Best of the Season to you and Yours

Peter

BTW What’s so wrong about wishing for Peace on Earth after all?

Next he informed me of the budget.   Ok then it wasn’t for the money.

And it was only really 2 pages of dialogue.   So it wasn’t for the challenge.

And yet I said …”Yes”.

So here we are , the crew, up in Williams Lake, outside in the Sun for 12+ hours a day during the hottest most brutal heat wave that the Province of BC has seen.  Forest fires surrounded the area and the forest was so dry that every footstep cracked like firecrackers.  And I asked  myself – “Self…why am I doing this?”  And I had to smile  – even though my lips cracked.

Cause I love what I do.  Now in spite of all the seeming hardship it was fun as well.  Getting some of the dialogue was a challenge and working with new people is always nice.

The first thing that got done   (from Audio Services Toronto) was 8 direct outs pre EQ,  pre Fader.  This enabled me the future option of  feeding an 8 track digital recorder that was in my not so near future.  It also enabled me to feed my SoundDevices 744T 4 track recorder some Direct Outs as well.   So this was good.

Now as work got me into different situations I noticed that the light on meters in the mixer were too dim  They didn’t allow me to operate in weak to moderate light without compensating for where my external light source was coming from (ie I don’t always have the luxury of AC when I need it).  Plus they took a fair bit of juice to operate.   So I took out the single filament bulb (12v) and put in 2 small LED’s.

So here is before (the regular light) >>>>>>>>>>> and with two LEDS .

You can easily see the needles glow even in regular light.  The interesting thing is how easy this little mod was.  No holes to drill just get the parts and solder them together.  The only tricky part was that the LEDs threw off so much light that I  had to cover them with heat shrink  -without heat shrink  it made it look like things were on, when in fact they were not.  With that all done I was able to view the meters in total darkness and read a manual if I wanted!

Next on the list was to replace the Direct/Return switch along with the talk back and slate mic switches. I found that they got dirty and noisy quickly.  I replaced them once already and having to replace them a second time  wasn’t my idea of fun.  The first time I did replace them,  the traces on the circuit board stripped off.  So I had to lay down new trace wires – a real dogs breakfast.    One thing is for certain though – you destroy the old switches in taking them out.   Got some miniature DPDT switches and placed them where they needed to be by soldering on some lead wires.  They fit quite nicely and work well.  Replacing them takes about the same effort  BUT the advantage is that the switches are more common and you don’t have to touch the printed circuit board if they have to be replaced.

With fine detail work a good soldering station is worth its weight in gold.  Magnifying glass or in my case goggles are the best way to ensure your work is not bridging connections.  And lastly tweezers with heat shrink on them to help place wires in small tight places.  The heat shrink helps to dissipate heat so when you are placing the wire it doesn’t melt.

NEXT…

A whole host of things.  I found that all the extra boxes that I had attached to the mixer made it difficult to pull out and quite time consuming to re and re or change batteries.

These boxes did the following:  made monitoring two decks possible without plugging or replugging headphones in and out of the decks or mixer, Record -pause of the HHB, the CL-1 from SoundDevices made plugging a keyboard in and remote record possible, being able to monitor via a speaker in between (to give ones ears a rest).  So I figured that it could all go inside the Mixer without too much of a hassle.
Coming soon… how I fit it all into the mixer.

Now some of my peers think that I’m crazy for doing this, helping for free or a greatly reduced rate and yet I feel that it is important to help others learn and understand the craft and make it better.  Or at least to get young directors and producers to appreciate what you are trying to do on set.  I won’t be rich but I will be happy.  To show them the skill set and tenacity that you approach getting what you want out of sound. And the question that I get asked the most needs to be repeated…

What do you (the Sound Dept.) need and what do we look for?

This is most often asked by people new to the industry – although I have run into some people that are in the Industry that really do need to  read this…twice.

The most obvious is quite locations devoid of anything that you can’t see in shot.  Examples:

Sirens, waterfalls, jets or planes, boats, compressors (refrigerators, freezers, nail guns etc), heavy traffic, horns honking, people screaming, drunks heaving, weed whackers, snow blowers, .. you get the idea.  Unless of course the sound plays in the  shot.  So yes it is OK to hear a firetruck  if you see a firetruck.  But if you are doing a period piece, Jets are not ok.  Now check for everyday sounds as well.  The heavy traffic that we hear we filter out and ignore.  Since microphones don’t have a brain, they can’t filter out that noise – they hear it all and consequently so do we.  Now if traffic “plays” great.  Remember to listen like a child, cause they hear everything.  And we just want to give you the best sound we can.  Next if your shoot is happening on a specific day scout it on that day.   It wasn’t like that on (insert day here) is too often said on set and people must learn or (you fill in the blank here).

So , so far this year I have already done 7  little ones and look forward to a few more.

And in a final quick note.  Scarlett Bruns (a local producer) made mention of a great idea that I thought that I would pass along.  She takes a small recorder with her to record the locations as she is looking at them.  And as she mentioned that “…Boy does it pick up a lot more than we want to hear!…”  That is what we hear.  Thanks Scarlett.