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What's in your kit? series with Stéphane Bucher - prep for Napoleon


Fred Salles

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URSA has created a YT series called "what's in your kit?" and for this new one they met with my compatriote Stéphane Bucher during his prep for Ridley Scott's next project Napoleon.

I found the video quite interesting and Stephane is very generous and open about his kit and choices.

His lucky sound department has a team of 6 and a large sound van to make jealous most of us I believe 😅

Particularly interesting to me are his choices to deal with long distance set (eg. Dante with back up recorder on set for the radio mikes, but wired booms with an 8 ch multipair directly to his Cantar).

Really worth a look even for experienced sound mixers.

 

 

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25 minutes ago, Fred Salles said:

Particularly interesting to me are his choices to deal with long distance set (eg. Dante with back up recorder on set for the radio mikes, but wired booms with an 8 ch multipair directly to his Cantar).

Really worth a look even for experienced sound mixers.

Great series from Ursa.  I recall in another video by Sonosax that it seems a lot of French/Swiss mixers prefer to still use wired booms on their sets?  I find it very interesting as it seems that wireless is God here stateside.  Obviously managing cables literally used to be a job title in the sound department on films of yesteryear but I can't help but notice now it's go-go-go and move things along as quickly as possible on American sets for the most part where having to wrangle an 100ft cable for a boom etc would just be a headache.  Glad to see this film is getting a well equipped, experienced and thought out sound department!

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5 minutes ago, codyman said:

... it seems a lot of French/Swiss mixers prefer to still use wired booms on their sets?  I find it very interesting as it seems that wireless is God here stateside.  Obviously managing cables literally used to be a job title in the sound department on films of yesteryear but I can't help but notice now it's go-go-go and move things along as quickly as possible on American sets for the most part where having to wrangle an 100ft cable for a boom etc would just be a headache.

We are trained hard from birth on how to roll a 20m cable real quick 🤣

 

More seriously, we do love the sound of our boom mike in a real preamp, and I guess would not compromise on it unless really no choice. 

On TV series however (I don't do) my colleagues are using more and more 100% wireless boom. 

But for feature I think we might fight for wired boom as long as possible, and most directors and producers agree on it !

Remember ADR is dreaded and avoided as much as possible in France (and Suisse I guess) so we pressure ourselves to get the production sound we choose.

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5 minutes ago, Philip Perkins said:

I was on wireless boom and I had a real preamp.  My boom fed a Sound Devices MM1, which fed a wireless TX with a return feed for communication.  Great wireless boom sound, and a very happy boom op hearing their mic hifi and without any delay.

This was my setup for years, however, my boom ops got tired of having to disconnect the coiled XLR from the boom pole to set it down, especially when quickly wanting to fuss with an actor's lav etc.  We've moved on to a Lectro Plug On directly on the boom / R1a beaming back both their boom audio and my voice for communication.  I still kept my MM-1 though as it is a great mic pre to have around.

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No question that the butt-plug rig is far faster and more efficient.  But as Fred says--I did miss the "real" preamp (and its limiter) on the boom.   It could be that on wireless-lav-centric shoots where the boom mic is far less central to the overall recorded sound than it used to be that a boom running through the preamp of a wireless TX might actually be a better match for the wires vs. a hard wired or wireless boom using a preamp like an MM1.  But I miss the direct-wired, console-preamp sound.

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3 hours ago, Philip Perkins said:

I was on wireless boom and I had a real preamp.  My boom fed a Sound Devices MM1, which fed a wireless TX with a return feed for communication.  Great wireless boom sound, and a very happy boom op hearing their mic hifi and without any delay.

I was thinking about using the Sonosax M2D2 for that very same purpose, but I was using it on the cart to bypass the 688's preamp and never had the time to unset it and try it with a tx for a wireless boom. Next time!! 

It would be great to find a good TX that accept AES though 😉

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2 minutes ago, Fred Salles said:

I was thinking about using the Sonosax M2D2 for that very same purpose, but I was using it on the cart to bypass the 688's preamp and never had the time to unset it and try it with a tx for a wireless boom. Next time!! 

Does anyone make a transmitter that takes AES in and then a receiver does AES out, all doing it "losslessly" / no codecs or compression?  Seems that would be perfect in terms of getting that console sound.

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6 minutes ago, codyman said:

Does anyone make a transmitter that takes AES in and then a receiver does AES out, all doing it "losslessly" / no codecs or compression?  Seems that would be perfect in terms of getting that console sound.

AES out several RX do, but TX that takes AES don't know about yet!

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