit... and that was just the camera crew. But ptalsky, you go back there month after month so you understand. It's fun to tell stories about how absurd the production was but it was truly an amazing experience to spend so much time so close to those animals. While booming shots I had them literally pawing at my jeans (cubs, I'll admit) and that's something you just never forget. Many of us lived at the ranch in trailers for part of the time and when we were off work we could just wander around and watch the cats whenever we wanted... and each night we'd fall asleep to their sounds mixed in with those of the elephants and the wild coyotes off in the hills. Yeah, it was crazy... but it was pretty cool, too.

David, when I went to Noel's nice big house in Franklin Canyon for the job interview, no predator cats were present and I don't remember him saying anything about working with 110 untrained lions and tigers and 1 certifiable madman.

If everyone in this forum understood the true value of their work, I'd say Yes to a discussion on rates but unfortunately, there's way too much evidence to the contrary. Therefore, such a discussion, whether open to public or veiled in the erroneous notion that it is not, would likely be damaging to all so I vote No.

It was challenging to work on but always funny and usually fun. 2 fishpoles and 3 hand-held 16mm cameras for all the backstage stuff, which was the majority of the show, and 2 fisher booms and a desktop ribbon mike for the broadcast portions. Lots of walk-and-talks down a twisting hallway while following a DP on roller-blades... then the actors stop and 2 doorways fling open on either side of the hallway with 2 cameras poking in for coverage... then more hallway and walking and roller-blading... and none of it on wireless mic or boom because the company didn't want to pay so with 2 fishpoles working, lots of times we'd do a hot unplug and plug while one of us ran around to a different end of the set to reposition. Craziness, but fun.

As I said, I did too until I found out what was going on. You just need to know whether the domain you have has real value. With numeric domains, the online articles that talk about which numbers are valued higher and lower in the Chinese market are no longer entirely true. It's gotten to the point that ANY numeric domain has huge value, regardless of the numbers. Speculators are buying them, hiding cash from the government, and then flipping for very big profit. It's insane but it's real.

The email above was written to appear professional, official and legit. In reality, real offers appear anything but. They'll look more like this: "how much you to sell domain. yao tzi" No social engineering there. I deleted about 2 dozen like that over the course of a year until I finally got a phone call from a broker in Chicago representing a buyer who flips the names and resells to China, passing the money through an Escrow company. Broker? Flipping? Escrow? Yeah, I was surprised, too. But she explained that my 3-digit numeric domain... what they call an NNN, as opposed to an alphabetic LLL or an NNLL or whatever... was worth a lot of money in China. All I can say is if you have an NNN... or even better, an NN... contact me and I'll make you rich. Seriously.

As many Local 695 members know, I had a recent experience with the booming Chinese domain name sales market and believe me... it's real. But the email you received is not.

I meant to say... there are plenty of low-budget union productions.

Just so you know, Gregor, there are many low-budget non-union productions.

Since the only 2 reports (so far) are coming from the same city, it suggests that the signal path is responsible, where page requests to certain parts of the network are routed through servers that are overloaded or failing, meaning it's a geographically isolated and probably temporary issue.

IMDB says the sound crew was: Earl Crain Sr. ... sound James R. Alexander ... cable man (uncredited) Clifford Call ... recordist (uncredited) C.J. 'Mickey' Emerson ... sound recordist (uncredited) Samuel F. Goode ... boom man (uncredited) It that is indeed Samuel Goode in the photo on the Fisher Model 2 boom, Giant was his first IMDB credit, after which he boomed "Maverick", "Sugarfoot", "Surfside 6", "77 Sunset Strip", "F Troop" and more.