Jump to content

Jungle Work


curleysound

Recommended Posts

All,

  I have booked what promises to be a pretty remarkable documentary shoot six months from now, which will involve 10 weeks or more in the Amazon Jungle, specifically on a boat on the Amazon River. We're shooting a guy who is going to swim the entire thing. Besides the questions that immediately arise, like "What if the guy gets eaten?" I am pressed with a bunch of questions concerning jungle work. I have the whole international travel part covered, but anyone who has shot in the Amazon, I'd love to hear some of your stories, and/or problems that arise, and how you tackled them? I have worked in many environments, hot, cold, humid, dry, but never a rainforest. I'm thinking of getting some transparent latex balloons to put the wireless in, and I'm not sure about the zeppelin, what can you do for those?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm giving serious thought to the Edirol R-4Pro, for cost considerations. I might have to go for the 744T if the specs don't hold up. Either way, Hard Disk is the plan at this point in time. I will likely bring a PD4 in case, but I posted because I'd like to hear what kinds of things people have done that don't work, so that I don't get caught with something that seems good state-side, and then I'm slapped in the face with something I had never thought of.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If I understand your original post, you are going to live on a boat for 10 weeks. I would want to know about the boat, its condition, how it will be crewed, amenities, sleeping arrangements, etc. Given the hot, humid environment, is the boat designed for good ventilation in the cabin (some boats are specifically designed for tropical environments, others are not)? Two things that I would give particular attention: keeping gear dry (a never-ending issue on boats) and ensuring that there is adequate power for all the demands. Sounds like a great experience, but one caution: I would want to know whether piracy is still a problem on the Amazon (the great New Zealand sailor, Sir Peter Blake, was murdered on the Amazon a few years ago when his 92 foot yacht was boarded) and, if so, what the organizers of this expedition are going to do about security. For example, will there be a night watch, and will the people on watch have access to rifles?

Cheers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm giving serious thought to the Edirol R-4Pro, for cost considerations. I might have to go for the 744T if the specs don't hold up. Either way, Hard Disk is the plan at this point in time. I will likely bring a PD4 in case, but I posted because I'd like to hear what kinds of things people have done that don't work, so that I don't get caught with something that seems good state-side, and then I'm slapped in the face with something I had never thought of.

Can't recommend the R4 Pro since it lacks a very important feature: the ability to record 23.976 FPS TC.  The Edirol stuff is a good bargain but not what I would call "combat ready"--it's a little flimsy and not well sealed up.  People have by now done some pretty awful things to 744s and had them mostly keep working--I think I'd go for that and ask on the SD forum about weather and jungle and high-heat experience with it.  I used DATs on several jungle trips and they were ok as long as I observed the consistency-of temperature-rule, ie don't try to move the machine from an airconditioned interior to a humid hot exterior, etc.  (Condensation.)  The main thing to consider when doing a job like you describe w/ a NL recorder is what do you do with the recorded files?  Leaving them all on the HD of a recorder w/o backup doesn't sound great to me.  (Theft.) CF cards are pretty cheap now, maybe you could get enough that you could roll the whole job on them--they would stand the heat and humidity better than a DAT tape.  Are you bringing a laptop?  A DVD burner like a Roadstor etc?  How will you be charging batteries, and will you have AC power ever during the shoot?  Do you have to sync to video TC, and if so, w/ what camera and @ what frame rate?  Are the shooting a camera that has a TC output?

Philip Perkins

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Picking up on Philip's post, I just spent ten days in a remote location where the weather included two days of non-stop, pouring rain. We used a Sound Devices recorder and compact flash cards, unloading the cards at night through a laptop to two portable hard drives (so that there were two copies of each sound file). Worked very well for us; we'll be going back to the same area this fall, and there is nothing that we plan to change. If I were living and recording regularly on a boat, the one thing that I would do differently is use a ruggedized, waterproof laptop. As mentioned in my earlier post, I would also want to be satisfied that there will be sufficient electrical power to meet my needs, the needs of others and the needs of the boat. Power is a significant issue unless a boat is berthed at a marina, with access to a shore power outlet at the berth, each night.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And just to extend on the power issue a bit - bring high-rated surge protectors for your equipment.  Depending on the boat, you can get a lot of fluctuation in power, including some nice surges.  Also check to see what type of power it is - 120 or 220 and what the outlet configuraion is (not sure if this is important in South America, but certainly is in Europe and Asia).

Sounds like a cool project.

Phil

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Curleysound,

For me, on a 70 day project in a remote location, the biggest question would be how many gigabytes of data I have to store (in duplicate) before I get to offload it to someone else and erase my own storage.

If my assumption is correct and you are going to be living on a boat (or is the boat a small powerboat that is just for following the swimmer?), you will have access to direct current (almost certainly 12v) and AC (110v, 220v or both, from a generator or inverter), but there is a fairly high probability that your window to charge batteries and download data will be when the boat is connected to shore power or you can take your gear to a regular source of shore power (which in South America can be 110v or 220v, depending on where you are).

This is all sufficiently complicated that there is presumably someone on this project who has been assigned the task of dealing with these kinds of issues across the board.

I don't know what the wind conditions are on the Amazon, but in a moving boat you (and your mics) will have the pleasure of dealing both with real wind and apparent wind, the latter being a magnification.

I assume that you and the producers of this show have seen the rather quirky film, based if I recall on a short story by John Cheever, called The Swimmer?

Cheers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I assume that you and the producers of this show have seen the film, based if I recall on a story by John Cheeever, called The Swimmer?

I haven't seen the movie, but as I understand it, the guy we're covering is a World Record Holder, and has swum all kinds of rivers end to end.

The wind shouldn't be a huge deal, at least with my trusty Rycote in play. I'm more concerned with Diesel boat motors and such. Of course, if we're chasing a swimmer downstream, I hope motors aren't needed! The boat, what I'm told, is large, and fully accomodating, with a scout boat ahead to look for/ward off any nasty water creatures. Although I don't know what fully accomodating means in South America, I've got some good power conditioning, and will likely burn DVDs in the down time, and also mirror to a 1TB drive. I suppose they might be periodically shipping out tapes and DVDs, but I don't think storage will be a huge issue, unless something breaks or gets ripped off.

I was also looking for life tips, like good mosquito netting tips, or how to work through malaria, how to boom once the croc's taken your left arm, etc.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi,

The reference to The Swimmer was intended to be amusing (I hope that it brought a chuckle to one or two people), and the rest of what I had to say was intended to be helpful. I've spent quite a lot of time on the Atlantic, the Pacific, the North Sea, the English Channel, the Mediterranean, the Carribean and the St. Lawrence River on cruising, fishing and racing boats up to 80 feet, and so I thought that I would pass on some observations on what I would be asking questions about. That's all.

Cheers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 10 months later...

Oh, this is rich! So, a week before we were to be getting our immunization shots, I call the producer that I'd been hired through for an update. "The show's off" he said, but what he should've said was "I'm off the show, and subsequently, so are you and all the people I brought on." However, I found that the show was indeed on, and got a frantic call about two weeks after the show would've begun. "Hi, Tom? Yeah, this is so & so from the Amazon Swim shoot? Yeah, we hired a sound guy who seemed like a good bargain, but he really doesn't know what he's doing apparently, so could you drop everything and come down to Brazil next week?" I passed. They completed the project, I'm not sure about the Doc however.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So typical.  I wondered about the project when I read something

about the swimmer months ago.  I had remembered your original post,

so the story sounded familiar, but I couldn't remember where I had read

it and by then, this thread was pretty buried.

(That's the nature of late night internet browsing and waking up slowly to NPR.)

It's a fantastic story of human endeavor, but with producers like that,

you probably saved yourself a lot of aggravation.

(hey, we have a med school dropout that will do your immunizations for cheap...)

Glen P.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...