Mark LeBlanc

Something out of the ordinary happened on day 1 of the show I'm on now. The lead actress is from South America and speaks very good English. But, every now and then she gets a word wrong. She asked me to be on the "Lookout" for any strange pronunciations and inform her directly. A few times after a take I would let her know and she was grateful, not mad and would ask for another take. She listens back and corrects the mistake in an almost Dialog Coach kind of way..Never had that happen before.

The editor happened to be on set last night with the VFX guys and we got a chance to talk extensively. We were talking about all the issues we were having then he tossed in that a majority of the B Cam footage is no usable because the operator / focus puller are not in sync and have focus issues. While I don't completely ignore the guys like Dan does. I'm a techy with can generally strike up a conversation by asking about the Red vs the Canon 7d etc and they are struck that a "Soundy" knows something about their world. At this point the DP has even accommodated me but putting cutters in place after I swing the boom around during setup. He's not the problem it's the jerk 1'st AC and sloppy 2nd AC. B Camera has been on the sideline for almost 60 percent of the movie. The producers are aware of the issue and look to address it by not hiring them back on the next project. BTW, last night was guide track night. Shooting between the cooling towers at a power plant, but was able to salvage 1 scene thanks to screaming.. Here's a funny one, the night before we were shooting a car "Crashed" scene. The car was flipped over and they had a fog machine in the engine area generating smoke. This darn thing ruined most of the early takes and was the same machine that haunted me on a feature it was used on last year. The moment we started punching in for closeup's and dirty 2's it died!!! HA sweet revenge as the director wanted the darn thing going the whole time. Small victories are SWEET!!

I'm not stressing, but the script supervisor is all over the place trying to keep up. Really nice lady, at the breaks we put our notes together and try and sort out the slating mess..

Working on a show now with a camera crew that is distinctly arrogant and has shown a contempt toward both sound and scripty. Extremely sloppy slating, not informing everyone in the chain when a lens change occurs then when you ask the blow you off. In particular, the 1'st AC on the shoot stands out. The DP and I have arrived at a good place, but the rest of his 1'st crew have been difficult. Issue has been brought up with 1'st ad and Line producer, gets better for a scene or two then they revert to status quo. Curious what your worst experiences have been? Oh yea, to boot, the director comes from background where all his films are mostly looped so he has no problems with putting the big generators a few feet away from the set.

Tom, No it was not a misunderstanding, the DP likes a lot of headroom on every shot even close-ups. So when he asked for 3 feet it made me laugh! ML

I'm working on a show with a DP from Italy with a very thick accent. Two night's ago we were shooting an interior office scene and I was riding the frame line as usual. After the take he pops up and says (Please add thick Italian Accent). Soundy, can a you give a me more space. My reply - Sure 3, 4, 5 inches. His classic reply. A No - gimmy 3 feet!! Darn near fell of my 4 step..

Good perspectives.. I'm up for adventure, the strange thing were the red flags thrown up by the talent. Apparently they started bets to see how long camera guys would last. None averaged more than 1 week before they left.

Question for yall. Has anyone here ever turned down a job because it would put you and your equipment in harms way? Have a job offer that would require spending a majority of the day chest deep in Swamp water amongst hunters and poisonous snakes. My main recorder is the 788t which is rugged, but not on the level of the Cantar. Got a taste of the job the past two days and found out from the talent that the previous sound guy had a break down on the set along with other drama caused by the producers (Example: today did a 10hr day and the producer didn't feed us, nor did he offer an apology. Thx

Protools has timecode support without DVTK, you just don't see it in the timeline, but it does generate MTC. Also, there are no midi interfaces that support 23.976, it wasn't in the original midi spec and thus is not a supported framerate. What you can do is use something like the MOTU micro express - 4x6 USB MIDI interface. Tell Protools to generate MTC and the Motu box will convert it to LTC timecode. If you want higher reliability, you could get the higher end motu syncbox that can also slave it's clock to a blackburst generator for a more accurate clock. You could also send LTC out say a 788t/744 into the Motu box and slave Protools like that. Protools plays back as the 788t records with the 788 as master. On the higher end is the Ambient ALL601 Lanc Logger which does a whole bunch of other functions, but the main one is generate LTC from MTC and may "MAY" support 23.976. Protools would then be the timecode master of the setup. Jamsync the timecode slate to the Motu/Ambient box ever now and then and all should be fine..

Interesting thread, I've worked both ways (Single and Crew) only 1 pseudo Union(show flipped union after the first week). A majority of what I've worked to this point have been 1 man gigs including a SciFi channel 35mm feature. I'm no where near the budgets that most of you have worked on and would look forward to getting to that level, but answer this question. How can a three man crew make the dialog I record any better if it's me aiming the Schoeps or a boom op with gobs of cable between us. In one man mode, I can't ride the levels that's true, but as I came from the post side of the world, its easy to deal with a steady noise level. I'd love to have a sample of the dialog I've recorded critiqued to see what you guys think. I also think it has to do with where you live and how active the industry is. Are big budget movies coming near me?? Close, but they already bring in big guns to do them so I have no chance. In this economy it will be an interesting, if not sad thing to see how many who have turned down gigs in the past because of crew size will be forced to rethink their answer if for no other reason than to just pay the bills. One advantage I've experience being in 1 man mode is the absence of the phrase "waiting on sound".. ML

Philip, Forgot to mention, the bracket is from an old sliding rack keyboard that I cut and bent to get the angle. ML

Phillip, Here's a link to the site I got it from. It was only $16.99 plus shipping. It was intended for a Playstation 2 controller.. http://store.mp3car.com/Mini_Key_USB_Keyboard_DGPN_570_p/com-005.htm Mark L

Greetings, Check out the little mount I came up with for the Mini-Keyboard I use with the 788t/CL8. It's just Velcro to the back of the CL8 and is very fast to type with. I use a Blackberry so typing on this keyboard is easy for me. I've assigned the function keys to open Scene/Take, Track Names and Folder options. The last so I can change Roll folders when I'm doing ENG stuff.. Mark L

Please explain what's broken with the 788t? I've used on 5 show's and haven experienced any problems.

As a happy owner of a CL-8/788t and having used it on the most difficult shoot I've been on. I could not detect any latency when turning the knob. Now, I did not sit there and wank the thing left and right really fast to see if there was a problem. My Euphonix MC Mx and protools combo had some delay which you could "FEEL", but nothing I can detect with the CL-8/788t combo. I also just use the "MIX" track as a mono reference and do post with the ISO tracks.. Also to clarify, the CL-8 is just a USB controller, not an Input device so if there is any delay, my bet is it would be in the 1-2 millisecond range at worst.. 2cents deposited Mark L

First big show I did, company asked for all my files, backups and everything. Turned them in, multiple copies of DVD etc then cleaned off my drives as per their request. Got a call a month later, they lost the DVD's from the last day of the shoot.. I heard later that they fired the office staff a week after show wrap and the files never reached Post.. Lucky for them, the last day is mostly screams.. OOPS!! ML

Mine will be here tomorrow, hope to put it into play on a small horror movie starting next week. This we I sold my Yamaha 01v96, past few projects I've been on being all DC power and mobile has been a great advantage.. Plan for CL8 is Mono mix post fader for track L, ISO tracks for the rest.. ML

Yep, I've had it happen a few times. The silver lining is the recorded audio is not affected. Turning the first pot on/off fixed the problem every time. A hassle, but feel confident they lick the problem... ML

The last show I worked, the lead actress would constantly unplug the lav by pulling on the cable. I finally got her to stop by getting the little remote from lectro. I demo'd how playing the dweedle tone would kill the transmitter and save batteries. Once she saw that I wasn't B/S, after the end of each scene she would come up to me and wait for the dweedle tone. No problems after that.. This same show I had to kill the comtek links all the time because of the actors talking SH(*& about the director between takes. High stress + Low Budget = Good times!!!

Philip, It might be a case of "use what you got". On my first movie I used a Digi 003r/Presonus Preamp with Protools, worked great. It's now my backup, though I'm tied to AC when using that setup. Mark L

Aaron 1. We are mostely in a fixed position. Each location will have a 'control room/video village' that will stay put for that location. Cool, you might suggest setting up a little network with a main computer in that control room. This way all you would have to do is Copy to your drive then shuffle off to productions computers where someone could burn disks for you. This would free your time up greatly. Having to deal with moving 32gig/ 788t, then sorting and burning will be a job itself. That entire process of moving data from 788t to computer then DVD will take you well over an hour. 3. I will record all tracks most likely. If I get a break I will disable unused tracks to save storage/trasfer. WOW, that's going to be a ton of data. Hopefully post knows about the 2gig limit for OMF files.. 4. I was hoping to use BWF as a way to import audio tracks (using ALE feature) into one 'A1' audio time line in Avid Media Composer. Likely Post will be renaming the files to perform this task. 5. Mono is what post has requested. Check out the bottom for what I found with AVID and poly files.. 6. No fixed times of day for shooting w this system. Why do you ask? Just make sure you don't have overlapping timecodes for disks you send them. This could cause them grief syncing audio to video later. The last shoot I was on, our schedule shuffled all over and my requests for extra DVD's to burn went on deaf ears. This caused me to sometimes have to burn 1 dvd with audio that overlapped. Like 12-20-08/ 1300hr and 12-21-08/1300hr.. Protools option sounds interesting. An .mxf would likely get around the messy file renaming you think? I played around with Protools and I just found a major downside. It throws away the meta data. GAK!! Timecodes are correct, but other stuff go's. It also makes the AVID project really messy with files. I've attached a screen shot of my test AVID project with the audio being imported directly from a POLY wav file. Only 1 file shows up in the bin, notice all the nice META data, track names from the 788t are correctly imported. Then when you drag the file into the sequence, new tracks are created automatically. I think this is the cleanest way to go.. BTW, I tested this with AVID Express Pro 5.8x and suspect Avid Composer works similar. Mark L

Aaron, A few questions... 1. Is the show a more "FIXED Location" show or run and gun type? Point being, will there be a "Control Room" where all the video stuff goes into 2. With three machines, when you hit record on 1, are they all chained together to all go into record? 3. Will you be running all tracks set to record at all times? I found with the new firmware you had to visit menus to record enable tracks as opposed to turning a channel on/off to have it go into record. If you are under the gun, you may miss the fact that a track is not record enabled without first checking the display.. 4. What do you want happen with BWF widget? Add more meta data? Merge files? 5. I will assume you are recording to Poly wav files, otherwise that a mess of files to deal with. 6. Will there be fixed times of the day the show will be shot? 8 to 5 for example. One option to maybe consider would be Protools with DVToolkit option. You could then drag each machines files, line up via timecode and then export one big .aaf or .omf file. You might even be able to send them a .mxf file. What would be really nice is if they had internet access on set you could upload or rsync the files to Post without having to burn a disk. This could be a background task that you really wouldn't have to watch over once you start it.. Mark L

Aaron, Few thoughts on the data side 1. Are you using a Mac or PC to burn DVD's to hand of at the end of the day? 2. What's your name structure? Will each machines Scene have something to ID which machine it originated from? Like A-S21-T01.wav, B-S21-T01.wav etc. Otherwise, computers might not like files with the same name. 3. Are you going to generate Sound Reports? I just finished a SciFi movie that it took my lunch break to do sound reports and burn a DVD of the work till that point in the day. The process of transferring to computer and burning to disk took between 30-40 minutes including sound report duties. My Macbook Pro takes about 10 minutes to complete a burn to DVD. If you are using a Laptop, you could rotate CF cards and copy them in the background between takes then rotate back into 788t at larger breaks. Otherwise you will have to Connect each 788t to you computer, download, eject and repeat with the other machines. Maybe you can ask SD if you rename each machines HD/CF, if you then use a USB hub to connect all machines at once to copy data, shouldn't be a problem. I only have 1 unit so I can't test. For backups,I use an open source UNIX utility called RSYNC to backup data between systems/drives or you can use OSX built-in AUTOMATOR with applescript to do the job. Mark L

Paul Thanks for your assistance! Mark

Paul, Forgot to ask, once you have update the firmware, can you downgrade? Thanks, Mark