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Sound carts on process trailers/camera cars.


traut

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Great thread people!

 

My approach to shooting in vehicles is in constant flux...

Despite the entirely solid-state production cart, I'm wont to put it on the tow vehicle. Fortunately, my work over the past few years has been fairly high-profile network drama, which means that when I see driving shots in the upcoming episode, I NAIL the first AD down, as in, "Look. I can do anything, as long as I've been told what will be necessary, with enough lead time to make it happen. You change your mind on the day, it's on you, not me."  They are truly responsible for arranging that stuff, and if you let them know that you know that, they will help. Next up is the Utility (notice I haven't said anything about gear yet - it's people - not gear that makes it work). Based on the info delivered by the AD, a good Utility is going to check in with transpo, props, and the 2nd ACs as to what's REALLY gonna happen. New info may modify the game plan, but my Utility and I will both ask all the right questions, such as "Hey! Any chance you're gonna want to shoot something  while the tow car is being reset?" A good AD might say, "You know, it's not in the plan, but this Director is a whack job, so have Plan B in your back pocket." Quick phone call to the UPM or Line Producer, saying it's going to cost another $150 have Plan B in my back pocket, and literally half the time the AD will come back and say not to worry about Plan B as the Producer doesn't want to spend the money. Ask the AD who the insert car driver is going to be, and if you don't know them, make sure you get an introduction shortly after they arrive. Adopt the attitude that the cool shelf in the shotgun seat was put there for the exclusive use of the mixer. The insert driver will agree. Have the Utility, as they pre-rig, make sure that the driver has plenty of fresh water and his or her favorite snacks handy...  Moral: Work the people stuff first. In time I feel it earns the respect of the Production Department.

That being said, my basic car rigs these days are a Mini-Cooper (306), custom cabled to a 788T-SSD with a quad pak of SRs velcroed on, with a Lectro TR-4 as the cherry on top. No pix. Separate mics on talent as body mics, plants in the car. Talent can be wired and checked out near the Production cart with transmitters which are removed before they get into the car, where hard wired feeds to the 306 get connected (so many things can cause RF interference in a tow rig, why spit in the wind...). The 788 is set as an 8 track line level recorder. Boom riding chase carries a wireless boom and the talent transmitters, and in moments can be ready to shoot out in the middle of nowhere. If nowhere is out of reception range of the insert car, the 788 can be pulled and reset as a "mix plus isos" recorder in seconds. Sure it's costly to have duplicate stuff, but part of the job is getting the goods without taking up any production time.

 

No trunk work - ever. Last time was in '95, with an un-named cast in a heavy duty driving drug party scene, and I lived in SF long enough to know in an instant that the talent was smoking real stuff, and it was high-test at that. Since then I ask the AD if the plan is to have the actors drive and act at the same time, and if it is, I set up a continuous roll with conservative levels on iso with a hotter production mix, lay an open slate on the floor, wish the camera operator "good luck and don't forget to look at the slate at the beginning or end of each take". Works fine.

 

Off topic moment!!!!!  Since I've had the SMVs, I've had to set input gains on them to what I used to think was an embarrassingly low setting ( 8 ), in order to not ever hear them limit. Signal to noise isn't really an issue, but Lectro limiters can be.

 

Back on topic, most Producers these days respond immediately to the "Safety" card.  If you identify an unsafe activity to a Producer, and they go ahead anyway and something happens, they are guilty of negligence in the eyes of the law, and most of them know that. By the same token, if one of your sound crew points out a safety issue, and you don't bring it up to the AD immediately, YOU are guilty of negligence. Safety is the trump card.

 

Lastly, @Crew  Elegant solution for the talk back rig! Off the shelf is the only way to go these days. Only caveat is when I use the RM-3as on set or in a car, is that they can be noisy enough with no input that I can hear them. Not a big problem on my last gig with period cars from the 50's! Much thanks to an aggressive dialogue editor! On the up side, when the period cars broke down or need a tweak, sound could race in and make that last little adjustment...

 

Jay

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Crew, rigging a process trailer in ten minutes has me beat by a mile.

Usually takes me 30.

Cantar, BST and video monitor in the cab.

Mount the Comtek antenna outside, run a snake to the car, feed the Alexas, rig the talk back from director to car.

Get a feed from VTR, audio feed to VTR.

Tove rides the trailer to get sticks and track down flappy squeaky bits for me.

But once I'm dialed in, it's a stroll in the park.

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Hey Phil, I'm using a Remote Audio Boom box 2  and a Remote Audio speaker as a Car Com rig. The Sony headphones have a mic wired to them and a ifb return so the director can hear the car actors and talk to them over the speaker. Not really the way Remote Audio intended this to work but it works for me.

CrewC

 

Intrigued by this solution...thinking it through.

 

Sweet 'un.

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Great thread people!

 

My approach to shooting in vehicles is in constant flux...

Despite the entirely solid-state production cart, I'm wont to put it on the tow vehicle. Fortunately, my work over the past few years has been fairly high-profile network drama, which means that when I see driving shots in the upcoming episode, I NAIL the first AD down, as in, "Look. I can do anything, as long as I've been told what will be necessary, with enough lead time to make it happen. You change your mind on the day, it's on you, not me."  They are truly responsible for arranging that stuff, and if you let them know that you know that, they will help. Next up is the Utility (notice I haven't said anything about gear yet - it's people - not gear that makes it work). Based on the info delivered by the AD, a good Utility is going to check in with transpo, props, and the 2nd ACs as to what's REALLY gonna happen. New info may modify the game plan, but my Utility and I will both ask all the right questions, such as "Hey! Any chance you're gonna want to shoot something  while the tow car is being reset?" A good AD might say, "You know, it's not in the plan, but this Director is a whack job, so have Plan B in your back pocket." Quick phone call to the UPM or Line Producer, saying it's going to cost another $150 have Plan B in my back pocket, and literally half the time the AD will come back and say not to worry about Plan B as the Producer doesn't want to spend the money. Ask the AD who the insert car driver is going to be, and if you don't know them, make sure you get an introduction shortly after they arrive. Adopt the attitude that the cool shelf in the shotgun seat was put there for the exclusive use of the mixer. The insert driver will agree. Have the Utility, as they pre-rig, make sure that the driver has plenty of fresh water and his or her favorite snacks handy...  Moral: Work the people stuff first. In time I feel it earns the respect of the Production Department.

That being said, my basic car rigs these days are a Mini-Cooper (306), custom cabled to a 788T-SSD with a quad pak of SRs velcroed on, with a Lectro TR-4 as the cherry on top. No pix. Separate mics on talent as body mics, plants in the car. Talent can be wired and checked out near the Production cart with transmitters which are removed before they get into the car, where hard wired feeds to the 306 get connected (so many things can cause RF interference in a tow rig, why spit in the wind...). The 788 is set as an 8 track line level recorder. Boom riding chase carries a wireless boom and the talent transmitters, and in moments can be ready to shoot out in the middle of nowhere. If nowhere is out of reception range of the insert car, the 788 can be pulled and reset as a "mix plus isos" recorder in seconds. Sure it's costly to have duplicate stuff, but part of the job is getting the goods without taking up any production time.

 

No trunk work - ever. Last time was in '95, with an un-named cast in a heavy duty driving drug party scene, and I lived in SF long enough to know in an instant that the talent was smoking real stuff, and it was high-test at that. Since then I ask the AD if the plan is to have the actors drive and act at the same time, and if it is, I set up a continuous roll with conservative levels on iso with a hotter production mix, lay an open slate on the floor, wish the camera operator "good luck and don't forget to look at the slate at the beginning or end of each take". Works fine.

 

Off topic moment!!!!!  Since I've had the SMVs, I've had to set input gains on them to what I used to think was an embarrassingly low setting ( 8 ), in order to not ever hear them limit. Signal to noise isn't really an issue, but Lectro limiters can be.

 

Back on topic, most Producers these days respond immediately to the "Safety" card.  If you identify an unsafe activity to a Producer, and they go ahead anyway and something happens, they are guilty of negligence in the eyes of the law, and most of them know that. By the same token, if one of your sound crew points out a safety issue, and you don't bring it up to the AD immediately, YOU are guilty of negligence. Safety is the trump card.

 

Lastly, @Crew  Elegant solution for the talk back rig! Off the shelf is the only way to go these days. Only caveat is when I use the RM-3as on set or in a car, is that they can be noisy enough with no input that I can hear them. Not a big problem on my last gig with period cars from the 50's! Much thanks to an aggressive dialogue editor! On the up side, when the period cars broke down or need a tweak, sound could race in and make that last little adjustment...

 

Jay

Jay is the man!   

 

philp

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How about recording on roller-coasters? I've tried twice in the dim and distant past - once with a DAT machine which couldn't cope with the G-forces and once with a Sony TCD-5M Pro II cassette machine, which managed OK, which is more than I did. A lot of heavy editing to cope with the involuntary expletives was required afterwards. Going to have another go in a week or two, but probably with a Zoom/DPA 4060 combination and a gag. Anyone else visiting Infocomm this year?

 

Regards,

 

John

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John.

i just saw something back today that we shot a few days ago, where we had 6 contributors trying to do a piece to camera on a roller coaster with a Go Pro strapped to the back of their hand.

we had them all on zaxcom TX's that were also recording, showed the go pro a digislate and left them to it.

it all worked very well as far as i am aware. (they synced it and no one on the sound team got a frantic call from the edit)

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This was a while ago - the cassette recording was at Anaheim in 1987/8-ish and the DAT in the UK some years later. The DPAs will be body-mounted (my body, although I hate the rides) and the recorder will be in a zipped pocket.

 

Incidentally, a colleague who designed the multi-channel on-board sound playback system for The Spiderman Ride at Universal Studios had to swap out the traditional hard-drives normally used for playback, for early versions of SSDs (made for aircraft Black Box systems) at enormous expense  not completely because of the g-forces, but also because of the liquid Nitrogen clouds which the cars go through playing havoc with the drive electronics.

 

Regards,

 

John

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