Features

by Ross Levy CAS

It was March 2023 and my historic run on NCIS: Los Angeles, thirteen years and over three hundred episodes, was finally coming to an end. The martini shot was complete and it was an official series wrap at Paramount Studios.

There were hugs all around as we said our goodbyes. I’m not going to lie; it was very emotional. I took a moment to reflect on such an amazing run with a strong sense of accomplishment. It dawned on me that these very sets will soon be gone and a new production will be moving in. I never dreamed I would be returning to these same stages on my very next show: Matlock.

I had the pleasure of working with actor Eric Christian Olsen for those thirteen years on NCIS: Los Angeles playing series regular, Marty Deeks. Eric is an amazing human on all levels and praised me and the sound team; Boom Operator Ben Wienert and Utility Sound Technician Jonathan “Jono” Hong, for the lack of ADR.

I was looking forward to working with Eric again on the new CBS series Matlock where he is an Executive Producer and coincidently, both shows are produced by CBS Studios. The pilot was shot in Toronto and the WGA and SAG strikes commenced soon after. As we all know, many new projects were shelved indefinitely due to the long negotiations. Fortunately, Matlock did not suffer that fate and was scheduled to start principal photography, March 2024.

Maximizing my workflow
The indefinite work stoppage during the strikes was a perfect time to focus on and maximize my workflow. The two areas that needed improvement were RF performance and a crew comms system. Dante is already integrated into my cart and I use Lectrosonics DSQD receivers. I wanted to build a Dante deploy mini-cart housing the DSQD’s to work close to the set to eliminate long antenna cable runs and antenna gain. The goal was to pad down the powered/filtered Lectrosonics ALP690 antennas to -6 Db and run the DBSM TX at 25 MW to mitigate RF noise. The deploy cart was an easy build since I already owned most of the equipment. I just needed a custom cage with a patch bay that I could drop on my PSC Euro cart. The cage lives on the Euro cart, powered by the Eurostar LiFe DC power distribution. I had Ron Meyer at PSC to modify one DC output to 6A which powers the cage. Inside the cage, a PSC Triple Play II BDS distro powers three DSQD’s, a Comtek BST-75, a Lectrosonics SMV 944 band TX, Cisco Business 250 series managed Gigabit Switch, and Lectrosonics DNTBOB88.

The Dante cage can easily be remoted and powered by a PSC pelican LiFe, or plugged into AC if needed. I already owned a Lectrosonics DNTBOB88 Analog to Dante box that wasn’t getting much use, and I thought it would be slick to build the DNTBOB88 into the cage. The BOB has up to 8 Dante I/O. This workflow came in clutch on Matlock (more on this later).

Matlock is set in New York City but primarily shot on stages at Paramount Studios. We go on location roughly one day per episode. The Jacobson Moore Law firm set where Madeline Matlock works, is built up to the fire lanes on the stage and divided by clear glass walls separating the rooms. After a couple days filming, I learned very quickly there’s just no place on set to hide without having to move after most setups.

The Dante cart simplified this. I found my spots on stage that were out of the shot and deployed the Dante cart up to three hundred feet away. Running the CAT5e cable on the outside of the set ensured it would never be in the shot. I also added the Accsoon Cineview SE 2.4/5.8 MHz wireless video system eliminating the need to be tethered to the Non Record Video Assist cart.

Next came the moment to shine! We were on location at a park, doubling as New York’s famous Central Park. It was an easy day on the call sheet, just a couple scenes near the water. I positioned my cart on a hill overlooking the set avoiding a flight of stairs. The scene was an actor seated on a park bench on the phone. “Easy,” I thought to myself. Seconds before we rolled, the first AD asked, “Do you have earwigs? The Director would like to read off-camera dialog from video village.” I responded, “No problem!” My current recorder, the Aaton Cantar X3 equipped with Dante+ and auxiliary options, made this a breeze. I assigned the Director’s Lav ISO (Dante input 16) to Sub Group 2 (S2). I assigned S2 to the Dante Output BOB4 at the deployed Dante cart for the earwig base station transmitter. Lastly, I assigned S2 to the top Slider 9 on the X3 for level control. The last hurdle was range. The Director was at video village, a good two hundred fifty feet away from the actor. I was behind the Director about fifty feet. The Dante cart was three hundred feet from me. I used 100-foot XLR out of patchbay (BOB4) to get the earwig base station close to the actor. It worked great!

Having the flexibility of eight assignable Dante outputs works great for playback or VOG. I haven’t used the BOB Dante inputs, but they would be slick if the Director wants to hear video playback in his Comteks/IFB, as an example.

GMRS radio comms
With the limited UHF RF spectrum availability for talent wireless, I wanted to avoid using those coveted frequencies for comms. Lower end FRS (Family Radio Service) radios are an option yielding mediocre results. I needed better range, fully programmable and an SMA antenna radio. GMRS (Global Mobile Radio Service) checked all the boxes. I settled on the BAOFENG UV-82C dual band radio. This model is FCC compliant operating in the 462/467 MHz and VHF 136-164 MHz frequency bands. An FCC GMRS license was required, which will cost $35 for ten years and the license was easy after navigating the archaic FCC website. The UV-82C is programmed with Chirp software and proprietary USB programming cable.

I uploaded twenty legal GMRS and eleven VHF frequencies for my region. Finding the best frequency for your area to avoid ham radio repeaters is essential. Range performance covering Stages 8 and 9 at Paramount was impressive and also penetrated exterior stage walls to reach restrooms and most importantly, Craft Service.

The setup; the GMRS radio installed on the sound cart. Line out of the radio into the L3 (line input 3) of the X3. I created Sub Group (S15) with L3 and assigned S15 to slider one of the X3 for level control. My crew monitors S15, mix track and PL with Lectrosonics rla’s in the 944 MHz band. The cheap PTT surveillance mic kits included with the radios sound great. I cut off the earpiece since they monitor from the rla. A Nagoya UT-72 magnetic mount antenna with SMA adapter for the sound cart GMRS radio increased range.

My team
I have worked with Ben and Jono close to one hundred episodes on NCIS: LA so any discussion about a setup is pretty quick—we all share the same philosophy. Production sound is a collaborative process to figure out the right approach for success. Matlock comes from the brilliant mind of Jennie Snyder Urman and has her signature wall-to-wall dialog, so Ben has very little time off from the law firm set. Reflection and shadows are a constant challenge and it’s common to run two booms to eliminate crossing lights or to hide reflections. It can be tricky, but we always come up with a creative way to get what we need. We do very little ADR on this show and everyone seems very happy. Ben’s ability to negotiate, and his people skills have been top notch. Jono takes care of wiring talent so Ben can watch the set. The actors trust Jono’s wiring skills, which is a valuable aspect of capturing good sound. Jono not only runs point on the wires but keeps up with multiple wardrobe changes during the day. Jono also switches microphones when needed, deals with Comteks, second boom, and laying carpets.

The Sanken COS-11D does most of the heavy lifting. We use DPA 6060 to poke through button holes and DPA4097 and Eastwind Audio TX-Flex Omni Gooseneck microphones for courtroom plants, the Sennheiser MKH50 for interiors, and Sennheiser MKH60 for exteriors.

Matlock has been one of those dream jobs. It’s been an honor and an aspiration come true to work on such a well-written, produced, and acted one-hour drama. It has been a true pleasure and privilege to work with Kathy Bates and the entire cast. The responsibility of capturing such emotional and dynamic performances is what keeps my passion growing as a Production Sound Mixer.

PS&V: You did two very different projects, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F and Captain America: Brave New World. But first tell me about working with Eddie Murphy.

Willie Burton: It’s always nice to work with Eddie. I’ve done four or five films with him, so it’s like a family getting together again, and it was a nice project to work on. I had my ace team, Douglas Shamburger and Adam Mohundro, which makes my life a lot easier. I get to sit back a little bit more and let them do their thing.

I’ve worked with Eddie enough that we have to be prepared to boom a lot. He does not like wireless microphones, especially if he knows you can use the boom. So, if you just put a mic on him, just to put a mic on him, he’ll say, no. You use the boom for the shot. What we try to do is anticipate. Fortunately, he wore a jacket the majority of the time. So we wired the jacket.

We get the jacket, put the transmitter in, and the microphone under the collar. It’s all nice and clean. No clothes rustle. All that good stuff. But then he’s wears another jacket, and we wire that okay, he’s got two jackets wired. We’re fine. Then Fetteroff Colen, Eddie’s personal costumer, comes to the set with another jacket. Now there’s three jackets. Wait a minute, where’s the other two? Well, he left them in the dressing room.

Now we have to send somebody back to the dressing room. In the meantime, Eddie comes to the set, ready to work, ready to roll. So you have to be ready. We wire a third jacket. Okay, we’ve got it covered, right? Well, then a fourth jacket shows up. I mean, there were a half a dozen jackets. We needed to wire as many jackets as we can with Eddie because when it’s a cut and print, Eddie wants the wire off of him. He just doesn’t want to be bothered.

In the driving shots, we planted mics in the cars and we put mics on the actors. We do everything to make it work. On Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, there were challenges here and there just like in every movie, but it’s not the most difficult thing in the world to work on a movie like this. It was a fun film to work on and the majority of the film was shot in LA, so being home was really nice.

PS&V: How do you prep for a show?

WB: The most important thing for me is to read the script to figure out if there are any difficult scenes for sound or are there scenes with a large number of wires or scenes in the water or is there playback music and if there is, will there be live singing or is it going to be just playback or combination live and playback?

I look for all those things as I break the script down. Will I need additional sound equipment? Once I do that, then I’m pretty much ready to go, except scouting locations. I like to scout location to see if we are going have any problems with certain locations or will the generator be parked too close to set or are there air conditioners or kitchen refrigerators on. Anything that will impact the sound recording.

During production, my whole team and I watch rehearsals, and then we figure out how we are going to do it. That’s it. I don’t go home and think about the next day, I just like to be surprised on what’s going to happen in each shooting day. That’s how I approach it.

PS&V: Let’s move on to Captain America: Brave New World.

WB: We shot in Atlanta, at Trilith Studios, and Washington, DC. Once again, we had a good cast, and the most important thing for sound is that you have the cooperation of the Director, Julius Onah, and the cast, Anthony Mackie, Harrison Ford, and Danny Ramirez, to name a few, who care about sound and give you a little bit of time to make adjustments and do the things that you need. Work in general on film sets is always a rush, and sound is the last department they want to wait on.

There was quite a bit of green screen and visual effects. We wired Captain Marvel’s costume ahead of time. My team works with wardrobe on the best way to mount the microphone in the costume, which was a little bit of a challenge.

We need to get quality sound, and the cast and the director do not want to loop (ADR). So, that gives us a better shot at it. When you have the cooperation from everyone involved, it makes our job so much easier. Especially wardrobe, they were always very helpful, as well as set props.

PS&V: Did you need to “paint out” wires or the booms?

WB: We didn’t have to paint out wires on the actors, but we painted out the booms a lot. We put the boom in and we would check with visual effects and we let them know that we really need to boom this shot as there’s so much going on. There are lots of special effects and mechanical noises that we needed the booms to be right there to get great sound, plus they have wires on as well. The visual effects team were very professional, and they know that they’re painting out so many other things anyway that to paint out a microphone is not a big deal. They had to paint out lots of stuff. I had Adam Mohundro on boom (Doug Shamburger wasn’t with me). We had Jennifer Elsinger as a local Utility Sound Technician, and Adam worked out nicely.

PS&V: After so many films, do you still get nervous?

WB: As a Sound Mixer, I think the most important thing is just to be prepared. We know what we have to do, you just need to prep, and make sure you’re ready to go. My biggest fear, more than anything when I start a project, is that something will happen to the equipment, and it doesn’t work on the first day. But other than that, I’m fine, people ask me, “Are you nervous? Are you nervous the first day?” No, I’m not nervous the first day. I’m more concerned about if my equipment works, and I’ll get through the day. Once you get the first scene in the can, then you’re cool. It’s okay, everything is working, the mics are all working.

God forbid you go into some location where the wires are not working well. You’ve got a four- or five-page dialog sequence and you’re beating your head against the wall. When I see the first day on the call sheet, I say, “Let’s hope it’s not the biggest scene of the movie.” Let’s hope it just starts gradually and eases into it, and majority of the time, that’s how it works.

by Simon Hayes AMPS CAS

Like so many US and UK filmmaking collaborations, it started with a Zoom meeting. I was speaking to Jon M. Chu, who was in Los Angeles whilst I was in our music room in London’s Pinewood Studios, where I was just finishing Disney’s Snow White.

After a quick introduction, Jon got straight down to business. He said, “My instinct tells me this has got to be live; we have two actresses who are absolutely incredible singers and are completely used to performing live as they are also recording artists in their own right, but, this film is going to be SO big. Everything about it is big, the sets, the scale, the choreography, the stunts, the number of cameras I intend to use. Do you think it’s possible to record live under those circumstances?”

I responded to Jon that those are exactly the kind of scenarios that me and my crew are used to working in and that I had no doubt we could deliver live singing. The secret is in the prep: the collaboration with other departments, the symbiotic filmmaking relationships we make during those months of preparation. The analytical breaking down of the script to discover exactly what unique challenges each song would have with regards to costumes, dancers’ footfalls, wire rigs, manufactured wind and shooting style, and the way each department would work together to capture all the vocals live.

I spoke about my experiences with the live process and musicals in general, both of us bonding over our passion for the genre. Jon is an incredibly easy guy to be around; warm, welcoming with his obvious enthusiasm for cinema and performance driving the conversation. “OK, final question, how many earwigs do you carry?” Jon asked. I answered: “Seventy-five but we have access to more if required.” A smile broke out over Jon’s face and he said, “I think you understand how big this is going to be!”

Rewind five years. I was on the set of Mary Poppins Returns and was introduced to Producer Marc Platt. I knew that Marc was responsible for the stage show of Wicked and how successful it was. There were rumours that he was considering a movie version. I said to Marc, “You know I love making musicals. If you make a movie of Wicked, I’d love to be considered.” Marc gave me a wry smile and said, “Watch this space.” Over the next few years, I’d work with Marc on multiple projects and on each film, we got to know each other better and a trust developed. It was Marc who asked Jon to meet me and was instrumental in me being considered for the biggest musical in movie history.

The next day, I was officially offered the project and with absolutely no hesitation I accepted. I knew I had a monumental task in front of me after Jon had explained the size of the sets and the special effects that would be involved in the filmmaking process. That same afternoon, I got into talks with Line Producer Joan Schneider who explained that Producer David Nicksay was exploring building a music recording studio from the ground up to service all pre-records on the film. Despite the fact that it was Jon Chu’s instinct that we would record the vocals live on the movie set, we still needed to pre-record the songs for a bunch of different reasons: choreography rehearsals where the actors would not be present for, second unit, and background element shoots, extreme wide shots so we could save the actors’ voices for the closer performances that their live vocals would be used for, and as a safety in case the unthinkable happened and an actor got a sore throat or a cold that affected their voice.

The sense behind wanting our own recording studio on the lot was that we were going to be based at the newly built Sky Studios Elstree, which is an hour from Central London. David Nicksay felt that Cynthia and Ariana’s schedules would be so compressed, it would be too time-consuming to have them making the journey across London, amongst their rehearsal time, costume fittings, and all the other pre-production responsibilities they had. He could ease the load by providing a recording facility on site so that they could do their pre-records without having to leave the world of Wicked.

I was one hundred percent onboard with this plan from the get-go. It just so happened that the Music Supervisor I was working with currently on Snow White, Maggie Rodford, was also going to be joining me on Wicked, so we started to formulate a plan. Maggie’s background is in the music industry, so she sourced contacts who could supply specs for the studio build at Elstree. I made a suggestion: My longtime 2nd Unit Sound Mixer Tom Barrow, who has been with me across many musical films, also comes from a studio engineering background in the music industry, so he was brought into liase between Maggie, the construction department that would build the studio to music industry specs, and Greg Wells, who would be the Music Producer. Maggie and Tom sourced the equipment that Greg likes to use, and Tom worked with the construction department. While building the studio, Tom was cabling it up. It was quite an incredible feat and after a couple of months, we had a world-class fully functioning music recording studio built to Greg Well’s exact specs which Cynthia, Ariana, and Jon M. Chu could visit whenever they wanted.

Prep

During prep, we started to have a lot of Zoom meetings with the music & sound department. When I mix a musical, I try to create a workflow that puts the music & sound departments together into one collaborative team. We all have the same overall goals and responsibilities; delivering the best soundtrack for the movie possible: Wicked was no exception. I was introduced to the Broadway Musical Director and Arranger Stephen Oremus, who would be joining us on the movie as Executive Music Producer and one of his team, Dominick Amendum, who would be the Music Supervisor. My longtime colleague Ben Holder, Music Associate, also joined us, as well as Supervising Music Editor Jack Dolman and Music Engineer Robin Baynton, who would be working alongside Tom Barrow and Greg Wells in the music studio. Jon Chu was present in most of the meetings to guide us and describe how he envisioned each number.

In those early meetings. we devised the music strategy for Wicked. Rather than look at an overall workflow for the entire film, we looked at each number and how best to deliver that song while considering each unique challenge it presented.

There was quite a lot of concern from everyone about footfall noise the choreography would have, as there were so many cast members dancing in many of the numbers.

As the meetings progressed, we arrived at a road map that would be our starting point throughout the movie. If the actors wanted to sing live, we would support them and implement that on all solo lines. We would also assess each chorus and try to capture them live too, but we were aware that often the choruses were occurring at the same time as big dance numbers, so we were prepared to use pre-records.

In solo vocals, there is emotion and character in the voice, which is golden, and should absolutely be preserved and delivered to the cinema audiences. The solos contain the original breathing patterns and vocal efforts of the actor which will match exactly what their character was doing physically as they sang. However, when the whole cast joined in the choruses, there would more likely be choreography footfall, and unlike our main cast members. there was no guarantee that hundreds of chorus members would be accomplished singers. We found out that often the choruses benefited from being sung live with some footfall and non-singers singing as it added to a sense of rawness and reality that is hard to achieve in pre-records. A great example of this is “No one mourns the Wicked” where all the villagers join in singing with the cast.

We developed a process for capturing those big live choruses with hundreds of background artists. After feedback from Music Associate Ben Holder, who ran the rehearsals, we would decide who were the best singers and they would be assigned the seventy-five earwigs. We would then surround the set with subwoofers so that anyone not wearing an earwig could stay in tempo with the music. The thumper track would be removed in sound post. We were able to get some wonderful huge vocal performances within the acoustics of the sets that added a reality that is incredibly difficult to reproduce with a loop group in post. We were getting hundreds of villagers singing for real with all the raw emotion and effort in their voices. The really big chorus’s like “No one mourns the Wicked” reminded me of a football chant: It was beautiful but also a bit frightening hearing that many people singing with such gusto and emotion. On that sequence, we were using thirty-six kilowatts of subwoofers playing the thumper rhythm. It was quite unprecedented!

Jon Chu was really supportive of another workflow, allowing us to do a sound FX pass of the environmental noise we had tried to minimise, so that if Jon, Andy Nelson, John Marquis, and Nancy Nugent Title decided in the final mix, they would like to hear more of that set ambience, they had an FX track to reintroduce to the clean live vocals. We achieved this with earwigs on the smaller numbers and added thumper tracks to the bigger set pieces to be able to deliver ‘sync choreography’ FX.

We would then surround the set with subwoofers so that anyone not wearing an earwig could stay in tempo with the music. The thumper track would be removed in sound post. We were able to get some wonderful huge vocal performances within the acoustics of the sets that added a reality that is incredibly difficult to reproduce with a loop group in post.

In case any of our actors did not want to sing a particular number live, or their vocal cords got tired during the working day, we would have a pre-record for them to lip sync to. As part of this insurance policy, I also suggested a workflow which I have been using for a number of years: recording the pre-recorded vocals with the same boom and lav mics we would be using on the set, along with the Music Producer’s choice of mics. Greg Wells used a combination of Telefunken and Neumann vocal mics for those sessions and joining him and the music studio staff was my Key 1st Assistant Sound (Boom Operator), Arthur Fenn, who would fit a DPA 4061 lavalier mic to the actor and also rig an overhead Schoeps CMC6/MK41 boom microphone in the same position he would later use when shooting close-ups. Having Arthur in those sessions rigging the lavaliers on the actors also had an incredibly important impact on trust and relationship building before shooting as he will be the person who rigs their lavs on the shoot.

This would give Re-recording Mixer Andy Nelson the ability, if required, to blend from live vocals seamlessly into a pre-records if for any reason, it had been unachievable to deliver live vocals on the film set. Our mantra through the whole prep period was to make sure that Jon Chu, Cynthia, and Ariana had complete support and could make a decision at any point to sing live or not. We needed to be completely ready for issues beyond anyone’s control that would prevent live performances. What we didn’t know at that point was just how incredibly motivated all three filmmakers would be to capture every single performance live once we started filming! It quickly became evident on the very first day that Cynthia and Ariana were absolutely determined to sing live all day, every day. Despite the action sequences during the songs, the incredible vocal stamina required to do that was not just within their capabilities but they thrived on it.

This unwavering determination to sing live was so infectious, it gave all our other cast members the confidence to sing live as well. This was quickly becoming an absolute dream job for me and although we had the safety of the pre-records in our back pockets, every morning we would have the IEM’s out, ready to go, and capture those wonderful onset vocal performances!

When Jon Chu and Marc Platt let me know that Andy Nelson was the Re-recording Mixer on the project, I was overjoyed. Andy and I had formed a very close and special creative bond on Les Miserables. We spent many hours discussing the tracks I had delivered, his approach to his musical mixes, and everything in between. I have learned so much from Andy on what he requires and how I should deliver. Working as a team with Andy again, filled me with confidence. He made the trip out to London from LA to visit the set, and we also had regular catch-ups throughout shooting where I could bounce ideas off him and give him the latest developments. I absolutely knew that Andy would get the very best from my production tracks and his skill and dexterity with live vocals, knowing how to immersively work them into the score, along with the sound FX so that all the elements blended seamlessly as the musical DNA is unparalleled.

We decided that we would have a keyboard always available, routed to Pro Tools. If the actors needed to waver from the original musical tempo during their live solo either for emotional or performance reasons, or the camera move required them to, then Ben Holder could accompany them. We would be able to weave in and out of keyboard and locked Pro Tools music pre-records to their IEM’s during a take whenever required.

My crew on main unit would be the same 1st AS duo who have been with me for my entire career: Arthur Fenn and Robin Johnson. Arthur’s additional responsibilities alongside boom operating is liasing with the costume department regarding lavalier rigging and then during the shoot rigging cast radio mics. Robin’s additional responsibilities are everything technical from software through to hardware, including frequency coordination with other departments and our own department’s frequency plots. We were using more than fifty frequencies on Wicked every day in our department alone. Robin is also responsible for interfacing between Pro Tools, Live Keyboard, Lighting Desk, Video, and my production sound cart, as well as running the induction loops we prefer to use for earwigs.

Taz Fairbanks joined us again for 2nd AS duties which includes assisting all of us in our specific roles, rigging the Voice of God (VOG), the Music PA, and carpeting sets to reduce footfalls on a shot-by-shot basis. She always had Harry King, our 3rd AS, to assist her (the JBL PA speakers we use are a two-person lift). We had twenty-four of them at our disposal to ensure that however large our sets were, we had enough kilowatts of sound reenforcement to fill the space.

We rig our Music PA and our Voice of God systems as separate entities. The Music PA speakers will be positioned as close as possible to our actors to reduce tempo delay. When the cast is preparing for the camera, to roll it can be distracting and fatiguing to hear the 1st AD giving loud instructions to the crew over the VOG system.

Our Pro Tools On-Set Music Editor, Josh Winslade, was a new addition to our main unit team, having worked with us on our previous film Snow White, as a 2nd Unit and rehearsals Pro Tools Operator. We were impressed with Josh and when the position became available, I asked him to join us on Wicked. We also decided to use me and my team’s experiences on the last five musical films together to completely redesign our Pro Tools rig. This was an excellent step forward as each film had taught us more about the unique requirements of Pro Tools on musicals, and I wanted to build a rig specifically for the challenges of Wicked, and one that was future-proof.

It was time to start technical recces, and the Heads of Department (HOD’s) made our way to a vast farm about twenty-five miles outside London where our exterior sets were being constructed. I cannot put into words just how awe-inspiring and massive these sets were. I’ve been working on movie sets for thirty-plus years and have never seen anything on this scale before. They were beautiful but absolutely huge. There was a whole village. Shiz University included a boating river and fountains. It was clear that we were going to have to be extremely progressive with our RF acquisition. It wasn’t just a case of moving the sound cart closer when you are attached to Pro Tools, a keyboard and distributing PA and VOG feeds. We decided that we would off-board our RF receivers in each location so we could set up a sound & music base camp out of two trucks on the edge of the set and simply move the RF receiver cart closer to the action when required rather than disrupt the entire sound & music rigs which would have cost us valuable time. Our receivers and antennas could be rigged high up overlooking the huge sets and we had one hundred metres of AES cable drums so that the vans could park alongside each other outside the set. Van 1 was Production Sound, van 2 was Pro Tools, and live keyboards with huge 50-inch monitors so every nuance of the performance could be seen to provide absolutely seamless frame-accurate cueing for Pro Tools and keyboard. The one hundred metres of AES cable meant our antennas and receivers could follow the cameras and cast around the huge, expansive backlot sets.

I contacted the brilliant Gaffer, David Smith, and asked about his plans for generator placement. I have worked with David many times in my career, and he supports production sound and will always provide helpful solutions to difficult circumstances. The issue on the Wicked location build was that due to the size of the set, David would need multiple generators supplying power to a different area of the set. All the generators would need to be running to provide the whole set with light. David said, “I’m going to have a gennie in each corner of each set. How far do they need to be away for you not to hear them and whatever distance that is, we will run cables and cable bridges if necessary.” I asked that each genie to be one hundred yards from the edge of the set and that is what David and his fantastic electrical crew delivered! Amazing, we were surrounded by genies, but we could not hear them.

Next, we started thinking about the earwig requirements. It was me and Arthur Fenn’s opinion that because Ariana and Cynthia were used to wearing cabled, full-range in-ear monitors (IEM’s) on stage, the bandwidth and quality of a hidden earwig would not be sufficient enough for them. Earwig systems are adequate when they are simply being fed an electronic keyboard as the frequencies they are required to reproduce are mainly within the midrange. Having listened to Greg Wells’ music mixes for the backing tracks, they were extremely deep in the bass and complex musically. I also figured that like an IEM mix on stage, Cynthia and Ariana would want to hear their own voices in their IEM’s and would require individual mixes. I contacted Pablo Helman, the VFX Supervisor, who instantly made me feel at ease. Pablo is an extremely collaborative filmmaker who completely understood why our actors would need full-range IEM’s. It helped enormously that Pablo is also a musician who plays in a band in his downtime. A plan was made to get Cynthia and Ari custom-made, skin-tone matched full-range IEM’s that could be used as one-ear mono or two-ear stereo units, and Arthur would work closely with hair and makeup to hide cables and be sensitive to Pablo’s paint out by making the IEM’s as low profile as possible.

We still decided to get all these cast members earwigs too, so they had a choice and if they decided to, sing live with a keyboard backing. We could offer them their earwig instead to help Pablo. Both IEM’s and earwigs would be custom moulded to each actor’s ear canal for three reasons: A custom fit device is more comfortable to wear all day, it is also easier to hide as it sits a little deeper in the ear canal, and third, it is less likely to fall out on a dance number.

We have been working with Deke Frickey at Puretone IEM’s since Les Miserables and he has become used to working with myself and Arthur, liasing with production in prep to schedule Deke and his audiologist the task of taking ear impressions and skin-tone photographs of each actor to enable personal IEM’s and earwigs to be manufactured. We have this process down to a fine art nowadays and I can’t thank Deke and Puretone enough for their unwavering professionalism and support.

Sky Studios Elstree was a hub of activity despite the fact we were still months away from shooting. The recording studio was finished, and Tom Barrow and Robin Baynton were assisting Music Producer Greg Wells, who was starting to pre-record Cynthia and Ari in between their rehearsal time. Arthur Fenn was rigging their mics, and Josh Winslade, our On-Set Pro Tools Operator, started to work alongside the choreography department, providing music playback on the big group dance routine rehearsals with a 10kw JBL PA system to really create an immersive atmosphere in the rehearsal space. Often it sounded like a rave was going on in there! This time was incredibly helpful for Josh to give him a couple of months to get very familiar with the songs, the routines, and potential cue points. He would also be part of each presentation of the routines to Jon Chu and his longtime Choreographer Chris. Josh would have a pretty good idea of how Jon was planning to shoot sequences, which, informed him of potential requirements on each number for Pro Tools

As we approached the start of principal photography, I reached out to Jon Chu’s longtime sound post team, Supervising Sound Editors John Marquis and Nancy Nugent Title. The collaboration between production and post sound is something I have promoted since the early stages of my career and I wanted to make sure I was going to deliver exactly what Jon and Nancy required and check with them that my creative choices, workflow, and track designation worked for them. Nancy and I jumped onto a Zoom call where I described the workflow I had designed for Wicked, alongside screen sharing my workflow document. I made sure that anything that Nancy asked for was delivered and I adjusted my workflow to include anything she wanted. I described my use of Schoeps Super CMITS in high background noise situations on both interior and exteriors, explaining exactly how the processed track of the mic worked and set her mind at ease, letting her know I would always record the unprocessed “CMIT” track too, so she had a choice on each boom mic. I also explained that using two lavaliers on an actor was standard operating procedure for me on musicals to deal with either noisy costumes (two different mic positions) or extreme dynamic range (two different transmitter gain levels). Nancy was one hundred percent supportive of my suggested workflow. I also gave her a breakdown of my 32-track dailies delivery to Picture Editor Myron Kerstein and 1st Assistant Editor Lara Khachooni; I would designate seven of my Scorpio tracks to what I felt were the most important stems from Pro Tools, so that editorial had that information within the ISO tracks. They would have immediate access to those stems before Josh Winslade delivered the day’s Pro Tools sessions on a separate drive. This meant that Myron had a streamlined system and could start cutting the music immediately as the synced rushes were delivered.

These tracks were:
Music Left
Music Right
Vocal Only
Music Timecode
Click Track
Mono Music
Live Keyboard

All the above tracks were delivered at zero gain.
My musical workflow uses two mix tracks: Mix track one contains a mix of dialog and live vocals. Mix track two contains mono music, with gain adjusted to an appropriate level so that when mix one and mix two are played together in mono, the vocals and music work together. Most Picture Editors nowadays are working at an absolute minimum in stereo in Avid, but many, Myron included, are working in Dolby 5.1

If I presented a mono mix track containing live vocals and music, it would require picture editorial to go back into my ISO tracks and completely remix the vocal mics to have clean vocals to add to the 5.1 music in the Avid.

For dailies uploaded on internet platforms for Director, HOD’s, and studio executives, mix tracks one & two are mixed so that they inhabit both L&R speakers on laptops and iPads, which gives the dailies viewers a completely mono mix of live vocals and music playback (or live keyboard) with appropriate gain levels so everything can be heard. It is a system I designed for musicals and always works extremely well.

Silent Wind

I contacted our Special Effects Supervisor, Paul Corbould. He knew exactly what I wanted to talk about having collaborated with me in the past: Silent Wind. He invited to me to the huge workshop where his team was based on the studio lot. I met Paul at his office, and he asked me to follow him down to the manufacturing floor. When we walked in there were about ten of his team with a collection of different devices lined up for a show-and-tell. Paul explained to me that as soon as he knew it was a musical and I was mixing it, he suspected we would be recording live. He told me that for SFX, there were a number of very challenging sequences that required wind and for that reason, he had asked his team to build about five different-sized Silent Wind systems based on his designs. The basic premise of Silent Wind is to keep the motorised fans away from the set and pipe in the wind though ducts that could be aimed and operated by the SFX team. Paul had taken different strategies based on previous designs and built some systems which were bigger and placed the huge squirrel fans outside the studio walls, with large diameter ducts coming in through the elephant doors or cable holes in the studio wall. If the elephant doors were used, he was also having construction fabricate soundproofed “bungs” which sealed around the door and the ducts to recreate an acoustic seal. He also had his team build smaller units where the squirrel fans would actually be inside the studio walls but outside the sets themselves. These devices used smaller diameter ducts, but were extremely mobile and did not require much pre-planning or pre-rigging. The fans were placed in soundproofed ply boxes on castor wheels so they could be moved incredibly fast by his team and get to areas that needed Silent Wind when a last-minute request from Jon Chu or Alice Brooks, our fantastic DP, decided a shot would benefit from wind that had not been originally planned.

The five different systems were all variations of this theme that gave the SFX team the correct tool for any requirement, including those last-minute requests for wind that can so often have a negative effect on the production sound tracks. Paul and his team had thought of everything, and I realised just how fortunate I have been in the relationships I have built up over the years with our fantastic UK SFX Supervisors. They have completely embraced the Silent Wind workflow and have made incredible progress on every movie.

Principal Photography

Onto the shoot and one of the huge collaborations filling me with gratitude was with Costume Designer Paul Tazewell and his team. On a film of the scale of Wicked, we have to plan for flawless lavalier tracks at all times. Although I love the booms and have the ability and staff to run three booms at all times, there isn’t always going to be the ability to get the booms close enough on a 3-camera shoot. It is never my intention to try and negotiate with Directors on films this size for close boom coverage. If it happens, that’s great and we will be ready to deliver those tracks, but if the Director and DP’s strategy is to shoot sizes that do not complement the boom, then me and my team are absolutely ready with high-quality lav tracks. One of the very first lessons I learned when testing for Les Miserables was that when recording live singing, unlike dialog, it is not flattering to have any air or width around the vocals. Camera perspective is irrelevant, the vocals need to be closely mic’d otherwise, the shift in perspective creates an uncomfortable attention to the picture editing process for the audience. For this reason, I needed to have two lavaliers on Cynthia and Ariana at all times. This was for different reasons. Cynthia was wearing a witch’s hat in a lot of the scenes where she was singing live. By rigging the brim of her hat with a DPA 4061 lavalier which was about an inch above her eyebrows, we had an absolutely outstanding close lav position that sounded as good as a close boom. Not only was it in perfect proximity to her mouth but it also followed her, just like a boom, on her head turns. However, over the years, I have learned that although hat rigs are great, there is a risk that the actor will want to remove their hat at any point during a scene and it is my absolute redline not to try and negotiate or influence an actor’s instinctive performance in any way. I am there to support the cast. For this reason, I knew that we also needed a body mic on Cynthia as well, which we could immediately cross-fade to if and when her hat came off.

For Ariana, the reason we needed two lavs was slightly different. Her beautiful Glinda dresses were often low cut and frilly. We needed to go into a position that exposed the lav to the least amount of clothing rustle. That often meant placing the mic on the side of her dress. This sounded great if Ariana was looking directly forward, but the pickup pattern would fall off severely if she turned her head to the side her mic was not on. So, we put a mic on both sides of her dresses, in the mirror image of each other. This meant that Nancy, the Dialog Editor, could cut between the two mics depending on where Ariana was looking as she spoke or sung. It also had the added benefit of giving Nancy two choices on dialog or vocals where she could pick the lav with the least amount of clothing rustle. It was a win-win!

Whenever we needed to place the lavs in positions to avoid clothing rustle that caused unusable or poorer quality production sound but was now slightly visible to the cameras, a quick collaborative chat with Pablo Herman, VFX Supervisor, resulted in an immediate agreement that he would disguise the mic in VFX. I am not saying we put the mics in full view like Les Miserables (well, maybe a couple of times!), but we knew the mics were edgy visually and could be seen on some angles on close-ups. Pablo’s support resulted in our costume department having complete confidence that everyone had their backs and that working together as one big team would ensure that no lavs would be seen in the finished film. Jon Chu was completely supportive of this workflow. The first time he noticed Ariana’s lavs, I remember distinctly Jon said, “Hey, I can see Ari’s mics” to 1st Assistant Sound Arthur Fenn, who was usually right next to him on the set. Arthur replied, “We’re all good sir, Pablo is dealing with them.” To which Jon just said, “OK, great,” and never mentioned seeing lav mics again.

During the filmmaking process, every day was a magnificent insight into remarkable talent. From Jon’s incredible energy and his ability to make his cast feel supported by building an atmosphere of playfulness. He encouraged them to try different things as they performed. He was ready to hear their suggestions and to collaborate fully with his film crew. His DP Alice Brooks has been working with him for a long time and the respect and understanding they have for each other really helped create a unique atmosphere on the set where, as a cohesive filmmaking team, we were encouraged to explore many possibilities. When I made suggestions to Jon, he was always open to my requests, but at the same time, steered this monumental ship called Wicked, with a steady and experienced hand. It was as if this project was completely meant to be under his leadership; he created an openness and trust on the set that was inspiring.

Behind the scenes on Wicked, a key process of our entire team facilitated the ability to support not only the cast’s live performances but also camera moves and lighting cues. This was an extremely close and symbiotic relationship between Ben Holder, who played the keyboard during performances that were free of tempo and full of emotion, and Josh, who would seamlessly cue the Pro Tools music tracks to blend with Cynthia and Ari’s IEM’s from live keyboard to pre-recorded music.

Arthur, the 1st AS, was on the edge of frame on our live sound & music comms whispering positional cues to myself as I was mixing the live vocals. We worked as one to give the actors unwavering perfect musical accompaniment, but also to ensure the vocal mix was in perfect sync with the camera moves and cues of the filmmakers.

The Challenges

Each shooting day threw up more challenges. One of them was the Wizard’s head that needed to talk in real time with real visual head movement to our cast. We had been planning to trigger the Wizard’s head with a pre-recorded vocal and timecode but it became evident during the rehearsal that Jon wanted more fluidity and an ability to riff with the dialog. We put a DPA cheek mic on the SFX technician who was controlling the Wizard’s head and lips with a joystick ‘drone’ type controller, and put his voice though the same plug-ins and FX in Pro Tools that we had used to create the booming, bassey, and synthetic Wizard’s voice in pre-records. He could then speak in real time to the cast through 10kw of JBL speakers, his voice completely synthesised with Jon Chu’s approved “Wizard” voice.
During their duets, Cynthia and Ariana’s voices complemented each other, the harmonies were breathtaking. Whether we were in the studio or at the huge ‘backlot’ set outside of West London, their live singing was incredible. One of the technical innovations we were using for our boom microphones was the new Schoeps CMD42 digital preamp, which takes the performance into the digital domain in the mic itself. On ninety percent of the movie, we used booms with AES cables back to the mixer. When we would get the booms into close-up positions on the more intimate and emotional vocal performances, it delivered spectacular results. On some of the massive exterior builds, Alice and David Smith (Gaffer) were using multiple soft suns on cranes above the set which meant we used our Schoeps Super CMITS to provide a level of off-axis cancellation of unwanted background noise, but of course, we always provided both ‘processed’ and ‘unprocessed’ tracks to Nancy Nugent Title, the dialog editor. I am a great believer in delivering choices, not just for the Director, but for all of my colleagues in sound post, too.

One of my lasting memories of Wicked will be recording Cynthia Erivo’s performance of “Defying Gravity.” Throughout the shoot, there had been behind-the-scenes conversations between me, the music department, SFX, the grips, the stunt department, and the whole shooting crew which focussed on the fact that we were going to spend a week flying Cynthia on wires in extremely dynamic and athletic movements as she sang.

Everyone would say to me, “Surely we can’t do that live?”
“How would you capture it if she’s twenty-five feet up in the air flying from one end of the stage to the other?”
“You know, we need big wind in her cape.”
“It will be too athletically demanding for her to sing as she’s doing somersaults on wires,” etc., etc.

The problems and preconceived doubts and issues kept coming in my direction. All I could say was, “Guys, we have to be ready for anything. Don’t assume this will be a pre-record. I know it looks difficult, but we’ve got to be ready to support Cynthia and if she says she wants to sing live, I don’t want anything to restrict her.”

Carefully, we were a huge supportive film family ensuring that we were making everything as quiet as possible. From the stunt team and its incredibly complex wire rigs, to the grips and their camera cranes, which were tracked at speed moving in and pulling out, to the SFX department that rigged all of their various silent wind strategies.

Finally, the shoot day arrived. Cynthia had been rehearsing the athletic movements of flying with the stunt department and as she was rigged with her wires, she exuded confidence in the process. Jon Chu asked her if she’d like to sing live and Cynthia’s response was simply, “Of course!” There was an exchange of looks amongst all of us in the crew, as it instantly became clear we had done exactly the right thing rigging the Silent Wind and putting in the preparation work to facilitate live singing on an incredibly complex stunt sequence. SFX technicians brought the Silent Wind hoses onto the set and skillfully positioned them so that wherever Cynthia flew in the huge stage, she would have a jet of directional wind hitting her costume to open her cape.

We had the DPA 4061 in the brim of her hat and we also had 1st AS Arthur Fenn on a Schoeps Super CMIT wireless boom with a digital Zaxcom 743 transmitter that could send both processed and unprocessed AES signals back to the sound cart. The boom pole was covered in a blue sleeve, and we were using a Cinela Piano zeppelin to protect the mic from the wind which was also covered in a custom-made Bubblebee high-wind cover in chroma key blue fur. Making the boom pole and mic completely blue and putting it on a radio link gave Arthur the ability to follow Cynthia in close-up at all times and capture at least seventy percent of her live singing on the boom. The DPA in her hat also had wind protection and sounded absolutely superb. Again, we were able to deliver choices to sound post. Cynthia’s ability to sing perfectly again and again as she looped the loop and did somersaults was nothing short of extraordinary. Although she was pitch perfect in every take, there was also a truth and reality in her delivery and breathing patterns although subtle, sounded like she was singing as she flew rather than stood still recording in a vocal booth. This was so successful that it just made the sequence sound so visceral and exiting. There was an element in her vocal that just brought the scene to life!

Thank you to my team, without you, it would be impossible: You’re the very best. –Simon Hayes AMPS CAS

There were too many moments on Wicked that were unique, but the one element threaded through our experience was the respect for capturing live production sound on the movie set despite the fact we were shooting on one of the biggest, most extravagant and immersive movies ever made.

Jon M. Chu, Marc Platt, and their incredible cast were completely supportive of the premise that original performance, whether that be dialog or sung vocals, were to be lovingly nurtured and preserved. No matter what the challenges were for the sound & music team, we were treated as creative collaborators, part of this huge team who were brought together to make something truly special.

The set was such a happy place to work. There were times when we had all the background dancers in, and as the end of the day approached, Jon would quietly say to Arthur, “let’s hit some tunes on wrap.” When Jack Ravenscroft, our 1st AD, said, “That’s a wrap,” we would have some drum and bass lined up on Pro Tools and the set would erupt into something similar to a huge Ibiza-style outdoor rave with all the professional dancers instantly freestyling their best moves, and Ari, Cynthia, and Jon Chu vogueing in the middle, all having a crazy party, supported by a sound system that was louder than many clubs with the subwoofers banging the bass. On more than one occasion, I had production staff saying, “We’ve got to turn the music off, this set needs turning around with a swing gang overnight and we’ve got to get the cast and crew out of here.”

No one wanted to go home!

No matter how much I try and articulate the filmmaking relationship, nothing can express the magic and fluidity of this “dance” we do on set each day when all factors are in a beautiful rhythm. This is filmmaking in its most raw and fragile state. One poorly timed element and the dance loses lock step. This is the “dance” that myself, Arthur, Robin, Ben, and Josh performed again and again with integrity and flare. Blink and we’re behind, be too cautious, and we’ve lost the magic. That dance is what gets me up in the morning, that dance is why I work in this crazy business!

Main Unit
Arthur Fenn, Key 1st AS
Robin Johnson, 1st AS
Josh Winslade, Pro Tools Music Editor
Taz Fairbanks,
2nd AS/Sound Coordinator
Harry King, 3rd AS
Emily Compton, 3rd AS

2nd Unit
Tom Barrow, Sound Mixer
Alan Hill, Additional Sound Mixer
Ben Jeffes, 1st AS
Ash Sinani, Pro Tools Music Editor
Billy Hayes, 2nd AS
Jamie Scott, 3rd AS

Splinter Unit
Simon Norman, Sound Mixer
Billy Hayes, 1st AS
Jake Hickey, 2nd AS
Zak Ferguson, 3rd AS
Jake Elliot, Pro Tools Music Editor
Dan Leigh, Pro Tools Music Playback

Music
Stephen Oremus,
Executive Music Producer
Dom Amendum, Music Producer
Greg Wells, Music Producer
Jack Dolman, Supervising Music Editor
Maggie Rodford, Music Supervisor
Ben Holder, Music Associate
Robin Baynton, Music Engineer

Sound Post
Andy Nelson, Re-recording Mixer
John Marquis, Re-recording Mixer and Supervising Sound Editor, and Supervising Sound Editor Nancy
Nugent Title

The names above are all one team in complete and utter collaboration. Music & sound together on a journey of support, sensitivity, creativity, and exploration. All completely in tune and playing together like an orchestra.

by Ryan Pedersen

The last two decades have represented a seismic shift for our RF environment. In 2008, the FCC sold off the 700MHz frequency band to the highest bidder with only a few small parts reserved for emergency services. Then again in 2017, they sold another large chunk of spectrum. TV stations and all other existing UHF users were relocated to the lower end of the band. Another auction saw the 616MHz to 698MHz bands sold, with a majority of it being bought by T-Mobile for cellular telephone expansion. Wireless microphone users were relegated to the gaps between TV stations and the very few other open frequencies of the spectrum. Our current bands to operate in with either no license or a Part 74 license are as follows:

VHF 174-230MHz
UHF 470-608MHz
UHF Guard Band 614-616MHz
UHF Duplex Gap 653-663MHz
STL Band 940-960MHz

Most of the UHF band is clogged full of TV stations, especially in major metro areas such as Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago. A few major cities also lose spectrum to the T Band, which is reserved for emergency services. In Los Angeles, that covers 470MHz-488MHz and 506MHz-512MHz. This link provides a list of all cities with T Band deployed frequencies and what those frequencies are: https://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/UHF-T_Band.

So, for production sound specialists, the question becomes how do we fit higher channel counts into this ever-shrinking RF world even with the more spectrally efficient digital systems?

One way is to lobby the FCC for other areas of the spectrum. This is currently happening, with companies like Shure being a leading voice for the wireless community.

The other way is to use the spectrum more efficiently through new advances in RF technology. I was afforded the opportunity to sit down with Jason Waufle from Shure to discuss this new technology and hear where it will take us in the near future.

Wireless Multichannel Audio Systems (WMAS) is a technology neutral approach to broadband digital transmission defined by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to employ new wideband modulation techniques to support the transmission of multiple audio links in one single wideband radio channel. In other words, it’s the next evolution in wireless transmission that can allow higher channel counts in the same amount of spectrum than we can currently achieve using narrowband transmission. It is essentially, a multichannel carrier system using different codecs or algorithms to decode the individual channels. Even though this technique is new for wireless audio transmission, it is not a new idea. This wideband transmission scheme has been used for many years for Wi-Fi, cellular, and wireless comms in the 1.9 GHz DECT and 2.4 GHz bands.

Before we get into WMAS digital systems, let’s cover what a traditional narrowband digital microphone system entails because the technology behind WMAS is all based on digital transmission schemes. Digital wireless systems convert the analog audio to a digital signal that modulates a radio carrier in discrete steps (ones and zeros). Unlike companded analog radio signals, a digital signal reaches the receiver unaffected by the radio link. This allows digital wireless systems to operate with less noise, closer to the noise floor, and with few to no artifacts. WMAS takes advantage of all these benefits and expands it to a new regulatory framework.

Narrowband transmission uses a single radio carrier per channel that is no more than 200KHz wide. WMAS would allow a wider carrier up to 6MHz wide in the TV bands in the United States, but requires that wider carriers transmit no less than three channels per 1MHz or eighteen channels per 6MHz. WMAS is not a technology, but a regulatory framework that manufacturers must adhere to when developing technology and products that use WMAS transmission. It defines the spectrum emission mask and minimum system performance requirements.

Many of the questions you might have about WMAS fall to the manufacturers’ implementation of WMAS and not to the regulatory framework itself. For example, you might need to know how many channels can fit into one carrier? What happens if there is interference to the wideband channel? Would I lose all of my channels or just a few if there was interference? Do I have to use an entire 6MHz TV channel for each WMAS deployment or can I use a smaller section of spectrum? What is the audio quality of each channel? How much delay or latency can I expect? How much range does the system have? The answers to all of these questions would be dependent on how the framework is deployed by a given manufacturer.

However, the WMAS standard can answer what frequencies can be used and maximum output power specifications. WMAS will still operate in the current available spectrum bands, including the AFTRCC 1.4 GHz band. One limit to WMAS frequency use is that each radio must only occupy one TV station (6MHz) and cannot overlap to adjoining TV channels. For example, if you have the upper 3MHz clean in TV channel 21 and need 6MHz total, you cannot use the clean, lower 3MHz of TV channel 22. In the AFTRCC 1.4 GHz, where up to 30MHz is permitted, users could operate one 20MHz WMAS system and one 10MHz WMAS system, or two 15MHz WMAS systems, etc. Unlicensed users are allowed a WMAS max system power of 50mW up to 1MHz wide and 100mW when your carrier is 1-6MHz wide. Part 74 licensed users are allowed the same power levels as narrowband carriers, typically 250 MW. Different manufacturers will implement this power in different ways.

As with any new technology, there are pros and cons to the WMAS framework. On the positive side, WMAS has the potential to offer much better spectral efficiency than we currently have with narrowband carriers. It also offers the opportunity for physical hardware efficiency as well. The ability to do more with less hardware can reduce the need for large racks of equipment, saving both space and weight for audio departments on production, on tour, and on live events. The hardware designs will be manufacturer dependent, but WMAS offers the potential for a major shift in the need for rack space.

A major advantage is the ability to deploy a high channel count. Large events such as major sporting events, large conventions, live theater, and reality TV—which all typically need hundreds and hundreds of wireless channels—will benefit greatly from the increased spectral efficiency that WMAS offers. When using traditional narrowband digital wireless in higher efficiency modes with sub 3ms delay, it’s possible to reach up to forty-seven channels in 6MHz. WMAS can offer even higher channel counts in that same space. Channels can be as wide as 6MHz in the U.S. and 8MHz in Europe. A system is not required to use a 6MHz wide carrier, meaning a manufacturer could design a system that uses only a 2MHz or 3MHz wide RF carrier as long as it adhered to the minimum channel count of three channels per 1MHz. It may even be the case in the future that a WMAS system is manufactured that could be scalable based on the needs of the user.

Another benefit that WMAS offers is bi-directional communication. While this is also going to depend on each manufacturer’s implementation, a system could transmit IEM’s and also transmit the talent microphones all within the same 6MHz carrier without any frequency separation typically created by a frequency coordinator. Frequency coordination is simplified because there is only one carrier to coordinate. While this doesn’t eliminate the need for frequency coordinators or even properly choosing a clean frequency, it puts the coordination of each individual channel in the hands of the hardware. I know a lot of us don’t like frequency coordination and it can be difficult in congested places like Los Angeles, so letting the box handle all of that will definitely make your RF life easier.

Everyone who has coordinated wireless microphone systems is familiar with intermodulation or intermod. All wireless microphone systems, whether they are analog or digital, create intermodulation. Digital microphone systems have extremely linear components in addition to transmitting at lower power outputs. Thus intermod is kept to a minimum. Intermod created by digital wireless microphone systems is typically below the noise floor. WMAS systems allow engineers to stack the transmitted signals in a system with improved emission masking and filtering, and place the intermod on the ends of the wideband carrier. Intermodulation is therefore not a factor to the end user of a WMAS system.

All these benefits sound excellent, so let’s explore some of the limitations to a WMAS system and explore why a user still might consider using a narrowband system. Due to the wideband carrier of WMAS, you will need to have a fairly clean area of spectrum to place your wideband carrier. It could require a carrier up to 6MHz wide. This may be challenging based on location and spectrum availability. You can’t place this carrier, for example, in the very small sections between digital TV stations or, if needing a full 6MHz, in the guard band. A full 6MHz wide system will be difficult to deploy in most major markets in the U.S. unless using it in the duplex gap or in the STL band or having the ability to use smaller wideband carriers.

Another limitation to WMAS is the redundancy factor. These devices will typically be built with high channel counts into one physical box. Certain things like power and the audio interface are easy to make redundant, but if the entire box went down, it would affect all of your wireless channels. Users will need to ask themselves, “How many eggs should I put in one basket?” Manufacturers will need to develop extremely robust systems, as well as offer redundancy in their ecosystems, especially for mission critical applications.

“A major advantage is the ability to deploy a high channel count. Large events such as major sporting events, large conventions, live theater, and reality TV—which all typically need hundreds and hundreds of wireless channels—will benefit greatly from the increased spectral efficiency that WMAS offers.”

An area of WMAS systems that could both be a benefit as well as a limitation is the lower RF power. Lower RF power is beneficial because it allows more systems to be physically closer together utilizing the same TV channel than a higher power system, but it probably won’t be able to have the reach that a higher power narrowband system could offer. If your circumstance requires a longer distance transmission, then a narrowband system may still offer a greater benefit than a WMAS system.

One area of development that I believe to be important is how the system deals with RF interference. If you experience interference on a narrowband system, it would typically only affect one or two channels at a time. A WMAS system has all channels sharing a single RF carrier, so the concern for interference is much greater. A potential user of WMAS will need to understand how each manufacturer’s system deals with interference. The need for a system to be able to deal with RF interference will be an important factor in the use of a WMAS system. How many interference events a system can take, how it heals itself, and how resilient is it to RF noise will all be important factors in a WMAS deployment.

Manufacturers have already started to design, test, market, and release WMAS systems. Each system will have its own design, specifications, and features. Unlike Wi-Fi products that are all compatible with each other, WMAS systems will likely not be compatible across manufacturers. Each manufacturer will have their own proprietary system based on their interpretation of WMAS and based on their own codecs and algorithms.

Shure recently announced their first WMAS product, the Axient Digital PSM, will available in January 2025. I’ve had the opportunity to explore what the WMAS deployment entails in this new product and it’s very exciting. Axient Digital PSM is a single-space rack mount digital IEM system that has both four stereo narrowband carriers, as well as four WMAS wideband carriers in the unit. Each of the four WMAS carriers is 800KHz wide with four stereo channels in each carrier. This allows the unit to have up to sixteen individual stereo IEM mixes in one RU. In combination with an AD600 spectrum manager and AD610 Showlink access point, the unit will be able to manage frequency deployment and interference events. Within each 800KHz carrier are four 200KHz wide subcarriers. If an individual subcarrier experiences interference, the other three subcarriers will not be affected by that interference. For more information, you can visit Shure’s website.

There is still a lot to learn about WMAS. It offers so many possibilities for the future of RF systems and will only continue to develop as technology advances. Each manufacturer will have their own approach, but that will just provide more tools in the toolbox to choose from. We live in challenging times for wireless microphone systems but one thing that this framework encourages is that we should all be good RF neighbors.

by James Delhauer

Communication has changed drastically in recent years. Though the internet age had already seen an acceleration in this field, the COVID-19 pandemic forced an exponential leap forward as social distancing requirements and remote contact became necessary parts of day-to-day life. Though life has more or less returned to normal following the pandemic, many of the innovations that resulted from it have remained. Video conferencing, event streaming, and distant participation are all here to stay. That is where groups like the Local 695 Stream Team have made their mark, continuing to innovate on developments brought about by lockdown.

When the pandemic hit, labor unions across the country had just as much of a responsibility to regularly meet with their members and keep them informed despite distancing requirements. Though not unheard of beforehand, remote membership meetings went from being more of a novelty to an absolute necessity. Local 695 hosted its first remote membership meeting in the spring of 2020 and, like most at the time, took advantage of the Zoom video conferencing platform to do it. This worked well, but as the pandemic gradually lessened and normal in-person events resumed, there was a desire to “return to normal.” Many felt that the social and community aspects of General Membership Meetings had been lost in a remote environment. At the same time, remote meetings had increased accessibility for many members. Attendance had increased dramatically since their implementation. Thus, a hybrid format meeting—where members could attend either in person or via a remote platform—was necessary.

This was a more difficult demand than it might initially seem on the surface. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has strict guidelines on how unions must conduct their General Membership Meetings and, in July of 2022, IATSE International President Matthew Loeb sent a memorandum to all Locals on how hybrid meetings needed to be implemented to be compliant with labor law. It outlined how all members, whether in person, or remote, had to be able to participate equally in all meeting business. This meant that remote participants needed to be able to see what was taking place in person, while in-person participants needed to be able to see everyone on Zoom. All remote participants would be required to keep their cameras on at all times and take steps to ensure the meeting remained private from nonunion family members. Most importantly, members needed to understand that participating in membership meetings while at work is a violation of federal laws.

These stringent rules, particularly regarding equal participation and the ability for all parties to see one another, necessitated careful planning. Many Locals, both in and outside of the IATSE, viewed them as prohibitive or impossible to implement. In essence, they meant that every membership meeting would need to become a full-on production.

But production is what we do.

It started with several multi-hour meetings and phone conversations between Local 695 President Jillian Arnold and me, where we both mapped out potential workflows. Both of us had come up in broadcast television environments, so the restrictions in place were a challenge we were dead set on overcoming. Once we had a general idea, we set about building our team.

For the video component of the meeting, we tapped Holley Video, a boutique video consultation company that crews many Local 600 and 695 members and that is owned by Local 600 & 695 dual card member Zak Holley. His team specializes in remote solutions, and they helped pioneer several social-distancing protocols that were essential to live-broadcast productions during the pandemic. Having provided live remote services on everything from award shows such as The Oscars, Emmys, and Grammys to competition shows like The Voice, Dancing with the Stars, and American Idol, they were a natural choice. Holley Video would come in and provide a four-camera setup that would be integrated into a live switcher, which would then be integrated into a Zoom meeting so that all remote participants would be provided with a live feed of the membership meeting, complete with real-time camera cutting to whomever was speaking at any given moment. They would also provide two 55-inch televisions, each of which would be connected to a computer that was logged into the meeting. This would allow in-person members to view the Zoom gallery, regardless of where they were sitting in the venue.

For audio, we approached Bill Kaplan of On Tap TV. Bill is a Live Broadcast Sound Mixer who has been a member of Local 695 for more than twenty years and is best known for his work on more than five hundred episodes of The Late Late Show with James Corden. Each speaker on the Local 695 dais would have their own microphone and a floor mic would be provided for in-person members of the audience to use when asking a question. These lines would all be taken into a mixing console, which would then be integrated into the Holley Video team’s host system for the membership meeting. The microphones in the room would allow remote participants to hear what was being said in person, while the speakers would allow in-person participants to be heard on Zoom. Bill would be assisted by Oscar Alva, a member of Local 695’s Y-16A Training program, who would receive on-the-job training while participating in union activity.

For administrative purposes, Local 695 Director of Education (then Senior Systems Manager) Casey Weiss and I would facilitate the Zoom meeting itself. This would involve confirming membership status and admitting those participating online, as well as working with the Local’s then Sergeant-at-Arms, Chris Howland, to ensure members on Zoom were complying with the requirements set forth by President Loeb’s memorandum and the NLRB.

After weeks of planning and preparation, Local 695 held its first hybrid membership meeting on July 16, 2022. While I have not been able to confirm that we were the first IA Local to do so, we were certainly among the first. The initial Stream Team consisted of Zak Holley, Local 695 member Tristen Poliseno, Bill Kaplan, and Oscar Alva. The meeting was a success and, with the concept proven, we all began devising ways of improving the workflow for next time.

The real challenge came in January of 2023 when Local 695 held a vote to amend its Constitution & Bylaws. Legally, such a vote requires an anonymous balloting system, and any electronic ballot requires a level of integrity verification not possible on the Zoom platform. This meant that a third-party online balloting service would be necessary. What’s more, we needed to ensure that only members in attendance participated in the vote, meaning that we couldn’t send out voting credentials prior to when the vote opened in the middle of the meeting. After much research and several pitches from companies that could not meet our needs, Local 695 enlisted the services of Survey and Ballot Systems. Theirs was the only service we were confident could meet the precise timing needs of our meeting.

During the meeting, all members who were participating at that moment, regardless of whether they were in person or remote, were emailed a unique login credential so that they could cast their votes on the new amendments.
I cannot stress how stressful this process was, as a failure to conduct the vote or an improper voting procedure would violate our Local’s existing Constitution & Bylaws, which set forth that amendments must be voted on after being read at two consecutive membership meetings. If members didn’t receive their credential emails or there was some irregularity with the process, it would have been a real problem.

But the vote went off without a hitch. Once again, I cannot confirm that Local 695 was the first union to conduct an NLRB-compliant vote in a hybrid format, but we were certainly among the very first.

I also cannot praise Casey Weiss enough for taking charge of administering the voting process and working with Direct Vote to ensure everything went smoothly. She has since gone onto advise the IATSE and other Locals on this process so that they can emulate our workflow.

In the two years since we began doing hybrid meetings, the Stream Team has refined the process tremendously. The group has grown to include Local 695 members Cameron Broadbent, Garret Vander Leek, and Brandon Boldroff on the video side and Patrick Simon and Rylan Sedivy on the audio side. I’d like to make special mention of Local 695 Mixers Steve Weiss and David Cook, who have both stepped in to mix our meetings when Bill Kaplan has not been available.

The Stream Team has even gone onto support other Local unions, including IATSE Locals 44, 705, 706, and 728, as well as Teamsters 399. In March of 2023, the Hollywood entertainment unions held a joint rally in Woodley Park in advance of the 2024 negotiations with the AMPTP. With members across the country, the IATSE enlisted the Stream Team to livestream the entire event straight to YouTube. This ended up becoming the largest “hybrid meeting” imaginable for the team, as more than two thousand members of the entertainment guilds turned up in person and more than six thousand joined in online. Following negotiations, the group was again tasked with facilitating communications for the IATSE, conducting a multi-Local membership meeting where leadership from all thirteen Hollywood Locals and the IATSE West Coast Office directly addressed members on the new terms and conditions of their bargained contract.

I am immensely proud of this group and the role that I have had the privilege to play within it. It has pioneered solutions to very modern problems and helped expand both accessibility and transparency of the union for its members. But more importantly than that, I can’t recall a time I have ever worked with a more generous or more professional crew. Every single person involved is the sort of person you’re lucky to know in your life. So, if you need remote streaming solutions for your membership meetings or live events, I wholeheartedly recommend you contact Holley Video and On Tap TV. They are the Stream Team.

by Ryan Pedersen & James Delhauer

We have been making movies in Hollywood for one hundred fourteen years. It began in 1910 with the release of D.W. Griffith’s Western short film, In Old California, and by the 1920s, nearly 90% of all films were produced in California. Throughout the twentieth century, the entertainment industry helped grow the state’s economy into one of the largest in the world. However, times have changed. Filmmaking is now a global industry with annual revenues between $90 billion to $100 billion. Every locality is trying to capture a bite of that pie, luring productions to film in their regions with large tax incentive programs that offset the cost of producing movies and television. This has led to a drought of work in California. Tens of thousands of workers and their families are struggling as the industry has migrated to other areas. So, let’s talk about the California Film & Television Tax Credit Program.

In order to combat runaway production, California introduced its first incentive program in 2009. It offered $100 million annually in tax credits based on qualified expenditures to help keep productions in the Golden State. The program was expanded in 2015 to Program 2.0 which increased the allocation to $330 million annually, as well as introducing a competitive application process. In 2020, Program 3.0 increased the program’s scope to appeal to a broader range of productions. This program was set to expire in 2025, but in 2023, California labor unions lobbied to expand the program for an additional five years. This secured funding through 2030 and introduced additional refundability provisions.

The California Film & Tax Credit Program is managed by the The California Film & Tax Credit Program is managed by the California Film Commission (CFC). This group oversees the application process, eligibility requirements, and allocation of tax credits to film and television productions. The CFC also helps producers navigate the program requirements. They work in conjunction with the California legislature and other state departments to ensure that the program is meeting its goals. The Tax Credit Program is rather extensive and contains many provisions that would take pages and pages to explain in this article so for your sake and ours, we will give the basic highlights of the program to aid in your understanding in what the tax credit does and how it works.

The current program offers a 20%-25% credit on production spending and up to 30% on labor costs. A production must spend at least $1 million in the state and each project has a tax credit cap of either $20 million or $25 million. To qualify for a tax credit, a production must have 75% or more of their total principal photography days occur in California, with exceptions for capturing backgrounds, VFX, action and/or crowd scenes by second; stunt; or VFX units. They must also spend 75% of their production budget for goods, services, and wages within California.

In an economic study assessing the impact of the program between 2015 and 2020, the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation found that the Film & Television Tax Credit Program had created over one hundred and ten thousand jobs in the state. The study further found that for every dollar spent, the program generated $1.07 in direct tax revenue, $8.60 in labor income for middle-class workers, $16.14 in state GDP, and $24.40 in labor activity.

Despite these successes, work continues to leave both California and the U.S. The same LACEDC study showed that revenue from 67% of productions that applied for a tax incentive and were denied relocated to other jurisdictions, resulting in losses of $1.9 billion to other states and more than $2 billion to other countries. In total, this resulted in a loss of 7.7 billion in economic activity, 28,000 jobs, and more than $350 million in direct tax revenue for the state. As of the time of this article’s writing, 40% of film and television workers in California are unemployed. This does not include workers from businesses that are adjacent to the industry that are struggling as well. Restaurants, catering companies, hospitality services, thrift shops, vendors who supply raw materials for set and costume construction, and so many others have been impacted as well.

The ripple effects of these losses should be clear. The loss of economic activity and tax revenue from the entertainment industry means a loss of state revenue for vital programs such as healthcare, education, transportation, environmental protection, and social services. These losses have the potential to cripple working-class families across the state and fuel the already out-of-control unhoused population crisis.

Thankfully, there is cause for hope. On October 27, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced his support to expand the Film & Television Tax Credit Program with a proposal to more than double its value with an annual investment of $750 million. The press conference announcing this possible expansion was heavily attended by union leaders, with the governor inviting labor to participate in making this proposal a reality. “This is a proposal, and we’ll need all of your help shaping it to work for our state’s film industry.”

As a result, the California IATSE Council—our union’s political action group in the state—has mobilized to work with elected officials in Sacramento, the Entertainment Union Coalition, and the studios to revise our existing program into a competitive, forward-thinking one that will endeavor to bring film and television work back home; not just for the good of film and TV workers and their families, but for the good of all families that participate in our state’s economy.

The governor also announced that the new program would be championed in the State Assembly by Assemblyman Rick Chavez Zbur, who has already begun working with our union leaders and other legislators to make this bill a reality.

There are also plans for a Federal Incentive Plan as well. Four days after Gov. Newsom’s announcement, U.S. Congressman Adam Schiff (who California elected to the U.S. Senate on November 5), wrote a letter to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis requesting data on employment trends within the film and television industries, stating that “In order for the U.S. to maintain its standing as a leader in the film and television production industry and spur more American jobs, we must create competitive labor-based incentives for U.S. production.” Congressman Schiff’s letter cited Australian and Canadian policies in which both their federal governments and state/province governments offer incentives that can stack with one another, noting that “major blockbuster productions have chosen to shoot in these countries rather than in the U.S, bringing with them all of the employment opportunities and investments in local economies that productions bring.”

The IATSE, which endorsed Congressman Schiff in his bid for the United States Senate and hosted his campaign kickoff event at the offices of Local 80 in Burbank, joined the congressman in urging the Bureaus of Labor Statistics and Economic Analysis to gather and release data on the impact of foreign-production incentives on U.S. jobs and local communities. “The proposal to implement a federal incentive would level the playing field and address this imbalance,” said IATSE International President Matthew D. Loeb. “We support the concept of a federal incentive for the creation of film and TV, provided the plan also has mechanisms to uphold labor standards. We are committed to saving America’s entertainment industry, and we look forward to working with our members, local unions, allies, and lawmakers at all levels to get it done.”

Many of you have been reaching out asking what can be done to help push a bill through to support incentive programs that will bring work back home. The very first thing to do is to have patience. This is the hardest part of the entire process, especially for those who are hurting from extended periods of unemployment. Following the election, the new legislative session will not begin until after the new year and once it has convened, the legislators and leaders will need time to craft specific provisions and language for the bill.

Once the bill has been written, we will need everyone’s help to write to and call their legislative representatives and tell them to support this bill. You can share your stories with them on why this bill is needed and why it will be good for California. The California Locals will be working to put together letters to state officials urging them to support expanded incentive bills. Once those become available, anyone interested in keeping and/or expanding production work in California is encouraged to reach out to your district legislators. If you choose to write your own message, Local 695 encourages you to keep your urging polite and engage in urgent, but civil discourse. After all, very few people respond well or want to help someone who is yelling at or insulting them.

We will need to show up over the next few months and the next few years as we rebuild our state’s industry. In her presidential election concession speech, Kamala Harris said, “This is not a time to throw up our hands. This is a time to roll up our sleeves. This is a time to organize, to mobilize and to stay engaged for the sake of freedom and justice and the future that we all know we can build together.” Those words are inspiring, especially given the circumstances in which she said them. At times it will seem easier to just give up and move on, but we love what we do. In order to continue on, we must continue to push forward.

Sound Mixing Winners

OUTSTANDING SOUND MIXING FOR A COMEDY OR DRAMA SERIES (HALF-HOUR) AND ANIMATION

The Bear
“Forks”
Steve “Major” Giammaria,
Re-recording Mixer
Scott D. Smith CAS, Production Mixer
Patrick Christensen, ADR Mixer
Ryan Collison, Foley Mixer
Production Sound Team: Joe Cambell Boom Operator, Nick Price & Nicky Ray Harris Boom/Utility Sound Technicians, Sharon Frye and Nick Faneli Utility Sound Technicians

OUTSTANDING SOUND MIXING FOR A LIMITED OR ANTHOLOGY SERIES OR MOVIE

Masters of the Air
“Part Five”
Michael Minkler CAS,
Re-recording Mixer
Duncan McRae, Re-recording Mixer
Tim Fraser, Production Mixer
Thor Fienberg, Scoring Mixer

OUTSTANDING SOUND MIXING FOR A COMEDY OR DRAMA SERIES (ONE HOUR)

Shõgun
“Broken to the Fist”
Steve Pederson, Re-recording Mixer
Greg P. Russell, Re-recording Mixer
Michael Williamson CAS, Production Mixer
Takashi Akaku, ADR Mixer
Arno Stephanian, Foley Mixer
Additional Sound Team: Don Brown &
Darryl Marko Boom Operators, Jenna Gouchey Assistant Sound, Robert Hanchar 2nd Unit Production Sound Mixer, Martin Mitchell Boom Operator, Patou Lauwers Sound Assistant

OUTSTANDING SOUND MIXING FOR A VARIETY SERIES OR SPECIAL

Billy Joel: The 100th – Live at
Madison Square Garden
Brian Riordan, Re-recording Music Mixer
Phil Detolve, Re-recording Mixer
Peter Gary, Music Mixer
Brian Flanzbaum, Production Mixer
Josh Weibel, Monitor Mixer
Brian Ruggles, FOH Mixer

OUTSTANDING SOUND MIXING FOR A NONFICTION PROGRAM

The Beach Boys
Gary A. Rizzo CAS, Re-recording Mixer
John Rampey, Production Mixer
Sabi Tulok, Production Mixer
Dennis Hamlin, Production Mixer

OUTSTANDING SOUND MIXING FOR A REALITY PROGRAM

Welcome to Wrexham
“Giant Killers”
Mark Jensen CAS, Re-recording Mixer

Names in bold are Local 695 members

Disclaimer: The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS) does not award Emmy statuettes or nomination certificates to those listed under “Production Sound Team.”

Editors’ note: We make every effort to contact the Production Mixer of each nominated show and request the names of the Production Sound Team. However, we do not always receive that information.