Features

Sound Apps: V-Control

by Richard Lightstone CAS AMPS

V-Control Pro 2 from Neyrinck can connect to both Mac and Windows, Android tablets, iPads, iPhones and laptop web browsers. V-Control Pro supports a host of app skins for applications such as Audition, Cubase, Digital Performer, Live, Logic Pro, MIO Console, Pro Tools, Reaper, Reason, Studio One, Sonar and Tracktion.

I have been using it with Pro Tools as a simple but elegant way to audition cues for an on-set music supervisor, choreographer and directors, without dragging them over to my playback system. I can walk my iPad over to wherever they are and hit the cue, stop, rewind, adjust the levels on the tracks or enter a new marker. It controls my Pro Tools session seamlessly and remotely from my iPad. You can preview eight memory locations and sixteen channels.

V-Control has the following features: Fader Control, Pan, Edit, Keypad, Memory Locations and more. The best feature is that it will emulate your Mac where you can work on your track and mix windows right there on the iPad!

V-Control Pro software runs as a menu bar application on your Mac or Windows computer. It automatically connects media applications such as Pro Tools, Cubase and Logic Pro to controller apps and devices. The Setups window shows all your devices, applications and connected setups. It also provides powerful custom confi guration for MIDI controllers.

I truly have enjoyed having this app on my iPad when we do Pro Tools playback sessions. https://neyrinck.com /products/v-control-pro-bundle/overview/#pm

In the next issue, I’ll talk about Soundcraft’s ViSi Remote app.

Fader View

Memory Locations

Edit

Keypad

Mac Edit Window on iPad

Mac Mix Window on iPad

Mac Mix Window on iPad

The Pro Control bundle is $49.99 from the Mac store. But you can get a limited feature version as a free download.

I Love Dick

by Sam Hamer with Jennifer Winslow

Kathryn Hahn & Kevin Bacon. (Photo: Jessica Brooks)

Saying the title of this show, whether placing orders with a vendor or simply telling friends and family, gets their attention. The title I Love Dick is based on a series of “love” letters by Kathryn Hahn’s character, Chris Kraus, written to Kevin Bacon’s character, Richard, aka Dick. It is a story of obsession and “female desire,” gone awry. Published first as a book, then as a stage play, then as a TV show for Amazon, when Jill Soloway came onboard.

Part way through mixing season three of Transparent, I was asked to work on another show created by Jill Soloway and Sarah Gubbins and I jumped at the chance. Having been fortunate enough to have worked with Jill and the Topple family since Transparent season two, I was very excited and appreciative to get to work on another project with the same group. The first thing I did was make sure my Boom Op, Eddie Casares, and Utility Ted Hamer were available and interested. It says a lot for the work environment at Topple when both Ted and Eddie were immediately excited at the opportunity.

Kathryn Hahn, Griffin Dunne & Kevin Bacon. (Photo: Leann Mueller)

The production methodology on this show is far from traditional, some might say odd, I say unique. Being on I Love Dick (and Transparent) is unlike any production I have been involved with before or since. We start the day with a gathering of the crew and cast called ‘Box.’ This is the moment where anyone can get up and speak about whatever is on their mind. It seems counterintuitive to spend five to forty minutes talking and listening first thing in the morning, but it brings us all together in a way that doesn’t happen everywhere. It reminds us that we are all on the same side, on the same project and working toward the same goal. Production can be stressful, locations can be challenging, daylight is finite, time is money, this is a morning moment and it reminds us that we are one family with one heart connection. Because we are able to share such personal moments with one another via the Box, it allows us to build a very strong trust between the crew and actors. This ultimately, helps with the work by creating an environment where the actors are comfortable to have a Boom Operator in the room during many very intimate sex and nude scenes. It is very nice to be respected and trusted enough to have the emotional IQ appropriate for such scenes and not have to have the sound or performances suffer.

Jennifer Winslow booming in the tiny jail cell set.

The shooting itself is very free-flowing, there are scripts, but the actors are allowed and encouraged to explore the part. This means, scenes often end up veering pretty far from the script, both in mood and stage direction. The show is shot handheld and is very organic with scenes developing from the first rehearsal, often on camera, to ‘Moving on!’ As with many shows of a similar freeform nature, we rely heavily on wireless lav mics, with two cameras (sometimes three) seeing anything at any time. However, because of the subject matter of the show, costumes may come off at any moment, so the boom operator must always be aware and available. It is an intricate and beautiful dance that Eddie Casares performs with the Camera Department, every shot, every day!

Kevin Bacon as Dick meeting Kathryn Hahn as Chris for the first time. (Photo: Patrick Wymore)

There are many last-second decisions being made in the creative moment that can be very difficult for sound to keep up with. Eddie’s sensibilities with regard to story and the director’s intentions give him the ability to make quick decisions with the boom and allows us to continue without breaking up the action.

One of the joys of working with Jill as a director is the confidence in what is being shot, what is needed and what specific coverage is required to make the scene work. With that skill, it makes it really comfortable for us to know what we need to cover the scene. Oftentimes, we will shoot big scenes with ambient music, onscreen musicians, background wallah or offscreen commotion. It can be very unnerving from a sound perspective, but what may seem like chaos after the first few passes, eventually becomes beautifully crafted where things often play as if it were in front of a live audience, intimidating, but exciting. Watching Kevin Bacon, Kathryn Hahn and Griffin Dunne flesh out those scenes was truly a wonderful and privileged experience.

Sam Hamer mixing with his bag-rig. (Photo: Jessica Brooks)

Eddie had to leave a few weeks from the end of the show due to a family commitment and we had to find someone that could jump into the deep end, have the appropriate sensibilities, set presence and personality to take over. My first call was Jen Winslow. Having worked with Jen before, I knew she would be a great fit and she blended in seamlessly to the mix, without missing a beat.

Jennifer Winslow: “My first day on I Love Dick, I walked onto the camera truck and met the show’s allfemale camera crew. For the first time in my many years in the business, I have never been on a show that was as female dominant as Dick. We unloaded the gear, chatted some and pushed into the set. I noticed a big difference in the tone immediately, and was warmly welcomed on that first morning, when we gathered in a circle around a rather large apple box signed and decorated by all those who have stepped foot upon it. This Box moment was such a surprise, the whole crew stopped what it was doing and came together. I’m so used to rushing onto set, watching the first scene rehearsal, listening to the director and DP devise our shots, and coming up with a strategy to get my department the best sound in the most efficient manner. Well, none of that happened. Box took at least a half-hour off the top of our day, every day. What a great way to start the day!`

Mixer Mack Melson in Marfa, Texas. (Photo: Patrick Wymore)

“Empowered and feeling good, immediately after that, I was thrown into an eight-page scene with six actors, all talking some scripted, some ad-libbing, all moving. I have filmed documentary style before and I quickly went back to that style of booming. Grabbing the most important sound to the story, using all my senses, listening for the key dialog as it was being generated, split-second, off the top of the heads of our actors. We had two to three handheld cameras, dancing and circling, creatively composing shots as we went on and on and on. The directors don’t always call ‘Action’ and ‘Cut.’ Instead, they say, ‘Off you go’ and ‘Thank you.’ That took a little getting used to, but again, the edict of this show is to be respectful of all involved, not to yell or get loud, unless safety is an issue. I was inspired and thrilled at how quickly I bonded with our two female camera operators, Julie Kirkwood and Shelly Gurzi, and their assistants, Zoe Van Brunt and Faith Brewer. We were in very tight, cramped quarters often. In one scene, I had to share a small space in a jail cell with six female actors and the camera crew while we shot a long, feminist-messaged ad-lib scene. This was an extraordinary experience and one I hope to repeat in the future. There was a slogan going around set inspired by Madame Gandhi, one of our actors and band members, ‘The Future Is Female.’ Needless to say. Jill Soloway and Sarah Gubbins are feminists and not afraid to get political.

Boom Operator Eddie Casares with his newborn son and wife.

“One special experience that really stuck with me on the show was an impromptu dance party we had shooting at a dusty location called the Skid in Pico Canyon. It was the end of a long, windy day when we moved into a small crowded room in a double-wide trailer. We were about to begin a long scene when our director, Andrea Arnold, instead of waiting for the final cast members to get ready, asked Sam for help. Ted always has a speaker available on set in case the director calls for mood music. He wheeled the speaker into the crowded room, hooked up the iPod and the dancing began. This particular night, we had a young cast of art students, no rehearsal, no line readings or stage direction. No UPM breathing down our necks. Only dancing with Andrea leading the pack for twenty minutes. What a fun way to reenergize the cast and crew. After the music stopped, we all geared up and began shooting the scene. We shot straight through and finished up in record time. This was definitely my first experience with a random dance party during the workday, led by the director. We had many female directors, with exception of Jim Frohna, the DP, who was so invested emotionally in the show, it was like having another they on set. I got to the point where I didn’t see gender as a primary defining characteristic of my co-workers, as it should be in a workplace. The set of I Love Dick proved to be more than I’d ever hoped to find in Hollywood. The gender equality came from the top down. They talked the talk and walked the walk, which is often rare on a film crew, especially when stress, anxiety and time push the crew to its limits.”

Art students. (Photo: Jessica Brooks)

We use a pretty standard package of Lectrosonics wireless with Sanken COS-11 lavs and Sound Devices recorders. We added some Lectrosonics SSM transmitters to help with pack placement on some of the more tricky and minimal costumes, with the help of our wonderful on-set costumer, Pamela Waggoner. Pamela always worked with Ted to get the best sound even with the most challenging costumes.

I have been using a Sennheiser EW 300 stereo IEM system for monitoring. I send all of the wires post-fade to one channel of the transmitter and a pre-fade boom to the other. This allows the boom operator to listen to the boom feed prefade, while the Utility can monitor both the boom and any wires I may be using. It is a very useful tool for this type of shooting, allowing the boom op to concentrate solely on the boom regardless of what last-second wires may be used.

Kathryn Hahn. (Photo: Leann Mueller)

The show takes place in Marfa, Texas, many of our exterior scenes had to be set in some pretty dusty desert-like environments which were pretty tough on the gear. Ted and I formulated ways to avoid all the mess and thus, a total redesign of the cart was born. The priority being able to close up everything and batten down the hatches! I also took the opportunity to increase my track count from the Sound Devices 788T to the 688, which is working out nicely so far.

Working with my brother, best friend and excellent Utility technician Ted, has been really tremendous. He is always looking one step ahead and preparing for it in advance, so we don’t have to scramble to pull something off in the moment of a new creative decision. He gets a lot of praise from our cast for having so many tricks and solutions for wireless mic and pack placement. It’s really nice to have someone on set to bounce ideas off of, help make technical decisions and as always, try to have a good laugh along the way. It has also become clear over the years that people seem to really like the fact we are brothers working together, it always elicits a good reaction.

I also want to thank Mack Melson for mixing the Texas portion of the show and for everything sounding so good.

Mack Melson: “I met Jill through the UPM from Texas. Happily, I was available. My first impression was that I thought they were all nuts. On prep day, we had a beat change meeting with the actors, Jill and all the Department Heads, and I wasn’t sure what I had gotten myself into. It didn’t take long before I was dancing along with them. What an amazing group, and I don’t believe I’ve ever worked with a more positive and kind bunch of folks. Love ’em all! My Boom Operator was Patrick Wylie, Utility Audra Hughes, and they both fit in perfectly. Box, Box, Box, words you really come to appreciate. The whole experience reminded me why I got into filming in the first place.”

Mixer Sam Hamer, Utility Ted Hamer & Eddie Casares.

Lastly, I would like to give a shout-out to our Post Department, Supervisor Wade Barnett, Re-recording Mixers Andy D’Addario and Gary Gegan. They have to piece it all together from what sometimes seems like sonic chaos and yet, it always turns out wonderfully by the time they are through. With the cast giving one hundred percent at all times, even when off camera, I always make the effort to capture every word and nuance of off-screen dialog. We don’t need to worry so much about overlaps when all conversations are ‘on mic.’ Jill knows when they really want something clean and we often just pick up that moment.

We all loved working with the cast and crew on this big family and we all Love Dick.

Dunkirk

WAGING WAR:
The Production Sound Team Goes Into Battle with Christopher Nolan on Dunkirk

by Daron James

George (Barry Keoghan) and Mr. Dawson (Mark Rylance) aboard the Moonstone as three Spitfires fly overhead. Photos compliments of Warner Bros./Melinda Sue Gordon

Nothing came easy for anyone on Dunkirk, including Production Sound Mixer Mark Weingarten. “It was challenging recording Nolan’s latest film, but it’s why we take the job and do the work,” says the Oscar nominee. This is Weingarten’s second picture with the English director, having worked on Interstellar—the sci-fi epic, starring Matthew McConaughey—which filmed in difficult locations of Iceland and Canada. But even with that familiarity, and over twenty-five years of experience, this production was his most difficult film to date.

“Dunkirk is very well known to every British schoolkid. It’s sort of the British equivalent of the midnight ride of Paul Revere every American child knows,” says Weingarten as we ate lunch at a Silver Lake restaurant on Sunset Boulevard. Taking place in the early months of World War II, the historical moment dates back to May 1940 when Nazi Germany pushed back British, French, Belgian, Scottish and Canadian troops to the beaches of Dunkirk, France. Surrounded by combatant tanks and aircraft, the only way to evacuate the nearly four hundred thousand troops was to send out a call for private naval vessels to help out the Royal Navy—including small craft that could get close to shallow waters. British civilians responded in droves joining the effort in one of the greatest stories in human history.

Nolan envisioned the account as a cinematic race against time—immersing the audience in the life-or-death situation by land, sea and air—while unfolding the narrative through the eyes of only a few characters.

Christopher Nolan (center) on the set of DunkirkProduction started in May of last year and landed on the beaches of Dunkirk. Nolan and Cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema (Interstellar, Her) deployed IMAX and 65mm film cameras for the visuals—shooting primarily handheld and three hundred sixty degrees—making placement for a sound cart difficult with strong winds and surf becoming the bigger enemies.

On Weingarten’s cart, a Zaxcom Deva 5.8 and Mix-12 complemented Lectrosonics wireless for the beach work. For boom, run by Tom Caton on the French unit, a Cinela Piano was paired with a Sanken CS-3e or Sennheiser MKH 416, depending on the situation. “The winds were a consistent thirty mph, so my older Zeppelins were not up to par. I first bought the Rycote Cyclone but then switched to the Cinela because the thing is amazing,” he continues. “It’s totally acoustically transparent in the most extreme wind. It comes with three levels of sound protection—we mostly used the middle weight—and it sounds like there was nothing on the mic.”

Dominic Happe with boom aboard the Moonstone with 1st AD Nilo Otero & 1st AC Bob Hall’s back

Moving from the thousands of extras on the beach to the east mole, a stone breakwater with a wooden structure on its top to offload ships, sound found themselves in tight quarters on the over thousand foot pier. Because of the limited space, Weingarten went to a simple over-the-shoulder rig, using a Zaxcom Fusion 12 and Lectro wires. “Often, the waves of the North Sea would come right over our heads, completely drenching us,” says Weingarten. Several boom mics and poles were completely destroyed. “Luckily, our cable guy, Gautier Isern, had a relationship with Paris-based VDB, the boom poles we were using. Over the weekend, he would take them in to get fixed and bought replacements. One of the poles we gave them was the worst thing they had ever seen. We were very proud of that.”

Nolan on set with Fionn Whitehead as Tommy (sitting)When the sound team couldn’t run a cable—the preferred recording method for Nolan—wireless frequencies, were hindered by neighboring interference. “In every direction on that beach, you’d see windowless military-styled buildings with huge communication towers on top of them,” notes Weingarten. “I couldn’t use my Lectrosonics Venue in my bag configuration or my larger antenna system, so my only means of finding usable frequencies was scanning with the UCR411. The problem with that is it doesn’t pick the best frequency for you, and instead, you have to select something that looks good.”

Mixing the mole scenes, the team couldn’t work off a nearby boat because the tidal change and the camera were sometimes twenty-five feet away. Wires interchanged with booms during close-ups, with Weingarten using the knobs on the Fusion 12 for the dailies mix. “There were these long, six-person scenes, and while I’m not very good mixing with the knobs, we were still able to record the dialog under those conditions without needing to loop it.”

If any unforeseen challenges or circumstances arose, Weingarten communicated them to Sound Designer/Supervising Sound Editor Richard King. “We were able to capture some M/S stereo recordings on the beach and get the soldiers’ reactions. We also recorded the vintage Royal Air Force Spitfire planes on set, but the planes’ engines were not original and needed to be later replaced in post. We also recorded many of the ships, some of which were actually there during the evacuation of Dunkirk.”

Larry Commans scuba booming in the tank at Falls Lake at Universal

From Dunkirk, production shifted to the Netherlands on the artificial lake of Ijsselmeer to shoot on calmer waters for scenes with Mr. Dawson (Mark Rylance) on his Moonstone vessel. The belly of the forty foot boat served as the mixer’s office while the camera crew sometimes worked on another ship using a twenty six foot-long, gyro stabilized, telescopic crane called the Edge to mount the IMAX. Van Hoytema would sometimes board the Moonstone with the 65mm camera for handheld work on the pitching seas.

Frequency issues cleared up for the recordist and Dominic Happe joined as his boom operator. Weingarten paired the Fusion 12 with a Mix-8, a Schoeps CMC6 MK 41 and DPA lavs to mix the dialog between Mr. Dawson and actor Cillian Murphy, who played one of the shivering soldiers picked up along the way. “It wasn’t as rough as an experience, but the little boat couldn’t take much—it would pitch left and right. While we were shooting, periodically, the captain would yell down to come up when he thought we might topple over in fear that anyone would definitely drown if the boat went over,” mentions Weingarten.

Mixer Mark Weingarten filled with optimism with his cart, Mix-12 & Deva 5.8

He also suggested turning off the boat’s motor to help record clean dialog. “In reality, the boat would be running, and during prep, I found out it sounded the same as a city bus. I thought it would be better to place the engine noise in later to save the dialog and Chris agreed. We ended up having a marine crew tow the boat from another vessel— those guys were super helpful.”

From the Netherlands and shooting on the English Channel where as many as sixty-two boats gathered to film the ships crossing, the company went to Stage 16 at Warner Bros., preparing to enter the largest water tanks in the world. Boom Operator Larry Commans and Sound Utility Zach Wrobel came aboard and dressed in full scuba gear to squeeze through bulkhead heavy sets, making sure gear didn’t get submerged.

“We used these old Audio Ltd. wireless devices that have an antenna sticking out the back. You can screw a Schoeps capsule onto it and it’s powered by a single 123 battery. It’s totally self-contained, very fragile, but when they work, they work great. They only have two frequencies, but we were able to use them for the entire stage shoot inside a Zeppelin,” explains Weingarten.

Since wrapping in October, Weingarten looks back at the experience as one that won’t be forgotten—chalking it up to the fantastic crew and how they all bonded together to get each other through it all.

Big Media in a Small Package

by Courtney M. Goodin

When I started looking at some of the new small PCs to host some of the video playback software tools I have written over the last two decades or so, I discovered a large number of choices from various manufacturers that were quite capable and surprisingly, small and inexpensive.

Many in the film and TV business have been stuck in the walled garden of Apple for so long, they haven’t ventured outside to see what is available to run some of the tools available or necessary to do our work. For on-screen video playback, most people are using the only small option available from Apple, the Mac Mini, which is overpriced and whose case is carved from a solid block of aluminum making it problematic to hide behind a display (no, gaffer tape won’t hold them). Besides video playback, many Production Sound Mixers are running a Mac Mini on their cart using BoomRecorder or Gallery Metacorder as a primary recording tool. They may have the need every now and then to run some utilities for Venue control or mixer configuration or sound file editing or conversion. A solution in the past has been to just install Windows on the Mac under Bootcamp or using Parallels, VR Fusion or some other virtual machine software. Well, that comes at a cost. A standalone license of Windows costs more than $100 and the virtual machine software another $79 or so and of course, if there is a hardware failure of the Mac, you lose both systems. Also, the Apple Bootcamp drivers and the virtual machine drivers are not very good and most don’t support hardware acceleration for video decoding. There is a solution that can be cheaper and more versatile, and that is a separate mini-Windows PC and a HDMI/USB KVM switch.

Intel started things off in the tiny PC market with their NUC (New Unit of Computing), which were small reference designs of single-board computers about the size of a two inch stack of CDs and about forty percent smaller than the Mac Mini. Then they introduced the first Stick PC that contained a full PC in a package about the size of a double pack of gum or a bloated USB thumb drive. Many of these are small enough to be stuck to the back of your monitor and are light enough (only 1.5 to 2.7 ounces) to support their own weight off the built-in HDMI connector. Some are completely fanless, so they make a good way to turn any HDTV or monitor into a full PC, which can be used on a soundstage or recording studio without having to worry about additional noise.

My use however, was for video playback on set, and I made some amazing discoveries in these small PCs. They are very capable of playing back HD (H.264 encoded) video. Specifically, I found that the units based on the Intel Bay Trail quad core Atom Z3735F chipset like the Azulle Quantum Access Stick PC and the original Intel Stick PC were even able to decode and play back up to nine HD video files simultaneously at full frame rate. This is very useful for simulating security video consoles or TV studio multiview displays. Although they are tiny, they are full Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 computers and will run any software that will run on your average Windows desktop. They support tenpoint touch screens and have built-in WiFi 802.11 a/b/n and Bluetooth 4. The most common configuration for these Atom SoC (System on Chip)-based machines is 2GB of RAM and 32GB or 64GB of eMMS storage for the operating system and programs and/or media files. Most have flush mount slots for a Micro SD card for additional storage that allows you to expand your storage an additional 32GB to 128GB pretty cheaply and is easily removable so you can pop it out and load it up with your video from another computer. Although these chips are actually 64-bit quad core CPUs, most use the 32-bit version of Windows since they only have 2GB of non-upgradeable onboard RAM, so don’t need the additional 64-bit OS overhead necessary for addressing more than two gigabytes of RAM.

The stick versions can plug directly into an HDMI port on any monitor or TV and some can even pull power from a nearby USB port on the back of the TV. (Most require about 2.5 amps of 5-volt power so beware; this may not work on your set.)

Newer versions of the small PCs use the next-generation Atom Cherry Trail line of chips like the X5-Z8300 that run a little faster base clock speed and include USB 3 support. But I believe that USB 3 support takes a toll on video playback performance and interferes with WiFi and Bluetooth throughput. On most of the Stick PC form factors, the antennas for WiFi and Bluetooth are just copper traces printed on the circuit board. And because of the tiny board, there is not enough on-board real estate to move them out of the range of the EMI from the CPU, GPU and especially, the USB 3 ports. This interference can reduce the range and increase packet loss in the WiFi and Bluetooth radios. This is especially problematic on a film set that is full of 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz RF pollution from wireless focus controls and HD video transmitters. Not to mention the hundred or so smartphones pinging the stage’s WiFi to pick up email, tweet or stream the latest YouTube meme while the idle on-camera artists await their moment of glory. Of the units I tested, only the Quantum Access Stick moved the antennas outside the case, which makes them much better at WiFi connectivity and fewer dropouts if using Bluetooth for streaming audio. The QA Stick also has the older Bay Trail chipset and it doesn’t support USB 3, which is a good thing for my use. The additional increased polling speed to support the USB 3 buss takes critical interrupt time away from the GPU and CPU for decoding and display. Of course, if your application doesn’t include playing back more than three or four video files simultaneously, you may not notice the hit on the video playback performance in the newer Cherry Trail Z8300, although the interference of USB 3 with WiFi and Bluetooth is still an issue.

The good news is that these fully functional PCs with a full licensed version of Windows 10 Home are priced around $100-$175. Some are even available for as low as $79 if you shop around. They are available from a large number of suppliers in a variety of configurations and cases with some supporting VGA ports and additional USB ports and LAN ports or analog audio outputs (All support digital audio embedded in the HDMI output). All use the Intel Graphics on-chip integrated GPU and the drivers support hardware (GPU) decoding of most compressed video and audio formats like H.264 and HEV or MP3. Because of the single-chip design and internal memory pipelining, this allows them to decode several streams of HD video simultaneously without putting too much strain on the CPU.

In my quest, I tested a variety of configurations and models from no-name units ordered directly from China with names like Tronsmart and VoYo to name brands like Asus, Lenovo, Intel or Azulle. Most had the same 2GB RAM and 32GB eMMC HD configuration, although some are available in 4GB RAM and 64GB or even 128GB eMMC hard drive.

In this class of machines, heat is your enemy and can cause a degradation of performance if the unit gets too hot. They all include Intel’s thermal power management in the EFI BIOS, which will throttle down the clock speed of some of the cores and even halve the GPU clock speed if the chip’s temperature exceeds a point that would cause damage to the chips or board. This speed throttling is dynamic and transparent to the user unless you are pushing the unit to the max (like playing back nine videos at the same time). Because of this, the Stick PCs from Intel and those based on their reference board design include a tiny fan (about ¾” in diameter) to help dissipate some of the heat when running full tilt. There is a slightly audible whine heard from these fans if you put your ear right down within a few inches of them, but it will probably be inaudible in most environments. The Azulle Quantum Access Stick has no fan and a sealed case without vent holes but surprisingly, in my testing, it seemed to be able to handle heat dissipation better than the units with fans and vents. Perhaps this is because of the case design that seems to be made of a metal or carbon particle impregnated plastic with a ridged surface on both sides to act like a heat sink to dissipate the heat over a larger surface area using simple convection. And as mentioned above, it is the only one that moves the antennas off the circuit board so they can spread the components out some to help dissipate heat.

Some of the larger units like the VoYo or the Kangaroo have internal lithium polymer batteries which can run the units for a short period of time from twenty minutes for the VoYo to several hours for the Kangaroo if you lose external power. This can come in handy on the set where things get unplugged by accident all the time without warning or you have to move from one location to another without having to shut down.

All the units mentioned here now come with Windows 10 installed and some are even Dual Boot with Windows and Android 4.4 installed. Although, those units with dual OS have a lot less free space available on the 32GB eMMC internal drive. Most with Windows only, have about 13GB-18GB free and the dual boot with Android drops that free space down to about 8GB to 12GB. However, all units reviewed here have Micro SD card slots so the storage can be expanded cheaply with 32GB to 128GB Micro SD cards. They will all run Microsoft Office full version and will do an admirable job running PowerPoint, Excel or Word. They can play Adobe Director files for interactive display. I have even run older versions of Photoshop (ver. 7) or Photoshop LE and other useful utilities like Video-to-Video encoding software or open source recorders/players like VLC and Audacity. They all have at least one full-size USB port (type A) and some add a second full-size or micro-size OTG USB port. The larger units also throw in a LAN port and USB 3 ports for interfacing external storage or adding additional displays. That’s right; with a small outboard Pluggable DisplayLink USB dongle, you can add an additional two displays. So, one of the small sticks can actually feed three different displays at the same time. If you want them to display 30-frame video at full speed, you may have to drop the resolution of the additional displays down to 720p. (A limitation of the USB 2 port.)

Although there is not room in this article to review them, if you need an integrated touchscreen display, there are many Windows tablet PCs available using the same chipsets as the stick and all about one-fourth the cost of the cheapest iPad. Also, small laptops like the Lenovo 100S or 2-in-1 (tablet/laptop combos) like the Vulcan VTA1005XBM 32, are under $200. I’ve even found eight-inch tablets like the CHUI H8 with 1920×1080 ips touchscreens and USB ports and external HDMI connector for around $150.

CONCLUSIONS AND CAVEATS

For my use (video playback sources), I found the Quantum Access Atom Z3735F units to be the best. Their lack of USB 3 (which I don’t need) improves their performance and the external antenna makes the WiFi and Bluetooth performance much better. If I can find them, I prefer the Windows 8.1 OS for playback. I can install a thirdparty UI like “Classic Shell” to deal with the lame 8.1 tile-based user interface and get back to an interface more like Windows 7. Windows 10 improved the user interface somewhat, but the problem with Windows 10 is that Microsoft removed the ability to turn off automatic updates in the latest versions and one thing you don’t want is to suddenly have your on-set monitor tell you to stand by while it downloads five gigabytes of “important” updates. You can turn off automatic updates in Windows 8.1 and as long as I don’t use these devices for surfing the net to questionable websites, I don’t have to worry about viruses or security holes. If I’m not using WiFi to remotely control the unit, I can just put the OS in Airplane Mode. None of these units come with keyboards or mice, so you will have to add a Bluetooth or USB keyboard and or mouse or touchpad. I am partial to the iPazzport mini- Bluetooth keyboard (model KP-810-19BT). It is about the size of a small TV remote and has a built-in touchpad for mouse control and thumb-operated keyboard with all the keys of a full-sized keyboard, including F1-F12 and cursor arrow keys. This unit is small enough to slip in my shirt pocket or stick behind the monitor with a little Velcro. Besides the Bluetooth version, they also make an RF 2.4 GHz model that has a mini-USB dongle. These can be had for under $20 if you shop around on Amazon or eBay.

Tip: If you are stuck with Windows 10 and need to be on the internet for some reason, you can change an advanced setting in the network configuration panel to treat your WiFi access point as a “Metered” connection. This will prevent Windows from automatically checking for and downloading updates over any wireless connection designated as “Metered.” However, if you plug in an Ethernet cable that has an internet connection, it will suddenly go to town downloading tons of updates without asking permission. This, while it happens in the background, can adversely affect video playback smoothness or worse case, ask you to restart the computer after it finishes downloading.

The small Stick PCs are small enough to slide two or three of them into the pouch on my laptop case with their small power supplies and a small iPazzport wireless keyboard/touchpad and be ready for any video playback “emergency.” You know the one, where the Director or Producer comes up and says, “I know we didn’t talk about it but can you put up this animated logo on these three sixty-inch displays that the Art Director built into the set last night?” You can save the day and maybe even get a little more box rental for the extra video source feeds.v

Sound Apps

by Richard Lightstone CAS AMPS

At the beginning of every shooting, day paper ‘sides’ are available for the crew and for a short time, they are reviewing them as opposed to staring down at their phones or digital devices, unless of course, they have converted their emailed PDF script into a digital sides app.

There are a lot of apps that will allow you to import PDFs into fi les that you can mark up, color and make notes. Three years ago, Jan McLaughlin CAS, fieldtested and reviewed several on JWSound. I’ll provide that link at the end of the article.

I’m going to review two of the most popular, Notability and Top Notes, and a new entry, Scriptation.

On the iPad, the Mail App allows you to ‘Copy’ the PDF file into the respective application by pressing down on the fi le until a new window opens and you make your selection.

NOTABILITY

You can also import the script via Dropbox and Google Drive. The app has thirty-two colors to choose from to mark up your script and the ability to preview all the pages on the right side of your screen. The bottom screen menu is very easy to navigate and here you can choose the Text Box Tool, Pencil, Highlighter, Eraser, Cut Tool and more. This app is a full-function design program where you can add text and graphics, notations and more. For our purposes, you double-tap the Highlighter icon and you can choose the color and thickness of the tool. Then it’s a matter of swiping your fi nger across the specific character and/or their dialog throughout the scene or scenes and then selecting the next color and so on. Notability was the fi rst app I tried. The time it took to highlight each character in the day’s scenes was about the same as paper sides, but much more functional and you can use the ‘scrollback’ icon to delete any mistakes or accidental swipes. (This feature is available in all PDF import apps.)

TOP NOTES

Similar to Notability, Top Notes is a multifunctional app for managing notes and drawing. Its menu structure is quite simple and easy to access when highlighting actors for individual scenes. But is limited to only eight colors. I had to become creative in my highlighting methodology when there were more than eight in a scene.

The multi-page view is very handy in accessing the scenes for the day.

I found this app to be easier to navigate than Notability. If I decide to change the order of my color scheme, I do a long press over the dialog and a convenient edit box appears.

SCRIPTATION

Scriptation is a script reader app and annotator specifically designed for fi lm and television production. Unlike standard PDF annotation apps, Scriptation allows users to transfer their annotations into new script revisions using a proprietary algorithm known as “transcription.” This unique feature promises to “End Script Change Hell.”

Scriptation was created by Steven Vitolo, a Script Coordinator on Black-ish, who aims to solve inefficiencies in the script distribution process, and believes Scriptation can be the paperless solution for the industry.

But let’s look at Scriptation with our needs in mind. Choosing the “ACTOR” menu opens up a list of all the characters in a hierarchy of who has the most lines of dialog. To the left of each actor’s name is an arrow symbol, and touching that opens a strip of sixteen colors to choose from. Each time you select a color or toggle a switch, all of the actors’ lines are automatically highlighted. If you change scripts, close out of the script or close the app altogether, your color selections are still available when you reopen the document. In my opinion, this app is the most efficient in the color choosing process.

Users that make additional notes on their scripts can enjoy using the “transcription” feature. When new script pages are published, users can open those script pages in Scriptation, and with the tap of a button, all their notes are automatically imported into the new draft. The app will even tell you if items you’ve annotated have been changed or deleted. Maybe those dialog changes that were discussed between the director, writers and script supervisor would be flagged and quickly available by all the users of the app, before we roll on that scene!

Top Notes sells for $4.99, Notability and Scriptation for $9.99 each. I’m sold on digital sides. No more arranging of paper and dragging out the highlight pens and then re-doing it if I made a mistake. I save time and love the convenience.

I will come back to this topic once I’ve had an opportunity to beta-test the promised improvements to Scriptation. Here is that link I promised:

http://jwsoundgroup.net/index.php?/topic/20996-digital-sides-via-ipad-andor/#comment-246908

In the meantime, happy shooting.

Willow Jenkins, Key Video Assist

by Daron James

Will Smith in Bright, set in a world where mystical creatures live side by side with humans. A human cop is forced to work with an Orc to find a weapon everyone is prepared to kill for. (Photo: Scott Garfield)

Willow Jenkins’ first credit on a fi lm was “Master of Time and Space.” The joke title was given to him by Producer Butch Robinson and First Assistant Director Mike Ellis on The Original Kings of Comedy, a documentary directed by Spike Lee. But it was absolutely fi tting as his persistent hard work managed to catch the eye of Lee during production in San Diego, California. “I’m very thankful for the career I have now and I tribute a lot of it to Spike,” says Jenkins during a morning phone call.

A Madison Wisconsin, native, the film enthusiast was living in San Diego taking on free production jobs to get his foot in the door while his wife finished her master’s degree. “I remember getting a call for a two-week paid gig and I was so stoked to be there. I really worked my ass off and day one, a PA comes over and says, ‘Spike wants to see you.’ I thought there is no way this is true because I hadn’t even seen him yet, but it was. I went over and Spike motioned for me to lie down next to him as we surveilled the Navy beach set and then asked me to clean up some debris off the beach so I did. The next day, he sees me working and tells me to go get a car for lunch. When I did, he said, ‘Get in, you’re driving.’”

From that moment on, Jenkins continued to work on the project as his driver and assistant, traveling to Hawaii, then to Texas and New York, always being there for Lee when he needed him—a master of time and space. “He saw something in me and gave me an opportunity I didn’t want to spoil. It was my fi rst project with him and I’ve managed to work on almost everything he’s done since.”

Spike was the one who suggested Jenkins to consider becoming a Video Assist Operator. “Growing up, I was the kid who always wanted to set up your home entertainment system or plug things in. I honestly just enjoyed being on a film set but in retrospect, Spike nailed it. I absolutely love this job. You’re right in the middle of it all, seeing the director’s creative process and you still have these massive technical challenges that need to be overcome.”

Willow Jenkins readies his system for a multiple stage shoot while Carlos Patzi sits in the background preparing a second system. Transferring footage and getting ready to handle two stages the following week. (Photo: Scott Garfield)

This year alone, you’ll see Jenkins’ name scroll by in the credits on four feature films as Key Video Assist or Video Assist. “It’s been busy to say the least,” says Jenkins, who’s schedule started to fi ll after finding himself on The Revenant, his most demanding project to date. “That was a film where you had to push yourself to a whole new level. We traveled to the southernmost part of Argentina to finish the movie, which was wild because the entire crew and our equipment flew together on a private 767 aircraft. It took about twenty-seven hours to get there because we had to wait six hours on the ground while refueling in Peru for fog to clear in Ushuaia,” he recalls.

When they did arrive, the camera crew wasted no time testing lenses in subzero temperatures well beyond midnight with Jenkins and Video Assist Rob Lynn following suit checking their own equipment. Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki ASC, AMC utilized five different cameras for the swift-moving production, making it necessary for Jenkins and Lynn to utilize a separate wireless system for each package. “We had no choice but to be quick, super mobile and keep batteries hot. It was important to have the wireless up at all times so they didn’t need to wait for our signal to lock.” While Lynn stationed himself at a briefcase running QTAKE, video assist software, and their own channel of headsets for constant communications, Jenkins was acting as a human tripod for a roving camera, holding a handheld monitor for Director Alejandro Iñárritu and Leonardo DiCaprio, who was very involved. “I had to stand five feet from them basically at all times,” laughs Jenkins.

The process trailer getting set to pull out.

While 2017’s releases of A Futile & Stupid Gesture (Director David Wain), The Evil Within (Director Andrew Getty) and The Circle (Director James Ponsoldt), starring Tom Hanks and Emma Watson had challenges of their own for the operator, larger obstacles loomed on Bright by Director David Ayer.

The big-budget Netflix original film set to be released December 2017 ushers viewers inside a present-day fantasy world where humans coexist with mythical creatures. Will Smith stars as Ward, a Los Angeles Police Department officer who patrols the night watch with an orc cop named Jakoby played by Joel Edgerton. When an evil darkness emerges, they fight to protect a young female elf (Lucy Fry) and a forgotten-yet-powerful relic she holds that can alter their existence.

Willow rigging a wireless feed for Jake Scott.

It was Production Sound Mixer Lisa Piñero who recommended Jenkins for the job. “When I met with David, we were having a great conversation when it abruptly stopped. When I was officially hired the next day, I was told we had a great interview and found that when he makes up his mind, he doesn’t spend anymore time on it. That quality translated well with him as a director on set which was a great thing,” says Jenkins.

For the first sixty production days, Jenkins operated seven days straight working Saturday-Wednesday on Bright and Thursday-Friday on another series he committed to, Wet Hot American Summer: 10 Years Later. “The turnarounds weren’t bad and the material we were doing on Wet Hot was completely different.”

The process trailer getting set to pull out.

Bright had a two-man team every day with a third filling several times during production. There was also a second unit with two additional video assist operators. “For the main unit, it was me and mostly, Willie Tipp, Carlos Patzi and Byron Echeverria swapping out week by week but we also had Michael Bachman, Chris Kessler and Anthony Perkins on days where we needed three,” says Jenkins. “I’m so thankful Damiana Kamishin, the Production Supervisor, allowed us to do this project properly. Major credit goes to her and Producer Adam Merims for being wise and approving my requests as much as they did.” Carrying out the second unit stunt test days was Dave Schmalz and the second unit shooting was handled by Anthony Perkins and Chris Kessler until Jenkins helped out during the last week of intense stunt work.

The schedule called for three months of night shoots without breaking for lunch, moving through practical locations in the rain and cold. Gear needed to be hidden and far away behind buildings while still offering viewing feeds for the director and Cinematographer Roman Vasyanov, who preferred to be right in the action.

Tom Hanks stars in STX Entertainment’s THE CIRCLE. Photo courtesy of STX Entertainment Motion Picture Artwork © 2017 STX Financing, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Tom Hanks stars in STX Entertainment’s The Circle. (Photo: Frank Masi/Courtesy of STX Entertainment) Photo courtesy of STX Entertainment Motion Picture Artwork © 2017 STX Financing, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

To prepare, Jenkins reads the script but it doesn’t tell him how the crew will operate. It’s important for him to adjust to the shooting methods of the director and cinematographer on each project. “During pre-production, I will talk to the ADs or anyone who’s worked with the director before to get as much information as I can,” notes Jenkins. “I’ll then try to find out how many cameras there will be, and on Bright it was two but a lot of times three. I’ll try to find out how the ACs work if there is somehow a focus monitor that sits off somewhere. I will also find out who the key grip is and see how they work. Then I’ll add up all the variables and find out what’s the best way we can approach the project.”

Since audiences will be watching on Netflix and it allowed Ayer and Vasyanov to be close to the action, they wanted to see the footage through an iPad. “Roman lived on the iPad Pro. He was actually lighting by it in many ways so he would know how it would translate to dailies later.” Wireless systems that transmit video like Teredek’s Bolt 3000 series were crucial to the work. On-set cameras would send a wireless feed to the DIT cart run by Arthur To. Then To would send a Rec. 709 or an image with a LUT to Jenkins’ cart where he could feed set monitors and video village. Four rotating iPad Pros had QTAKE installed on them for Ayer and Vasyanov to select one camera or split screen up to four to watch a live feed or playback footage. “Arthur and I had to figure out a system to get the iPads up and running as quickly as possible because a lot of the times Roman would want it even before camera was off the truck.”

Sound Mixer Lisa Piñero and Director David Ayers

The crew found that out on the second day while shooting a scene that closed off a busy Los Angeles intersection—Alvarado and 7th near Langer’s Deli. “We shut down the whole street in all directions and this was our first big setup with three hundred extras all outfitted in other-worldly makeup and dress. We quickly deduced where we needed to be and where video village had to go and it was pretty far from the action. And just as we got settled, Roman was already asking for his iPad. He really didn’t know who we were so we needed to make a good first impression. The first challenge was power. Then as soon as we connected to Arthur, the DIT, Roman instructed him to move about 175’ down the street toward the action and away from us. With every second counting, we were thankfully able to get our feed from the DIT by asking Arthur to move back six feet just in time. Once we got our system going, set decoration stepped in to hide our transmitter while Willie [Tipp] got electric to help us with power. When we handed off the iPads, we found out they were getting into a police cruiser and decided to back up further down the road to start the run—something we didn’t factor in. Luckily, the wireless system worked and we managed to pull it off,” Jenkins admits. “It was one of those moments where you say to yourself, so this is how it’s going to be? Wow, OK. But then you develop a system, find your groove and it makes things easier.”

The team became very efficient with the iPad system and particularly good adapting to challenging interference issues Jenkins looks forward to employing the system on future projects. “Our job is a lot about anticipation. We would try and read their minds and be handing them the iPad the moment they turned to ask us.”

THE REVENANT Renowned filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu (“Birdman,” “Babel”) directs Leonardo DiCaprio on the set of THE REVENANT. Photo credit: Kimberley French Copyright © 2015 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved. THE REVENANT Motion Picture Copyright © 2015 Regency Entertainment (USA), Inc. and Monarchy Enterprises S.a.r.l. All rights reserved.Not for sale or duplication.

Another demanding task came during the last week of shooting where an action unit directed by the stunt coordinator was on the stage next to the main unit. Echeverria handled the video assist on the second unit since Ayer needed to be involved in both sets at the same time. “The challenge for us was making sure he could see everything everywhere at any given time,” says Jenkins.

They ended up running snake cables and wireless between the stages and sent feeds in both directions to make the setups at L.A. Center Studios identical. “Doing this allowed David to run back-and-forth between sets with his iPads. We used a roving monitor with a live switcher attached to the top so he could manually choose the feed between the three main stage cameras and the two cameras from the action unit stage. It was a technological feat to give him the ability to review a shot next door, send approval to the action unit director or see a rehearsal or grab an iPad to view all the cameras at once or select them individually.”

When asked about working with Ayer, Jenkins says, “He’s a phenomenal person who surrounds himself with the best of the best as far as crew and talent goes. Once you get to know his sense of humor, which is very dark, and he starts saying hysterical things that bring the level down, you know you’re doing your job right because that’s his way of complimenting you.”

This is Us

by Michael Krikorian CAS

Studio photos by Ron Batzdorff/NBC

This Is Us is an hour-long single-camera episodic TV show produced by 20th Century Fox for NBC with wall-to-wall dialog. I received a call to work on the pilot last year late February and was blown away when I read the script. I’m a tough critic when I read through scripts but the pilot moved me. It was by far one of the best scripts I have read and I was extremely excited to be working on it.

I called Erin Paul to boom and Tim O’Malley for utility and lucky for me, they both were available. Erin, Tim and I had worked with each other on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., American Horror Story and a few other shows on their double-up units. We became fast friends, worked well together and got along great, which to me is a godsend. I can’t recall ever having a disagreement with Erin or Tim, except when Tim doesn’t let Erin and I know that crafty brought some hot food onstage. Erin and I give Tim the works but of course, it is all in fun.

Erin Paul and Tim O’Malley at the grocery store.

The show was picked up with a scheduled start date for the and of July. We had a pickup order for thirteen episodes, but after our first episode aired, we received an order for sixteen episodes, then shortly after that, they bumped it up to eighteen.

Michael Krikorian CAS at the controls.

As with most TV shows, it is important that we capture the dialog with the best means possible in the environment we are given. Boom Operator Erin Paul is the frontman, he reads through the sides and nails down his cues. Erin is solid and smooth with the mic and in full communication with our camera operators working out the framing. Tim, sound utility, preps the wireless mics and handles all the wiring of our actors. His wiring skills are spot on and he is familiar with all the current equipment, making him invaluable to our sound team. On top of that, the actors love him. Erin, Tim and I talk through the scene after we have seen a marking rehearsal, and we stay alert and pay attention to what is up next. A well-informed crew will always be ahead of the curveball.

Mixing our night shot.

Our first season was shot on the Paramount lot on two stages and a swing stage. Randall (Sterling K. Brown) and Beth’s (Susan Kelechi Watson) house is on one stage while Jack and Rebecca’s (played by Milo Ventimiglia and Mandy Moore) house is on another. The exterior scenes of the houses are shot on location, while most of the Pennsylvania and New York exterior scenes are on the backlot.

Music playback day with Mark Agostino.

It is a fast-paced show, with lots of moves per day, and because of that, we have to have everything on the follow cart for our next location. To make our moves quicker, we often load up on a stake bed. Luckily for us, we have an AD Department that keeps us well informed.

There are times we need to take a stand for sound. In keeping with the style of the show that the producers want, Yasu Tanida, the Director of Photography, uses hard lighting and some practicals to light the set. The show is full of time jumps, flashbacks and present-day scenes, so the lighting changes depending on what time period we are in. For the most part, Yasu does accommodate our requests and stays away from wide and tights and helps with the lighting where he can. When Erin can’t get what is needed with one boom because he will have to cross through some lights, Tim will come in and utilize a second boom. We zone-out the booms and at times, fl y a wire in the mix until the actor crosses the lighting threshold into our booming zones. It gets tricky in the larger scenes but we are always able to come up with some creative way to get what is needed. I find we can get the dialog a bit tighter sounding with two booms, especially with all the overlapping we do. Our directors like the natural feel of the acting with overlaps. We don’t stop or redo a take for sound, though there are times when I’ll request to record a certain line clean. I’ll bring up my concerns to the director if the line gets buried and more often than not, we will do another take to get the line cleaner. This is a show with wallto- wall dialog and our objective is keeping the actors out of the ADR stage. If we can make a simple adjustment to get what we need, I’ll be sure to request it. Yasu and our directors have been pretty fl exible and easy to work with.

THIS IS US — “A Handful of Moments” Episode 114 — Pictured: — (Photo by: Ron Batzdorff/NBC)

An interior scene with Milo Ventimiglia and Mandy Moore “A Handful of Moments.”

We wire everyone who has scripted lines when we aren’t restricted by wardrobe or a shirtless actor and on occasion, we will wire actors even if they don’t have any lines. We communicate with our directors to see if they are expecting any dialog adjustments and try to get a jump on it and wire that actor. We often get some great reaction sounds that make it to air. When it comes to mixing the show, the actors generally stick to the script but when they change it up, we have enough time to make the needed adjustments. The actors have been great to work with and we have had no pushback when it comes to putting mics on them.

Susan Kelechi Watson as Beth, Ron Cephas Jones as William.

While This Is Us is a straightforward show when it comes to recording the dialog, we sometimes have music playback with our Pro Tools 11 rig. The playback cart has a MacBook Pro running PT11 with a MOTU 828x interface. We use a Mackie 1204, Phonak Earwigs, QSC 2450 amps and JBL SRX715 passive speakers. We’ve had Jeff Haddad, Mark Agostino and Gary Raymond in to run the playback. For non-sync atmosphere, we get a handful of stems to suit what our actor wants to hear. Primarily, it is Mandy Moore needing playback, but we also had a live record with Chrissy Metz (Kate) and also Brian Tyree Henry (William’s cousin Ricky). We use speakers onstage and earwigs for the band during scenes that have dialog over music. This gets us the best results for capturing the band and the dialog simultaneously. I started in music recording, so anytime we do live music records, it makes for a fun time and a great challenge.

Erin Paul at William’s AA group.

When we do driving scenes, it is a mix of free driving and process trailers. I’ll pull my recorder off the cart and Tim will start wiring up the car. I love the sound of my trusted Schoeps BLM. We mount it to the header between the two actors in the front seats. It works well in our modernday vehicles but not so great on our vintage automobiles, which tend to be louder and less helpful acoustically. Randall’s current Mercedes-Benz sounds like a sound booth. It is one of the quietest cars in which I have ever recorded. I wish that were true for the older vehicles because they are noisy! We make sure we give Post the options they need to make the scene work.

In the episode after William’s death (played by Ron Cephas Jones), the cast had a celebration of his life. The whole family decided to go on a long walk down Randall’s street, because that was something William did every day. We wired all eight actors with Erin and Tim booming. I got together with our transpo team and the grips, and they helped me rig my sound cart in the back of our video village Sprinter van with the antennas on top of the roof. We were able to drive the van far enough in front of the action to keep the van’s engine out of our mics. We got everything that was needed for the scene to work and I was really happy with the outcome. There are also those moments when going mobile is the only way to go. We had a subway scene with Kevin (Justin Hartley) and Sophie (Alexandra Breckenridge) that had them going on and off a subway car. Production closed down the track around Wilshire and Western. We had to squeeze into the back of the subway car. I used my upright Magliner with two shelves, putting my recorder on top and wireless mics below. It made moving in and out of the subway car much easier.

My sound package isn’t out of the norm, except for one piece of equipment that I added last year to my sound cart: the Aaton Cantar X3 with the Cantarem II. Having this brought me a level of security and allows me to not worry about track count since the X3 can record up to twentyfour tracks. On average, we will have between two to six actors wired. There are times when we will have eight to twelve actors wired as well as music playback. Our Thanksgiving episode had twelve actors wired, three booms and music playback for a total of eighteen tracks, the most I have had to record that season. It was nice to be able to accommodate the scene without having to piecemeal the wireless mics or rent more gear.

This Is Us is a fast-paced show shooting seven-day to eight-day episodes with reasonable hours. There are no late calls with maybe two to three split days all season, which for me is gold. I like to see my family at night and sometimes, I even make it home for dinner. This Is Us is a fun and enjoyable show and I’m hoping it has a long run. I can’t wait to see what season two brings.

The crew in Jack and Rebecca’s master bathroom

Young Workers Committee Report

by Eva Rismanforoush & Timothy O’Malley

We live in an era where labor unions are facing a global decline, yet in recent years, the I.A.T.S.E. has managed to increase its membership against the odds. This is in part due to political activism programs. The Young Workers Committee (YWC) is one of those institutions. Created by President Matthew D. Loeb, it aims to welcome new members and to get workers under the age of 35 politically involved. Most committees have been active since 2012 and the numbers are growing in each Local. Every two years, YWC members from all over the United States and Canada have a chance to meet at the biennial Young Workers Conference, an opportunity for receiving educational training, sharing experiences and networking.

As part of our Local 695 Young Workers political action agenda, we will provide you with quarterly reports on current legislative trends that directly affect the I.A.T.S.E. and Local 695.

right-to-work
,_rt,_ta ’werk/
adjectiveUS
adjective: right-to-work
relating to or promoting a worker’s right not to be required to join a labor union. “Kansas is a right-to-work state.”

Parts of the Taft-Hartley Act restrict striking rights of labor unions and their negotiating power. They also prohibit unions from requiring a worker to contribute fi nancially, even when the worker is covered by their collective bargaining agreement. In a right-to-work state, the union provides all legal funds and protections to negotiate a fair contract. Any employee may receive those benefi ts, but without the obligation of joining and paying dues.

According to contemporary right-wing think tanks, such as the Legal Defense Foundation and the Heritage Foundation, “Every American worker should be able to pursue employment without the obligation of joining a union.” While this notion may sound like a noble cause—perhaps due to the fact that the word “Right” is in the title—it is much rather a semantic disguise for a bill solely purposed to bankrupt organizations such as the IA.

WHY SHOULD YOU CARE?

American labor unions are organized associations of workers formed to protect and further workers’ rights and interests. Collectively, workers have a much greater chance on improving workplace safety, earn a living wage, and collect health & pension hours. The collective buying power of its members is also used to negotiate consumer benefi t programs for working families.

The burden of asking an employer for such basic needs is thereby lifted from the individual. Unions set a fair bottom line for everyone in the form of a contract.

California productions operate under a closed-shop contract. Our IA union security clause ensures only vetted members in good standing are eligible to work on projects under contract. It is a mutually benefi cial system that ensures a level of job security and benefi ts to employees, while providing employers with a well-trained & highly skilled workforce.

To declare a union membership optional is a predatory strategy to fi nancially weaken the bargaining power of the entire workforce.

The rate of workplace fatalities is 49 percent higher in right-to-work states.

Infant mortality is increased by 12.4 percent and educational spending per pupil is 32 percent lower than in states that harbor strong unions.

WHAT IS THE STATUS OF THE NEW BILL?

The bill was introduced to Congress on February 1, 2017. H.R.785 has since been referred to the House Committee on Education and Workforce. It has since gained twentytwo Republican co-sponsors. To view the most current details and actions on H.R.785, please visit congress.gov

WHAT’S THE FISCAL IMPACT OF RIGHT-TO-WORK?

Since 1947, twenty-eight states have adopted right-towork laws, including Kentucky joining in 2017. Over the past fi ve decades, US Census reports have shown signifi – cant economic disparities between union-secured and right-to-work states. The American Federation of Labor [AFL-CIO] lists an average wage decrease of 13.9 percent in a median household income ($50,712 to $58,886 per year). This translates into an average loss of $8,147 annually per household.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

A short-term strategy proven successful is to directly contact your congressmen and congresswomen. California holds fi fty-three seats in the House of Representatives. You can visit house.gov to obtain your representative’s detailed contact information. Should H.R.785 pass in the House, California senators Dianne Feinstein & Kamala Harris can be reached through senate.gov. Simply calling and leaving a voice-mail stating your concern can have a direct impact.

A great long-term plan to combat anti-union legislation is to contribute to the IA’s new Political Action Committee (PAC). The PAC fund is completely voluntary and enables the IA to have a seat at the table in Sacramento and Washington, D.C. Visit iatse.net to sign up for a monthly donation.

The United States is a democratic republic. Citizens can choose their political representatives. So take part in local elections. Even though most of us work extra-long hours, California lets you register to vote online and mail-in ballots are available for each election.

Most importantly, educate and embrace new members!

Stay informed, care and make your voice heard!

REFERENCES:

“IATSE Labor Union, Representing the Technicians, Artisans and Craftpersons in the Entertainment Industry.” IATSE Young Workers | IATSE Labor Union. IATSE, 2012. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

Sherk, James. “Right-to-Work Laws: Myth vs. Fact.” The Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation, 12 Dec. 2014. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

NRTW. “National Right to Work Foundation » Your Right to Work Rights—In Three Minutes.” National Right to Work Foundation. NRTW, 2017. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

Isbell, Jesse. “Right to Work Is Wrong for Your Family— Whether You Are Union or Not. Here’s Why.” AFL-CIO. American Federation of Labor, 4 Feb. 2017. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

Ungar, Rick. ‘“Right-to-Work’ Laws Explained, Debunked and Demystifi ed.” Forbes. Forbes magazine, 13 Dec. 2012. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

Eidelson, Josh. “Unions Are Losing Their Decades—Long ‘Right-to-Work’ Fight.” Bloomberg.com. Bloomberg, 16 Feb. 2017. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

Offi ce of the United States Attorneys. “2413. Outline of 29 U.S.C. 186 (Taft-Hartley Act Sec. 302).” The United States Department of Justice. United States Department of Justice— U.S. Attorneys Manual, 1997. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

National Labor Relations Board. “NLRB.gov.” The 1935 Passage of the Wagner Act | NLRB. NLRB.gov, n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

In Memoriam – Richard Portman

Richard Portman, Re-recording Mixer
April 2, 1934 – January 28, 2017

Everyone knew Dick Portman. He was a major presence in the Post Sound world for three decades with a list of credits to prove it. I guarantee that anyone who met him has a Portman story; we heard quite a few of them when he was honored in 1998 by the CAS with the Career Achievement Award. Unlikely as it seems, most of them are probably true. And everyone knows the magic he brought to the soundtracks of the movies he mixed, his mad skills and dexterity, covering the console in a flamboyant solo act.

I never spent time with him on a mix stage with the candles, the incense, crystals, the sorcerer’s cloak and all that legendary weirdness, but I will always remember the first time we met. I was a big fan of the groundbreaking Robert Altman films of the ’70s, Nashville, California Split, as well as The Godfather and The Deer Hunter. I was very excited when the re-recording mixer of those masterpieces of sound was to be teaching his specialty at the UCLA School of Motion Pictures and Television back in 1980.

My fellow students and I awaited his arrival in the mix stage in Melnitz Hall, a room full of baby auteurs and future rulers of Hollywood, expectantly wondering what magic this genius would bring to our projects. Finally he showed, just a little late, and our expectations were exceeded, if not shattered. A tall, lanky fellow burst into the room, long straight pony-tailed hair held in place by a red, white and blue headband, tie-dyed T-shirt, jeans and flip-flops, bounding over the seats, all the while cleaning the seeds and stems from a small box of weed from which he proceeded to roll a joint. Stopping short of the front of the room so we had to turn to see him, he certainly had our full attention and the lesson began. The man knew how to make an entrance.

Not everyone in that class aspired to a career in sound, I certainly didn’t; we just wanted to make our films sound better. Nevertheless, everyone was treated to a journey to a heretofore undiscovered realm of filmmaking, the world of sound. We were dazzled by his knowledge, his stories, his passion and creativity. Comforted by his generosity, his patience and his desire to teach us at least a little of what he knew; kind of like filling a water balloon with a fire hose.

Beneath all the wild flash and mad genius, one could not help but be blown away by his profound understanding of the science, the engineering and all the underpinnings of sound recording and mixing. He was after all, born into the business. His father, Clem Portman, was one of the major re-recording mixers of the previous generation, that is, from the very beginning of the Sound Era. Richard’s rigorous and creative application of those principles, with his natural ability to share his excitement about his life’s work, inspired his students to hear and see in a new way. As loaded as he might be (or was he?), he knew that shit cold. He said at least once, that the Nagra was the worst thing to happen to sound because it made it too easy; any knowledge-free undisciplined idiot could now record sound. You could never mistake Porto’s freewheeling style for a lack of discipline and attention; five years in the Marines brought a sense of order to the proceedings.

If you were willing to hold on and follow him, man, you could learn a lot! Something he talked about constantly, signal path and integrity, unity gain, impressed us so much that my partner and I later named our new company One To One Sound. He made a big point that sound should be treated on par with camera. He said that we were not “recording” sound, rather that we were “shooting” sound, and we deserved the same respect that camera received and could get it if we spoke of it similarly. Then there were the fringe benefits and extracurricular activities, including going out to the desert to record stereo bus-bys for Honeysuckle Rose, sailing trips in Santa Monica Bay on Richard’s boat (don’t show up empty handed!) or hanging out at his place in Venice, soaking up wisdom or whatever.

It wasn’t just the incredibly deep reservoir of knowledge that he offered for a few of his first students, it was the opportunity to observe a sound professional at the height of his passion, skill and creativity. Demonstrating that this was not just a viable career path, but respectable and satisfying as well. We were all going to be great and successful filmmakers, we were sure of it. But here was a glimmer of another way, combining art, science, craft and filmmaking that also was a lot of fun. You could even win an Oscar!

I finished film school, encouraged by Richard to further develop my skills by doing sound on several more student since no one wanted to do sound at UCLA, there must be plenty of openings out there. While we worked on our scripts and waited for Hollywood to call, my partner and I bought a Nagra, some mics and radio mics, put up a shingle … and waited … and waited.

I met a wonderful new mentor, the late, great Production Mixer David Ronne, who also pointed the way to sound. He gave me my first job in the business (thrown off the set by Bob Fosse!) and sold me that first Nagra. David and Richard collaborated memorably on the Oscarnominated On Golden Pond—two masters at their best. I always figured that if you were making a movie and it wasn’t certain that the cast would be around (as in alive) for looping, you’d hire David on the front end and Porto to finish.

Eventually, the jobs started coming, not writing and directing, and thirty-six years later, One To One Sound lives on while I record and mix movies and television. I did production sound on several projects that Richard re-recorded. Early in my career, I visited him on the dub stage where he was mixing Sam Shepard’s directorial debut, a very challenging but inconsequential little movie. When I entered the sanctum sanctorum, he made a point of effusively greeting me so that Sam would notice, as a hero and the savior of the soundtrack. It wasn’t a very good movie but it sounded great!

I am incredibly lucky to have encountered Dick Portman at such a formative moment in my life. Not just for the chance to bask in his genius and enjoy his company but even more because he was such a fantastic, inspiring and encouraging teacher who always challenged us to dig deeper and go further. It is fitting that he transitioned into full-time teaching at Florida State University, where he would influence several generations of filmmakers at a program that was essentially built around him. As a mixer, Richard Portman changed the way movies sound, as a teacher, he changed lives. I can’t think of a better legacy for this great man.

–Steve Nelson CAS

The History of Sound in Motion Pictures

by C. Francis Jenkins 1929

This is a small extract from an early text on television from the 1920s, written by C. Francis Jenkins. Jenkins was instrumental in the birth of motion pictures in the 1890s. As an inventor, he built and patented one of the earliest prototypes of the motion picture projector which, by the time this book was published, was delivering entertainment in movie theaters throughout the world. He claimed to produce the first photographs by radio and mechanisms for viewing radiomovies for entertainment in the home. By 1929, he held more than four hundred patents, foreign and domestic, and maintained a private R&D laboratory in Washington, D.C. He was also the founder of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers or SMPE, the precursor to SMPTE.

Fences

by Willie Burton CAS

In late February 2016, after returning from my morning walk, I turned my cellphone on to check my messages. There was a voice mail from Molly Allen wanting to know if I was available to work on a project starting mid- April to be filmed in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I was excited and immediately returned the call. The voice on the other end said hello and it was Denzel Washington. I announced myself and his first words were, “I want you to work on my film.” I said okay and Denzel joked that he was the Secretary, Director, Producer and did many other office tasks.

Usually, it takes a lot more than “I want you to work on my film” before you have the job. Most of the time, you have to go in and meet the Producers, the Production Manager and the Director. After the meeting, it’s “thank you for coming in and we will be in touch.” However, it helps when you have done five films with the Director. Denzel was so excited about the project and that the script was adapted from the hit Broadway play Fences. I had not seen the play, but had heard a lot about it. I was just as excited as he was and could not wait to read it.

Denzel was the star, Director and one of the Producers of Fences, along with Molly Allen and Todd Black. This was my first time doing a film that was developed from a play. My first step is to read the script and have a good understanding of the story. I was thrilled to be involved with such a great project and to be working with a great team. I knew this would be challenging, a period film, practical locations and a lot of lengthy dialog scenes. My task was to assemble the best sound team possible. Douglas Shamburger had agreed to be my Boom Operator and the next step was to find a qualified local Utility Sound person. I reached out to my friend, Jim Emswiller, a fellow Sound Mixer who resides in Pittsburgh. He agreed to make some calls on my behalf, and a few days later, as he had promised, Jim recommended Kelly Roofner for my choice for Utility Sound.

In early April, the production office called to inform me that I should prepare my equipment for shipping and make plans to travel to Pittsburgh for location scouting. Location scouting is so important for the Sound Mixer, it allows you to identify potential sound problems early on and come up with solutions.

The majority of filming was in and around the house. It was most helpful to work with Ed Maloney, the Gaffer, and Steve Cohagan, his Best Boy, for placement of the generator. Oftentimes, the generator is too close to the set and there is never enough time to move it because all the cables are already in place.

I use a Zaxcom Mix12, two Deva 5s, set up for ten tracks each, one as the master recorder and one for backup. Two Lectrosonics Venue receivers and an assortment of lav mics; Sanken COS 11, Countryman B-6 and DPA. For the boom poles, I use Lectrosonics UM400 plug on transmitters with Sennheiser MKH-50 and Schoeps for interiors and a MKH-60 for exteriors, plus twenty Comtek receivers for IFB.

During scouting, one of the problems I encountered was that a period garbage truck was to be used; needless to say, it was loud and noisy. It was suggested that we could turn the engine off and let it coast down the hill while recording the dialog. Sounds good so far and I went to the sanitation yard where the trucks were parked and recorded wild tracks of crushing garbage.

The day we filmed the scene, it was not possible to shut the engine off, due to starting and stopping at a fast rate of speed. You always have to be prepared for the worse. Lucky for me, the actors projected their lines over the engine noise. It is amazing to watch Denzel work and how he prepares for each scene. He arrives well before crew call, before me and sometimes blocked the scene with the stand-ins.

At Call, the cast is brought in for a private rehearsal and then the crew for a marking rehearsal. Denzel wanted the actors to overlap their lines in many of the scenes to build intensity and emotions. Each cast member was miced with a Sanken COS 11 lav, while the boom was used overall for the master shots and close-ups. After a couple of scenes with Viola Davis, I wasn’t happy with her sound using the Sanken COS 11, so we switched to a DPA lav which was better suited for her voice.

Our main location was at the house in a suburban neighborhood, where we were able to block off the streets and control traffic. The neighbors were loud, from time to time, but when asked to be quiet, they were very considerate and accommodating. Some of the neighbors even baked pies, cakes and cookies for the crew. Unfortunately, the birds were not so considerate. They were very noisy forcing us to cut takes several times and try to scare them away. After some research, we ordered a couple of electronic bird-repellent devices to try and get rid of them. I still have my doubts if the units really worked. We also bought several fake owls and placed them on the rooftop.

All the rooms inside the house were very small, which made it difficult for the camera crew and Douglas to work. In order to film some of the master sequences in the living room, the front window glass was removed and the camera and dolly were placed outside on the porch. This was no help to us, as we now heard all the exterior noise.

My technique for mixing is always to use the boom with a blend of wireless mikes even on the wide-angle shots to capture the room and have the actors on the isolation tracks for the tighter camera. The actors moved from room to room in many scenes in the house and we accomplished this with both a second boom and a blend of the wireless mikes.

In the bar sequence, there were a lot of mirrors, which meant the boom mike was very high over the actors’ heads. In this set, the boom was my primary mike and the wireless mikes were used to give the sound some presence. In one shot on Denzel, in the mirror behind him, we see Bono walking toward the door. Here, we planted a MKH-50 and I also blended Bono’s wireless mic to make it sound more natural. For the many backyard scenes, two booms were always used with a blend of wireless to give it a rich full sound. Some of the scenes were eight to ten pages in length. I assumed we would break the more lengthy scenes up. However, there were times we would film the entire master of eight or nine pages in one setup. I ran out of space on my sound cart trying to place all the script pages. Lucky for us, only one or two cameras were used throughout, and we shot on 35mm film, therefore, we could only roll ten-minutelong takes. Shooting on film offers another benefit; Fences has a great look.

We had great cooperation from Charlotte Christensen, our DP, Camera Operators, Set Lighting, Grips, Art Department, Props and our location team. Thanks to Denzel for caring about the sound quality and allowing us to do the best job possible. The cast was very cooperative, allowing us to put radio mikes on and make adjustments as necessary.

A film is always a collaborative effort. A special thank you to my sound team, Douglas Shamburger on Boom, and Kelly Roofner, Sound Utility. Our film editor, Hughes Winborne, and his staff, along with a great talented Post Sound crew for their work. The Post team was superb in enhancing the production soundtrack, along with creating a brilliant sound design and final mix.

Producer Molly Allen, along with the production staff, threw a block party for the neighbors to thank them for their thoughtfulness and cooperation while making this film. One caveat; I gained a couple of pounds from the treats the neighbors provided. Well, that’s it and that’s a wrap.

La La Land Sound

By Steve Morrow CAS

Working on La La Land is an experience that I’ll never forget. Not only did the movie turn out splendidly, but we all enjoyed making it, too. From pre-production planning through shooting, it was a constant flow of fun technical challenges, which is my favorite kind of project.

In the first meeting, Director Damien Chazelle, myself and the Music Department got together to discuss what the vision was for the project. We figured out a plan for which vocals would be recorded live on set, how they wanted to blend live vocals and playback, and what needed to be straight vocal playback. We were able to keep the production sound team to four people; myself, Craig Dollinger on boom, Michael Kaleta as utility and Nick Baxter as our on-set Pro Tools Engineer.

A new idea was floated just before the start of filming that we should be prepared to record everything live, vocals, instruments and crowds. We gathered back to discuss every musical moment in the film and figure out how to best achieve what Damien had in mind. Prop Master Matthew Cavaliero joined the meetings to ensure we would have all the instruments needed, and ready for live recording. Counting this all up, I needed to record up to thirty-two channels of analog audio. How on Earth was I going to achieve that portably, reliably and affordably? Running two Sound Devices 970s with a Mackie 1604 gave me sixteen analog inputs. Now, how to get sixteen more channels. Ryan Coomer of Trew Audio was a huge help and suggested a RedNet2 Analog to Digital Converter, which would give me sixteen tracks of Dante Audio. I ended up using two Mackie 1604s on my cart to run all the channels and get me the needed thirty-two inputs.

It was exciting to get into work and put all of our plans into motion, each musical scene was like a new technical adventure.

The first scene up was the big movie opener, which required shutting down the freeway Express Lanes connecting the 110 to the 105. At midnight on a Friday, the freeway was shut down so Gino Hart and the transpo team could fill the road with cars to create our very own LA traffic jam. Our call was four a.m. to set up speakers and prep with the rest of the crew for a Saturday-morning rehearsal. There were one hundred and twenty cars, at least sixty dancers and one day of rehearsal for production to find and fix any issues over the next week. The following weekend, the roads were closed again, refilled with cars, this time to shoot.

This was all to be playback, and this normally simple task had become a big challenge on an overpass. The active set was a quarter-mile long, with nearly everything in frame and a ton of dancers at all times. With nothing for the sound to bounce off of and a center divide down the middle of the lanes, we were teamed up with the entire Electrical Department to help get the music to the dancers and bring this dream to life. Every other car had a speaker set behind the bumper on each side of the freeway. To keep on-screen actors in sync with the camera moves, Craig Dollinger pushed a cart with two speakers, a wireless receiver and a generator alongside the camera. We had a blast playing safely on the freeway. The opening shot appears as one long take, but it was actually three different shots masterfully blended together to achieve the look of one continuous one.

We had lots of fun working live recorded lines into playback scenes. In order to capture the essence of a live musical, we made sure to record all of the spoken lines and actor nuances whenever possible. We achieved this in several ways. Sometimes it was just dipping the playback down and catching the sighs or scripted lines with a boom and then popping the playback back up, and other times we’d do a full live vocal record with the music being heard through earwigs. It was all part of a choreographed dance.

Recording the instruments was the easiest part. In my experience, wireless microphones never sound quite right on musical instruments, so we ran hard-lines to every possible instrument. We also knew that at any moment, we could be asked to switch to live record, and we didn’t want to hold everyone up to accomplish this. Damien definitely has a very specific vision in mind, and truly believes that the crew he has can accomplish whatever he needs. We were constantly inspired to live up to that and needed to be ready at all times. Knowing what Damien wanted the scenes to feel like made it much easier for us. My team and I quickly figured out a shorthand for communicating the room acoustics for post by placing wireless mics around the set to create reference points that could later be used to apply convolution reverb. In communication with Marius De Vries, Executive Music Producer, I was able to ensure that we all had what we needed from the production side to help achieve the feeling that Damien was looking for.

Ryan Gosling spent months learning to play the piano for his role, so you could actually see him playing in each scene. In the piano scenes, we would hard-line two mics in stereo to match keys in post. Ryan is a fantastic piano player, however, they wanted to use the recorded studio tracks in the film. Every scene of him playing was shot as one long take, so any variation in his performance would potentially limit them in post. Having the live recorded piano in stereo, allowed them to shift the track as needed to match his playing on screen using the studio track.

One of my favorite scenes to record was the duet of “City of Stars” by Ryan and Emma in his apartment. They both sang this live, and in order to get the vocals clean, the piano was muted, and they sang to a playback track fed to them by earwigs. The same playback was also fed into the Comteks and the video assist feed so James Brown, Video Assist, could play back takes with the proper mix of piano and vocals.

Emma’s audition song was also sung live, in one long shot and had no prerecording at all. She was accompanied live by Justin Hurwitz, the Composer, on a digital piano played in the next room with the audio fed to her through an earwig. This allowed Emma to set the pace of her song instead of following a prerecorded track. Justin’s piano was also recorded in stereo on its own iso tracks to be used as reference later.

This film was an incredible challenge and immensely satisfying to make. Even though this was my fourth movie that incorporated music, it was the first true musical filled with live singing, dancing and musical instruments. The long sweeping shots throughout that creates so much of the movie’s magic, required a lot more preparation from our team than a usual show. We were almost always the first ones in and the last ones out. We had a large amount of equipment out and being used, as there was a lot of music that needed to be played back invisibly to actors and dancers, whether it was through earwigs or hidden speakers. I live for the challenges that production mixing provides and I am thrilled to have been a part of the making of this movie. For all of us on the sound team, it was an honor to be a part of a project filled with people pushing to create something unique in a way that hadn’t been done before.

The History of Sound in Motion Pictures

Hulfish

The Hulfish material is from David S. Hulfish’s 1909 book, The Motion Picture: Its Making and Its Theater.

It’s an early 20th-century reference to the ongoing development and attempts to create a viable cinema with sound. It also highlights the focus at that moment on synchronization in a primitive mechanical form, ultimately recommending “playback” during filming as the best solution for the time. The bigger technical obstacle still to be solved is amplification, and some very interesting aspects of that technical journey are to come in future additions to this column.

Sound Apps

by Matt Price

With the proliferation of iPhones, iPads and Android devices, there are many new and powerful apps that help us each day. In this edition, we feature a free app designed by Matt Price in Great Britain, called Soundrolling.

Matt explains, “Soundrolling app is basically a natural progression of my blogs and other ventures over the past five years. Gear was coming down in price and more people were buying equipment and getting started, so I felt as a community, we need to better communicate the values and unwritten rules.

I decided to make the app free because to me, the real value is the community; with more people, there are more ideas that have a multiplier effect of helping the people and attracting a wider audience. There are some great ideas coming out of Soundrolling I will eventually incorporate other departments such as editorial and post production sound to essentially be a central source that is as fluid as the community it serves.

“I’ve spent around £2,000-f3,000 on the app with failed attempts and even trying to unsuccessfully outsource it a few times, so I decided just to do it all myself and found an interface that works really well along with £60 a month going to support from others to help implement some features and keep the app with as little bugs as possible. I will be spending about £800 a year in outsourcing some tasks and £97 goes to Apple every year for being a developer.”

Despite his own expenses, Matt is determined to keep the app free.

“I have had over two thousand downloads and plenty of suggestions for more features. I’m really looking forward to how it develops, and I’m currently getting between 1,000-2,000 page views a day.

The more people get involved, the better it will become and I am more than happy to fit pieces of this giant puzzle together.”

HERE ARE ITS FEATURES:

1 – CAMERA CHEAT SHEET

This is where you can view the timecode inputs and audio inputs for major digital production cameras (Arri, Blackmagic, RED, Sony, Canon …)

2 – YOU TUBE VIDEOS

From tutorials on how to recover formatted cards to comparing £1.20 lavalier to a £270 lavalier. I’ve been on You- Tube for more than five years doing tutorials and sharing what I do.

3 – SOUND CHATS

I have more than forty interviews with Dialog Editors, Sound Mixers, Re-recording Mixers, Foley Artists and Boom Operators on some of the world’s biggest blockbusters and Oscar-winning films. These are also available as podcasts and videos.

4 – FINDING LOCAL AUDIO VENDORS AROUND THE WORLD

Finding audio vendors local to where you are at the moment is going to vastly cut down your research time and get you on with the job at hand.

5 – BOOM POLE CHEAT SHEET

This compares more than 125 boom poles in min height/max height/weight/material/locking mechanism and units are in imperial and metric measurements. There is a view to sort them all by weight as well.

6 – FREQ FINDER

Find legal frequencies for countries around the world as sourced by mixers who live or work there, with links to government websites for extra reading. Meaning you can travel around the world and recommend the best ones to build up a better picture. You can also submit scans using your phone camera.

7 – BLOG (BETA)

Over the past five years, I’ve added more than three hundred- plus blog posts to soundrolling.com and I’m in the process of making it easy to find them through this app.

8 – SOUND MANUALS/TIMECODE MANUALS

PDF versions of some popular products along with a firmware checklist with links to manuals and firmware notes. Timecode manuals link directly to manuals and firmware pages also.

9 – FOLEY CHEAT SHEET

I’ve added more than two hundred items and ideas for Foley you can do to make awesome sound effects. I’m building more and more Foley-related material out of my previous articles.

10 – SOUND EVENTS ONLINE AND AROUND THE WORLD

This is a list of sound Meet-ups and industry events for sound people so you can connect with other mixers around the world and in your local area. It’s really simple to submit new listings.

11 – POST PRODUCTION HELP AND FAQS

Here are useful docs for importing and exporting AAF/OMF’s and more, to help explain post to others. The idea is to better integrate editorial and other members of the team with the Sound Department and vice versa to solve those pesky communication errors that can occur with different deliverables.

12 – SOUND TRIVIA/ JOKES

This is a collection of articles I’ve collected from around the web, of trivia for the sound world. Just a bit of fun and light reading, along with some on-set banter.

13 – POCKET SOUND DICTIONARY

Two hundred-plus sound terms explained right on your phone.

14 – WIRING DIAGRAM ARCHIVE

This is a collection for all those who DIY and make their own cables or you want to make sure you are wiring them correctly. This is also useful for different connections to different cameras like the RED.

15 – FACEBOOK GROUP

There is a Facebook group setup for those with the app to easily make suggestions and connect with each other and build a community. I’m also trying to incentivize feedback with polls and prizes.

16 – BUY/SELL FREE

List your used gear and get in front of more than two thousand sound professionals for free. In 2017, listings will be no commission and just £1 to submit. All organized into categories.

Matt is very happy to have all feedback emailed to him at matt@soundrolling. com. Check it out. It’s a free app, so you can’t lose.

Passengers: Video Playback

When I started my career in playback, the job consisted of playing back pre-rendered video content into TV and computer monitors. Fast-forward sixteen years and our culture has become saturated with display technology. With the majority of people walking around carrying at least one, and often a few screens, on their various personal devices at all times, it’s becoming commonplace to take for granted that images and video should just magically appear on demand. So often the question we’re greeted with on set becomes “We have this new mobile device, can you make it work before it plays tomorrow?” While the playback job has always required creativity and flexibility, the pace of modern technology has pushed things to a new level where, to remain viable in this age of rapid growth, we must blend the roles of traditional playback operator with a hefty dose of software engineering.

Having grown up enamored with technology and gaming, I have a natural tendency to want to figure out how things work. This has been a real blessing in my professional life as I’m driven to want to experiment with and develop for new devices as they appear on my radar. Up until recently, we’ve been making do with pre-made mobile apps and a basic video looping program I developed a few years ago. Now that devices and technology have both evolved to a point where people are able to enjoy advanced video gaming on their phones, it’s become apparent to me that leveraging video game engine software will allow me to become more agile and able to work with new devices as they hit the market. Building content across platforms (iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, etc.) has been a major challenge when working with the current tools used in computer playback. Adobe’s flash program works on some mobile devices but is limited and cannot take full advantage of the device’s hardware and their Director program (which hasn’t been updated in years) can only function on Mac or PC and has very limited support from Adobe.

To excel in the fickle gaming community, game engine developers know that they must harness every bit of a device’s hardware capabilities in order to give the player the best graphics experience possible. To maximize profits, they also need their games to function in a cross-platform environment. Knowing that the graphics I need to build for playback work essentially the same way as a game, it made sense to me to move my development work into a game engine and the one I ultimately chose was Unity 3D. It allows me to be able to display interactive graphics that can be deployed cross-platform and controlled either remotely or by the player/actor in the scene. While I’ve gotten a few funny looks on set for triggering playback with what looks like an Xbox gaming controller, at the end of the day, the only difference between gaming and this kind of playback is that my software does not keep score … at least not yet!

When Rick Whitfield at Warner Bros. Production Sound and Video Services approached me to do the Sony Pictures movie Passengers, we both felt that it would be the right fit for what I had begun to develop in Unity. The sheer number of embedded mobile devices that required special interactivity with touch as well as remote triggering necessitated a toolset that would allow us the speed and flexibility to manage and customize the graphic content quickly. Early in preproduction, Chris Kieffer and his playback graphics team at Warner Bros., worked with me on developing a workflow for creating modular graphic elements that could be colorized and animated in real time on the device as well as giving us a library of content from which we could generate new screens as needed. Along with this, we were able to work closely with Guy Dyas and his Art Department on conceptualizing how the ship’s computer would function, which allowed us to marry the graphics to the functions in a way that made sense. This integration with the Art Department’s vision was further enabled by their providing static design elements to us so that we could create a cohesive overall aesthetic.

As part of the futuristic set, there were tablets embedded in the walls throughout the corridors. Everything from door panels to elevator buttons and each room’s environmental controls were displayed on touchscreens. Due to the way the set was constructed, many of these tablets were inaccessible once mounted in place. This meant that once the content was loaded, we had to have a way to make modifications through the device itself in case changes were needed. The beauty of using a game engine is that it renders graphics in real time. Whenever color, text, sizing, positioning or speed needed to be changed, it could be done live and interactively without causing the kind of delays in the shooting schedule that would have resulted if we’d had to rip devices out of the walls. This flexibility was so attractive to both the production designer and director that tablets began popping up everywhere!

Screen shot of Unity development software of a hibernation bay pod screen

When we got to the cafeteria set, we were presented with the challenge of having a tablet floating on glass in front of a Sony 4K TV that needed to be triggered remotely as well as respond to the actor’s touch. As the storyline goes, Chris Pratt’s character becomes frustrated while dealing with an interactive fooddispensing machine and starts to pound buttons on the tablet. We needed that to be reflected in the corresponding graphics on the larger screen as they were part of the same machine. Traditionally, this would involve remotely puppeteering the second screen to match choreographed button presses. With the pace at which he was pressing buttons, it made more sense to leverage the networking capabilities of Unity’s engine to allow the tablet to control what’s seen on the TV. This eliminated the need for any choreography and allowed for Chris to be much more immersed in his character’s predicament as well as eliminated any takes having to be interrupted by out-of-sync actions.

From a playback standpoint, one of our most challenging sets was the hibernation bay. With the twelve pods containing four tablets per pod plus backups, there were more than fifty tablets that needed to be able to display vital signs for the characters within the pods. Since extras were constantly shifting between pods, we had to have a way to quickly select the corresponding name and information for that passenger. This was accomplished through building a database of cleared names that could be accessed via a drop-down list on each tablet. Doing it this way, Rick and I could reconfigure the entire room in just a few minutes. Because the hero pod that houses Jennifer Lawrence’s character was constructed in such a way that we could not run power cables to the tablets, we had to run the devices solely on battery power. This required me to build into the software a way to display, without interrupting the running program, the battery’s charge level as well as Bluetooth connectivity status so that we could choose the best time to swap out devices so as not to slow down production.

One of the bonuses to working in most 3D game engine environments is having the tools to write custom shaders to colorize or distort the final render output. This gives the ability to interactively change color temperature to match the shot’s lighting as well as adding glitch distortion effects in real time without needing to pre-render or even interrupt the running animation. Many of our larger sets like the bridge, reactor room and steward’s desk needed to have all the devices and computer displays triggered in sync. Some scenes called for the room to power down, then boot back up, as well as switch to a damaged glitch mode based on the actions within the scene. Although I had been developing a network playback prototype, due to the production’s time constraints, we ultimately ended up having to trigger the computer displays and mobile devices on separate network groups.

Though I’ve since worked out the kinks in crossplatform network control, this served as a reminder that when working with new and untested technology, things can and will fail you. Especially when you’re using development tools that weren’t designed to function as an on-set playback tool. However, the growth of technology is only getting faster. Soon, we will be seeing curved phone displays, flexible/bendable and transparent screens, as well as all manner of wearable devices. And that’s only in the next few years. What happens beyond then is anyone’s guess.

All that said, you can have all the technology in the world but without a great team, it doesn’t matter. Having Rick Whitfield as a supervisor with his wealth of experience and decades of knowledge was invaluable. His years of having to think way outside the box to accomplish advanced computer graphic effects in an age in which actual computers couldn’t create the necessary look allowed him to break down any issues into their simplest, solvable forms. The talented graphics team at Warner Bros., Chris Kieffer, Coplin LeBleu and Sal Palacios, pulled out all the stops when it came to creating beautiful content for the film. The sheer amount of content they produced and the willingness with which they built elements in such a way that made real-time graphics possible borders on being a heroic feat. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have been a part of their team on Passengers.

As much as I am thrilled to be standing on the bleeding edge of technology in getting to merge what I do in playback with new advances like gaming engines, I’m even more excited to think of the day when this will all be old hat and we’ll be on to something newer and even more exciting.

Live-Record for ROADiES

by Gary Raymond

When Jeff called me for Roadies, I was very excited to be working with him, Don and Cameron again. This would be my fourth project with Cameron Crowe. Several of the other department heads were also veterans of Cameron’s films; such as Production Designer Clay Griffith, who I had worked with on Almost Famous, Vanilla Sky and Elizabethtown.

Live Record for Roadies At our first pre-production meeting, Bill Lanham was introduced as the technical consultant. I had planned on providing a simplified stage monitor mix which I had used for similar situations, but Bill wanted to use the bands full rider contracts verbatim. We upped the technical gear to handle thirty-two inputs and a dozen stage mixes with house and side fills in addition to my eight-track sub mixes for Post. Depending on the bands riders, we provided several stage monitors as well as In Ear Monitor mixes, side fill and house stereo mixes as needed. All inputs were split before the mixers and I created two eight-track sub mixes for Post. These were recorded on two Pro Tools rigs, one for backup.

During the pre-production phase, I contacted the Post Editor, Jenny Barak, to determine what they wanted. Although the live records on the pilot episode had been done as full multitrack recordings, Post used an eight-track sub mix to capture the essence of the performances and greatly speed up the mix-down process, and this is what they wanted me to deliver. With the time constraints of television being what they are, they felt they could trust me to give them the elements in a partially mixed format.

This was fun as I have more than twenty years of experience mixing more than four hundred top livetouring bands, starting back in the ’70s with War and Earth, Wind & Fire. My concept with the sub drum mixes was to get a fat sound with plenty of low-end, presence on the snare and air on the cymbal. Essentially, to target different frequency bands with each instrument so the Re-recording Mixer could still manipulate the separate instruments by frequency ranges. I also panned everything to different degrees, which facilitated the separation. At the recent Mix magazine MPSE CAS event at Sony, I had Re-recording Mixers come up to me after our Music Playback Panel to tell me that is often what they will do with summed tracks, which was very cool to find out.

Gary Raymond back in the day on Rock Star I did the drums as a stereo sub mix and all the vocals and solo instruments as iso tracks dry. Some of the bands had very large track counts, so in some cases, I provided guitar and keyboard sub mixes as well. We also had multitrack iso’s on everything, so Post was able to mix efficiently and still have complete control over levels and effects on vocals and key instruments. The entire recording we did was the onstage concert performances. As Jeff and Donovan explained, we decided to have all the offstage “acoustic” performances recorded by them with conventional boom microphone techniques. The only crossover was that we had Don Coufal with his boom to record the room sound during the stage performances so Post had some to play with. For dailies, we fed production the stereo mix that also went to the house speakers.

I had about sixty hours of prep time before we started shooting as there were many aesthetic decisions regarding the look of the equipment. I had provided all the dress and practical concert sound equipment for Almost Famous as I have a lot of Pro Sound gear from my concert-touring days. It was decided that the look would be contemporary, so that dictated flown arrays with digital boards. However, the Art Department took liberties based on aesthetics.

The current digital boards seemed too simple in their looks; instead, production purchased a Yamaha analog mixer, circa 1990s, as it had about a thousand colorful knobs. As far as dress verses practical, there were several decisions regarding the EQ, racks, wedge monitors, side and drum fills.

We did full live recordings of all the bands with their complete rider requirements. The difference in manpower and time is half-day with one music Playback Operator for straight music playback versus a three-person crew and two days of prep and recording for each band with live records. Clearly, efficiencies were improved when we used the same stage for all the band recordings and it was redressed to represent the different concert tour venues. We did do two episodes “on the road,” Halsey at the Honda Center and Phantogram at the Roosevelt Hotel.

There were very few turnarounds as the shots looking at the audience were actually done at the real venues, the LA Forum and Staples Center, and all the stage views were done on Stage 25 at Manhattan Beach Studios, with the exception of Halsey and Phantogram. The Honda Center and Roosevelt Hotel episodes were smartly scheduled after the first few episodes, so by then, we had our system down.

The live recordings resulted in absolutely real and authentic performances with excellent sound quality by all the bands. Timing and other potential problems were avoided because all the dialog was before or at the end of each performance. In addition, dealing with seasoned bands that had been doing the same songs for months or years is a lot different than “cast” bands that are put together for a scene and may not have worked together before the shoot date.

I’m very proud of the fact that the concert performances we recorded; every episode, every scene, every band, every song, every take and every track, we had good recordings. Production never had to reshoot because of our recording team. This included dealing with a citywide power outage at one point, and in some cases, the musically excellent “younger” bands showing up to set with several pieces of gear not working or missing.

We had a great team effort and I want to thank Jeff Wexler CAS and Donovan Dear CAS and their crews plus our team of Bill Lanham, Steve McNeil and James Eric, who worked with me on Almost Famous and Steve Blazewick for their great teamwork and excellent efforts. I also want to thank Prop Master Matt Cavaliero and Head Set Decorator Lisa Sessions for their huge help sharing information during the initial decision-making process and of course, a thank-you beyond words to Cameron Crowe for creating this fictional based on a reality world, that so many of us were able to share creatively with him, the entire production and the audience who watched the show.

ROADiES: A Sound Experience

by Jeff Wexler CAS and Donavan Dear CAS

Jeff Wexler: When the call came in for Roadies, I knew I had to do it. I was not available to work on the pilot, which they shot in Vancouver, Canada, as I was on a feature. Showtime gave it the green light for a full season and though I was pretty much semi-retired, I really wanted to do the show. Don Coufal and I have done six movies with Cameron Crowe and Roadies would be Cameron’s and my first television episodic. I was a little worried since I had not done any episodic television and heard all the horror stories. But there was no need to worry, Cameron had not developed any of those awful habits, and shooting the first two episodes with Cameron directing was wonderful— just like working on any of the movies with him. It was a bit of an adjustment for me to be doing nine pages a day instead of the one and a half I was used to.

Each episode was to have one or more music scenes and in preproduction, we had lots of discussions about how to do these things—shoot to prerecorded playback tracks, shoot to playback but live vocals or do it all live. Many of the scenes took the form of impromptu songs performed in dressing rooms, hotel rooms, rehearsals, music and dialog, starting and stopping; the sorts of scenes that are best done live. The final decision was to do all the music live record.

I have done lots of music in movies, playback, live recording, concert recordings with remote truck and so forth, and I already knew that the Production Sound Mixer needs to have help doing all of this, whether it is as simple as hiring a Playback Operator or as complex as interfacing with a remote truck for a full on concert recording. I requested that Production hire Gary Raymond and an assistant for any of the live record. We added Bill Lanham to Gary’s crew, a veteran concert engineer who proved to be a vital part of the music crew. Gary was set up to record directly into Pro Tools with all sources in use for the scene. Some of the performances were fairly simple, one person, solo guitar, but others were quite a bit more complex, full on concert setups. I was so pleased to be able to record Lindsey Buckingham singing “Bleed to Love Her,” just Lindsey and his amazing guitar playing, recorded with just one Schoeps overhead. Like so many of the things we have done together, all the “mixing” of this beautiful sound was done by Don Coufal with his fishpole.

It was always the plan that I would do the first two episodes that Cameron was directing— I was really not up to doing the full season so I asked Donavan Dear to come in and replace me. Donavan was so pleased to come onto what turned out to be one of the best TV experiences ever. Don Coufal stayed on the job which helped immensely in terms of preserving continuity on the show, and Donavan was pleased of course, for the chance to work with Don. After the first two episodes, new directors were brought in as is usually the case with episodic, but Cameron was there most days and directed the last episode.

I’m just so pleased that I got to do the two episodes, and be able to work with Cameron Crowe again.

Donavan Dear: When Jeff Wexler asked me to take over for him on Roadies, I said I’d love to do it. A few weeks later, Jeff introduced me to Cameron Crowe. Cameron took a lot of time talking and getting to know me. I’ve done many television shows and never seen a director actually take more than a minute to meet the new Sound Mixer. We talked about our love of music and how it could be used to mold the performance of the actors. This was the first clue Roadies was going to be different. Taking over for Jeff Wexler was very flattering and getting to use Don Coufal on the boom was also something I was really looking forward to.

Roadies Was Different
Roadies was different; from the start, it was essentially a very long feature about music and the people who made it happen. Cameron had decided that he wanted live music performances, which not only meant the performers would perform live, but the sound system would be real from the arena speakers to the concert desk, monitors and amps. Jeff Wexler smartly decided the PA system should be managed and set up by concert-sound experts, so he hired Gary (Raymond) and Bill (Lanham), who set up the entire PA systems a day or two before each performance. I would simply take a stereo left/rght mix directly out their console; the loudness of the speakers was always set to not interfere with the multitrack recording.

One of the other interesting facets of Roadies was the live recordings that weren’t stage performances. There were usually a couple in each show, the artist would start “noodling” on a guitar throughout the scene with one of the roadies, or they would just be singing a song trying to tell a story. This was a lot of fun. We recorded Halsey with one of the roadies, Machine Gun Kelly (aka Colson Baker) playing and singing with two electric guitars beneath the stage. What was most challenging was to get a consistent mix with multiple cameras and different angles in such a poor acoustic environment. This is where Don’s listening was so important. It’s simple to play back a prerecorded track and have the actors lip-sync, or even to live record the first take of a performance, then play back that recording to keep things consistent in future takes. We recorded every shot and every angle live. When the cameras would turn around and change the position of the actors and amplifiers, it changed the properties of the sound. The actors usually could not sing and play the music the same way from take to take. This is why it’s so important for the Boom Operator to listen. There is no formula for positioning a microphone and capturing the same musical tonality, there is only your memory of how the last setup sounded and how to place a microphone for the best sound and consistency. Don Coufal and the editors did an outstanding job in preserving great live performances. More often than not, our biggest problem was the balance between the louder acoustic guitars and soft singing voices—often nudged by Don to give us a little more voice.

Boom Philosophy
There are two kinds of Boom Operators: ‘hard cuers’ and ‘floaters.’ Don Coufal and I are on opposite sides of these philosophies, but I had so much respect and trust of Don that I let him do what he does best. My regular boom operators are always aggressive and cue very hard while getting the mic as close to the frame line as possible, while Don concentrates on listening very diligently to the background ambience and cueing to the voice, creating a smooth, consistent background. Don Coufal is probably the only boom operator I know whom I would trust to use his method.

Don and I had some great conversations about microphones and technique, but when we talked about microphones, acoustics or the tone of a particular actor’s voice, I could see the excitement in his eyes. I knew he was someone I could trust completely. A sound man needs to be excited about equipment, about learning and about ways to approach an actor with a sound problem in a way that will make the actor feel comfortable to accommodate that request.

Don made a believer out of me. Boom Operators have to learn every line in the script and point the mic at the actor’s sweet spot no matter what technique they use. There is a movie/TV difference; in general, a sound crew on a feature has more opportunities to quiet the set whereas a TV crew often doesn’t have time to put out all the ‘noise fires.’

When it comes down to it, the floating style cuts nicely with a bit more background noise, where a hard-cue technique has more proximity effect and less background noise but with a more inconsistent background ambience. All in all, the most important things about boom technique are listening and experience. Don Coufal excels in both of those.

Cameron Crowe: Roadies was very special because of Cameron Crowe, and music is very special to him. There were times during a take that an AD would run over to me and say Cameron wants you to play one of these four songs between the lines or in that moment, at the end of the shot. We always had a playback speaker ready, several music apps and 150,000 of my own songs ready to go at all times. Cameron has his own playback/computer desk that Jeff built for him so he could play music and set the tone for an actor’s performance or set a mood for the crew before a scene. Cameron uniquely communicated with music, he wasn’t a very technical director but he did have an amazing way of tuning and changing a performance with his choice of music. The goal of Roadies was to move people with great music and sound. I was so happy to be a part of such a special show.

Sound Apps

by Richard Lightstone CAS AMPS

An Interview with James LaFarge, the developer of LectroRM, FreqFinder and Timecard Buddy.

ABOUT ME AND APP WRITING
WHAT’S YOUR BACKGROUND?

Primarily, I’m a Sound Utility that has been in the film industry for a little more than ten years. I joined NY IA Local 52 in 2008 and just recently joined Pittsburgh IA Local 489. Programming has always been a hobby of mine, but I didn’t really have experience with anything truly commercial until LectroRM.

WHAT MADE YOU START WRITING LECTRO RM?

At the time, it was just a fun experiment. One of the most interesting things to do for me is to decypher protocols. At the time, I was day playing on a movie, Nature Calls, and I asked my sound mixer to borrow his RM device just to see if I could figure it out. Once I saw what the protocol was, I figured it would be useful to have it on my Android phone. Then, I figured it would be useful to have on everyone’s phone. I was already familiar with Java, which is what Android developers use. I learned Apple’s Objective-C just to develop LectroRM for iPhone.

DID YOU HAVE ANY HELP? LIKE OUTSOURCING OR ANYTHING?

I had help with the graphics, but that was by a friend. The rest was all self-taught programming skill. Probably why there’ve been so many bugs over the years.

WHEN YOU HAVE AN IDEA, DO YOU REALLY HAVE TO LEARN TO PROGRAM TO MAKE AN APP?

The path I took, yes. But Apple and Google make billions of dollars on apps that other people create. Really, what I can attribute my ability to put out a sellable product to is that Apple and Google work very hard to make the tools and information available for people willing to put in the work. Apple developed a relatively new programming language that it very much wants programmers to use; it has a lot of great resources on how to program in it.

YOU SAID SOMETHING ABOUT ‘WORK.’ ARE YOU SURE?

Yes, and ideas can be deceptively simple. LectroRM is probably as simple as it gets. It doesn’t require any sort of web service or online support (most ideas do). The UI is relatively simple. Even updating the remote controls for a new product is relatively simple (although reconfiguring the UI can be tricky).

But every year, Apple releases a new version of iOS. Often, it causes an incompatibility with the previous versions, and maintaining backward compatibility means branching the code in multiple paths. And it is only harder with more complicated apps. This year, for example, Apple changed a large portion of its new Swift programming language. LectroRM and Freq- Finder aren’t written in it, but my new app, Timecard Buddy, will have to be reprogrammed in large part to accommodate the changes. Long story short, ideas do not have value without the time and effort spent making it a reality.

THAT SOUNDS ROUGH! IS IT WORTH IT?

For me and the comparatively simple apps I make, I believe I earn a reasonable sum. I try to set prices to reflect the work, skill and value. The market is small but substantial, and there is still a constant stream of new users. It is enough that I feel free to take time off from work to program, particularly in the winter months. More important than money though: I have experienced no greater feeling of fulfillment in my life than releasing something I have created to be used by the greater community.

SO YOU SPLIT YOUR TIME BETWEEN FILM WORK AND PROGRAMMING. DOES THAT MEAN YOU’RE REALLY NOT GOOD AT EITHER?

Ha ha, I don’t know. Splitting my time that way has the fantastic effect of providing a certain balance to my life. Film work can cause a person to disappear from the rest of the world for lengths of time, but I don’t want to stare at a computer screen my whole life either.

That said, I wasn’t formally trained in either field. I matriculated from a music program at NYU: one that focused on recording engineering but did not translate into the majority of skills I use on set. I have great appreciation for the everyday struggle of continually learning and improving.

WHERE CAN WE FIND YOUR APPS AND HOW MUCH DO THEY COST?

LectroRM, FreqFinder and Timecard Buddy are all available on the Apple App and Google Play stores. LectroRM and FreqFinder sell for $20 and $30, respectively. FreqFinder’s TVDB add-on sells for $15. Timecard Buddy is free but will have a paid ad-free version in the near future.

ABOUT LECTRO RM
SO HOW DOES IT WORK?

The transmitter recognizes two audible frequencies as a 1 and a 0, respectively. When the remote is activated, you can hear the tone shift between those two frequencies as the data is communicated. The actual data is only two bytes, but there is some padding and error checking that helps the transmitter know that the data is what you want it to be.

HOW DID YOU FIGURE OUT THE DATA BEING SENT?

Well, I’m a nerd of sorts, so allow me to explain it in nerd terms. Some of you might remember a thing called Game Genie for popular 8-bit and 16-bit game systems like NES and Super NES. What it did was change pieces of memory in a game to make the player jump really high or have more lives. When Codemasters developed it, they had to look at a picture of the memory in the game and see how the memory changes while playing. From there, it’s pretty easy to see when four lives turn into three.

Looking at the RM remote control sound was like looking at the picture of memory. I could play the control sounds for two different settings and see what parts of the control sound changed. There are other parts to the equation, but most of them, like start and stop bits, still can be figured out just by comparing the control sounds to each other. The hardest part of reverse engineering a protocol is usually figuring out the checksum as it usually takes a lot of guesswork. The remote control tones use a somewhat obscure checksum algorithm that took a while to find.

SO YOU HACKED THEIR TRANSMITTER REMOTE CONTROL. DOES THAT MEAN YOU CAN MAKE IT DO COOL NEW THINGS?

Sadly, no. A few people early on, asked me if I could add features like low-cut filter control or incremental gain changes. But the remote just sends a signal. Lectrosonics has to build the interpretation of that signal into the transmitter, which is why not every transmitter supports every tone.

ALL OF THIS IS VERY BORING. WAS THERE SOME SORT OF POLITICAL SCANDAL WITH LECTROSONICS?

Scandal, no. But I still found it exciting. Lectrosonics has been stellar with me, and I’m sure they would be with anyone else who wanted to create a competing product. Understandably at first, Lectrosonics was cautious about being associated with a product they did not control. But it’s clear they appreciate that LectroRM makes their transmitters more flexible and useful. They do contact me when they want to see new functionality built in, and I am more than happy to oblige. And the remote functionality is a selling point for their transmitters, so they do use LectroRM when promoting it.

LECTROSONICS JUST RELEASED THEIR PDR DEVICE. DOES IT HAVE LECTRO RM SUPPORT?

Yes and no. Instead of adding the PDR controls to LectroRM, I created a standalone app called PDRRemote. It is a near clone of LectroRM, except that it only works with the PDR device, and it’s free.

ABOUT FREQ FINDER
WHAT IS FREQ FINDER?

FreqFinder is a calculator that is designed to make transmitter channel selection with respect to intermodulation more user-friendly. When many transmitters are used in the same area in the same frequency range, the combination of their transmissions can cause interference in ways that are not easily determined by the radio operator. FreqFinder makes accounting for that interference more manageable.

HOW DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE INTERMODULATION EFFECT?

Shared wisdom at first, experience after that and then studying when I went to write FreqFinder. When it comes to the algorithm itself, there is a common equation and set of practices employed by other software for this purpose. I’ve used Intermodulation Analysis System (IAS) fairly extensively in my work, but always for installs. I figured I could use a mobile version of the algorithm in my location jobs.

FREQ FINDER LOOKS AND WORKS VERY DIFFERENT FROM IAS THOUGH…

One of the most important parts of app writing is developing the right user interface. IAS is designed to provide a large number of compatible channels upon order. Their default calculation allows for large channel counts. While a scan can be imported, the frequencies provided do not account for the scan. For installs, large channel counts are needed, the radio atmosphere doesn’t change, and there is time to finetune and test the resulting channel lists. FreqFinder is meant to be on-the-go. Fewer channels are needed, and generating channels quickly are sacrificed for more deliberate channel selection.

YOU SAY THAT USER INTERFACE IS IMPORTANT BUT I CAN’T FIND A MANUAL ANYWHERE…

I’m often asked why I don’t have a manual and my usual answer is because by design, the user interface should be self-explanatory, and if it is not, I should redesign it. Then I offer to explain any part that doesn’t seem intuitive, and that helps me know what needs to be redesigned. I also encourage users to explore. Virtually, all functions have immediately understandable and reversible effects so you won’t break the app just by pressing buttons.

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY YOU THINK ABOUT WHEN DESIGNING A USER INTERFACE?

I usually think about user interface on two levels. The first level directs people where to go. Take the iPhone version of FreqFinder for example. A fresh install has an opening screen with three buttons. The left slide menu button and title bar button navigate away from that screen but very quickly navigate back to the home screen. The ‘+’ provides the immediate feedback of adding a new button to the screen with transmitter information and an arrow on the right, indicating progression. Pressing that button moves the configuration process forward and tells the user that his goal is to configure his transmitters.

The second level of user interface requires exploration. Nonessential functions are kept behind deeper menu trees and less intuitive user controls. The title button allows multiple profiles to be made. Long pressing on a transmitter in the list will bring the user directly to the Compatible Channels list, instead of the intermediary page. These functions are not needed to use FreqFinder, but they provide welcome advanced functionality. The left slide menu provides most of the smaller configuration items, but the default settings do not need to be changed in most scenarios.

OK I’VE CONFIGURED MY TRANSMITTERS. WHAT DOES FREQ FINDER DO WITH THEM?

The meat of FreqFinder is the Compatible Channels list. Selecting channels from this list assures users that their transmitter channels are compatible with each other. To determine this list, FreqFinder works in two stages. First, it takes every combination of two or three transmitters in your profile and calculates their intermodulation products. Then, it removes from the All Channels list the channels that are close in frequency to any of the intermodulation products calculated in stage one, leaving only compatible channels. There are variations to that theme in FreqFinder, but that is the broad concept.

THAT SOUNDS LIKE A LOT OF CALCULATIONS. IS IT SLOW?

At first, yes, and I had to do some UI magic to make it seem fast. For example: previously, when a user selected a transmitter and the configuration page appeared, the Compatible Channels calculation would start for that transmitter before the user navigated to the Compatible Channels screen. Now, devices are much faster and I’ve optimized the calculation quite a bit so the Compatible Channels list is generated more on demand.

THAT’S PRETTY COOL! GOOD JOB!

Thanks! Unfortunately, optimizing the calculation does make it difficult to alter it later. The speed boost in hardware has helped with some changes I felt were necessary later on.

SO WHAT ABOUT THIS TVDB THING I KEEP HEARING ABOUT?

Honestly, I think it’s the most useful part of FreqFinder. In all the experience I have with radio, the most critical aspect to performance beyond intermodulation and nearby operators is competing TV stations. TVDB provides a calculation of the field strength based on location, and in my experience, that number generally correlates with how happy I am with radio performance on a given day.

HIGH PRAISE FOR THIS EXTRA IN FREQ FINDER.

Don’t get me wrong, one should look out for anything that can go wrong. But intermodulation and the random taxi dispatch aren’t always factors. TV stations are the first thing to show up on a scan. At least in the United States, our legal operating ranges are TV station channels. Knowing how strong they are for a given channel is paramount.

SO WHY IS TVDB ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE UNITED STATES?
The FreqFinder app downloads directly from the FCC for its TV station data. I don’t run any servers or collect data to support TVDB, and it is important to give users up-to-date and authority-provided data. I’ve looked into other government agencies for other countries. Their data either needs to be translated or is not as complete or easy to access as the FCC’s. They even provided me the code I use to calculate field strength.
ABOUT TIMECARD BUDDY
WAIT, WAIT, WAIT. ANOTHER TIMECARD APP?

Yes, but this one has a meaning. The premise is to make the transition away from paper as innocuous as possible. Also, Android hasn’t gotten much love in this respect. As such, I have centered everything around images of payroll timecards themselves. The fields are all the same, including signature pads. And the result is a PDF of the original timecard for a given payroll company complete with entered fields. From there, we add some digital trappings.

DOESN’T EVERYBODY LOVE DIGITAL TRAPPINGS?

I certainly do! Fields can be stored in templates to be used from week to week (I call it, Autofill). Multiple employees can be managed at a time. And of course, no paper!

WHAT ABOUT AUTOMATICALLY CALCULATING HOURS AND MEAL PENALTIES FOR ME?

OK, so here’s the thing. Paper timecards don’t do that. And the entire premise is to make people comfortable switching to digital. So here’s the rule: we don’t automatically enter in anything. Users must be responsible for what goes on their timecard. However, there are hints provided. And to demonstrate why it is important to require users to enter in their own fields, here is one example of a hint. The Total Hours field provides three suggestions: No Lunch, 30- Min Lunch and 60-Min Lunch. The suggestion calculates the time from Call to Wrap, but it doesn’t know how much time to take off that total for Lunch. Nuances like this are rampant per location, per contract and per job. Timecard Buddy is in its early stages, but there are plans for calculations to check your pay totals.

YOU SAY TIMECARD BUDDY IS IN ITS EARLY STAGES. WHAT ELSE CAN WE EXPECT?

I don’t want to make promises, but there are ways that Timecard Buddy still feels incomplete. More calculation is one. Also, having used it for the last job, it seems clear that more work should be done for managing multiple people. A daily times email seems like a clear winner. And a little more polish. After which, I’ll release a paid version.

WILL THERE STILL BE A FREE VERSION?

Yes. My goal is to make Timecard Buddy ubiquitous, and people have a right to be cautious when it comes to their timecard. It will be the same as the paid version but with ads.ååå

The Radio Frequency Spectrum Puzzle Part 2

by Bill Ruck, San Francisco Broadcast Engineer

In order to understand what is happening with the UHF television band and how it has an impact on the use of this band for wireless microphones, one needs to take a look at several different aspects of the situation.

WIRELESS MICROPHONES

A wireless microphone is nothing more than a small radio frequency transmitter; and it has been around for a long time. The oldest example I’ve found is an “RCA RADIOMIKE” Type BTP-1A from about 1950. It weighed six pounds and had handles on both sides of the 11” high x 4 1⁄2” wide x 3 1⁄2” transmitter. Stated battery life was four hours but it took a strong person to hold that transmitter for that long a time!

Those of us of a certain age remember—and not too fondly— the Vega systems from the 1960s. These units had a much smaller transistorized transmitter but the main problem was that the transmitter was not crystal controlled. The receiver had a strong Automatic Frequency Control (AFC) circuit to track the drifting transmitter. The problem was that the AFC would also respond to a stronger frequency and it was commonplace to hear police or taxi cab transmissions in the middle of an event. And while the worked, they never sounded very good.

The next generation had crystal-controlled solid-state transmitters and used the 169 MHz–171 MHz VHF spectrum allowed under FCC Rules Part 90.265. Eight channels were specified at 50 kHz bandwidth in a band shared with hydrological systems (such as rain gauges). These worked well although the narrow bandwidth had a relatively high noise floor. The main problem was that there were only eight channels to use.

As transistor technology improved, systems in the UHF TV band started to appear. These had a higher 200 kHz bandwidth and lower noise floor. They also had relatively decent frequency response and low distortion, which was an improvement over previous systems. The first generation of UHF wireless systems was crystal controlled. If you stayed in one area, you could pick frequencies that were on unused UHF TV channels but if you moved around the US, it was always a risk that your wireless microphone systems would bump into a UHF TV station in another city.

Again, technology improved so the next generation of UHF wireless microphone systems was synthesized and could move around several UHF TV channels. Now, mixers that moved around, had a good chance of finding frequencies that could work no matter where they were located.

The combination of higher fidelity, reliable medium-range operation and robust construction completely changed the industry. Instead of plant microphones and boom microphones, now every actor could wear a wireless microphone. Instead of one or two microphones in use, more and more wireless microphone systems were necessary.

As long as there were lots of unused UHF TV channels, there was no problem finding enough radio frequencies to use for production. But, as explained in the introduction, those unused UHF TV channels have been greatly reduced and may go away entirely.

The FCC was forced to recognize the existence of thousands of wireless microphone systems during the 700 MHz planning. Their first response was “We looked at the database and only found a few hundred licensed users.” One needs to understand that from their perspective in a band that required licenses—and licenses have always been required—only licensed users count. Since very few eligible users actually held licenses, the vast majority of users were not considered.

REPORT AND ORDER FCC 15–100

Wireless microphone manufacturers, Broadway musical shows, the NFL and other major high-profile users forced the FCC to at least acknowledge the existence and need for wireless microphones. Finally, the FCC released the Report and Order (R&O) FCC 15–100 on August 2015 titled “Promoting Spectrum Access for Wireless Microphone Operations.” In the R&O, they did their best to tap dance around the problem, acknowledging the loss of UHF TV channels, with proposing only a few really usable options.

The changes in the R&O will become effective thirty days after the R&O was published in the Federal Register on November 17, 2015.

169 MHZ–172 MHZ BAND

The FCC proposes to combine a few of these channels to make four 200 KHz channels (169.475 MHz, 170.275 MHz, 171.075 MHz and 171.875 MHz). Licenses have always been required and users will continue to be licensed “pursuant to Part 90” and “applications will be subject to government coordination.”

944 MHZ–952 MHZ BAND AND ADJACENT 941 MHZ–944 MHZ AND 952 MHZ–960 MHZ BANDS

944 MHz–952 MHz is in Part 74, Subpart H and is primarily used for Studio to Transmitter Links (STL) and Inter City Relay (ICR) links stations. This band is already available to Part 73 licensees (AM, FM and TV stations) for wireless microphones. The FCC in this R&O expanded the eligibility to all current eligible Low Power Auxiliary Station (LPAS) entities such as Motion Picture Producers (MPP) and Television Program Producers (TPP).

The other two bands, 941 MHz–944 MHz and 952 MHz– 960 MHz, are primarily used for Private Operational Fixed services. The FCC will allow licensed secondary use in these bands with the provision of not causing interference to licensed Part 101 stations.

For the entire band frequency, coordination is mandated with the Society of Broadcast Engineers.

UNLICENSED OPERATIONS IN THE 902 MHZ–928 MHZ, THE 2.4 GHZ AND 5 GHZ BANDS

The FCC allows unlicensed operation of radio frequency devices under Part 15 in these bands. The problem is that nobody really knows who is using what at any place and at any time and all devices must accept interference. Since unlicensed operation is already allowed in Part 15, the FCC decided not to make any changes for wireless microphones in these bands.

1920 MHZ–1930 MHZ UNLICENSED PCS BAND

This band is designated for use by Unlicensed Personal Communications Service (UPCS) devices under Part 15. The FCC recognized that wireless microphones are presently made that use this spectrum and decided not to make any changes in this band.

1435 MHZ–1525 MHZ BAND

This band is shared by the federal government and industry for Aeronautical Mobile Telemetry (AMT) operations such as flight testing. It is also used often with Special Temporary Authorization (STA) for event videos. After much discussion, the FCC declined to establish a process for permitting wireless microphone use.

3.5 GHZ BAND

This band allows General Authorized Access (GAA) tiers of service for commercial wireless use. The FCC decided that this band had potential for wireless microphones.

6875 MHZ–7125 MHZ BAND

This band is primarily used for TV BAS stations and also has been opened up to Part 101 Private Operational Fixed stations. The FCC decided to allow Part 74 eligible users to use this band for licensed secondary use with coordination. No systems are available today in this band.

Of all of the mentioned new bands, the one already with equipment in production with useful, reliable range, is the 941 MHz–960 MHz band.

RECOMMENDATIONS

1. Although exactly how much of the “600 MHz band” will be taken away from UHF TV and exactly how many unused UHF TV channels will remain, cannot be predicted at this time. It would not be wise to purchase new equipment in the 600 MHz–700 MHz band unless it will pay for itself in a year or two.

2. If one desires to purchase new systems in the near future, the 941 MHz–960 MHz band is likely the better choice.

3. If you use or own wireless microphone transmitters and work in film or television production, obtain a Part 74 Low Power Auxiliary Broadcast License.

Editor’s note: Due to the efforts of the AMPTP, along with IATSE Local 695 brother Tim Holly, the FCC Report and Order (FCC 02–298) of October 30, 2002, changed the language of the Codes and Regulations to allow persons to hold a Part 74 license, previously open to only producing companies.

Cantar-X3

by Richard Lightstone CAS AMPS

[NOTE: In June 2013, TRANSVIDEO’s holding Ithaki acquired AATON, the French manufacturer of cinematic equipment, now Aaton Digital. Since this time, Jacques Delacoux with his team developed the Cantar-X3, the most advanced on location sound recorder that received a Cinec Award in 2014.]

JP Beauviala, aka “Mr. Aaton,” started the design of the AatonCorder back in 2000; the first working model arrived by 2002. In 2003, the fully functional Cantar-X was released and I still remember the excitement of seeing it demonstrated at NAB that year.

The Cantar-X could record eight tracks and was far from box-like, looking like a modern sculpture, as if from the imagination of Jules Verne. What set it apart was its excellent microphone preamps, rivaling the quality of Stefan Kudelski. Even better, the Cantar was both waterproof and dustproof. Also unusual, were the six linear, magnetic faders on the top and the four screens on its hinged front panel. The inner electronics were flawless and it utilized the excellent Aaton-designed battery system, allowing it to deliver twenty hours of continuous use.

The Cantar-X2 was released in 2006 with major hardware changes, and added software features such as AutoSlate, PolyRotate and PDF Sound-Reports, as well as a Mac and PC software called the GrandArcan that could control all the parameters of the machine. The Cantarem, an eightchannel very portable miniature slide fader mixer, was also new to the market.

In 2014, Aaton introduced the X3 with major changes in design and features. The X3 is capable of recording twentyfour tracks. Featuring forty-eight analog and digital inputs; eight AES, two AES42, twenty-four via Dante, eight analog microphone inputs and four analog line inputs. As a companion, the redesigned Cantarem 2 is equipped with twelve faders.

Production Mixer Chris Giles was introduced to the Cantar-X2 by Miami base mixer Mark Weber. Chris regales, “When I was covering for Mark on Bloodline (Netflix), a scene took us from a boatyard and then into the mangroves after nightfall. Not a problem for us! Rain or shine, grab the Cantar, put it in a bag with a few receivers, something to cover it when it rains, my boom pole and we are off!”

Chris describes the versatility of his Cantar-X3, combined with the Cantarem 2 mix panel in his current configuration.

Whit Norris is a recent convert to the Cantar and his reasoning was twofold; he could interface the X3 with his Sonosax SX-ST8D and record twelve channels with the Cantar’s built-in mixer. Whit describes the other positives: “I could record on four drives at one time all within the X3. There’s the SSD drive, two SD cards and a USB slot. The redundancy is unique to our field.”

Whit gave the machine a real ‘test drive’ on Fast & Furious 8. With the help of Chris Giles, they came up with a suitable routing plot. Whit assigned the mix to track 1, a combine of the mix out of the Sonosax and the internal X3 inputs. The AES inputs on the X3 to tracks 2-9, from the Sonosax AES outputs 1-8. The mic/line inputs directly in on the X3 are assigned to tracks 10 through 17. The line inputs 1-3 are assigned to tracks 18 through 20 and line 4 from the ST8D Mix out to the mix track on the Cantar.

For the locations in Cuba, Whit wanted a smaller footprint: “I went to a very small SKB case, where the Cantar was the mixer and the recorder. I had ten tracks with the Cantar, using it as a mixer. We needed to be very portable and I could just break the Cantar off and go with it when needed.”

Michael ‘Kriky’ Krikorian recently moved to the X3 and the Cantarem 2. “As a twenty-four-track recorder, I’m not worried about running out of ISOs. I record two mix tracks on channels 1(Xl) and 2(Xr). Xl is at -20db while Xr is at -25db. My wireless mics are assigned to ISO tracks 3-14 and are also post fader to Xl and Xr mix tracks. There is a menu setting that allows you to move your Xl and Xr metering to the far right of the display screen. This aligns metering on the display to match my fader assignments and place the mix tracks separate from my ISO tracks.” Michael continues, “On the Cantarem 2, faders 1 and 2 are boom 1 and 2 respectively, while faders 3-12 are for my wireless lavs. I assign the ten linear faders and the first two line in pots on the X3 as my trims.”

The display screen is the largest of any HD recorder on the market and the brightness range can be controlled for any environment.

The main selector, reminiscent of the Nagra, controls many features of the X3. For example, the one o’clock position takes you to ‘Backup Parameters.’ This function allows you to copy files from one media to another, restore trashed takes or create polyphonic files from monophonic ones. Since its introduction, the Cantar defaults to recording monophonic wave files but it allows you to create polyphonic files to any other media.

Two o’clock is ‘Session,’ which includes the project and which media you record to, as well as the sound report setup. Three o’clock is ‘Technical,’ such as scene & take, metadata, file naming and VU meter settings. Four o’clock ‘Audio & Timecode,’ including sample rate, bit depth, pre-record length and of course, all Timecode settings. Five o’clock is ‘In Grid Routing,’ Six o’clock ‘Out Grid Routing,’ Seven ‘Audio File Browser,’ Eight ‘Play,’ Nine ‘Stop,’ Ten ‘Test,’ Eleven ‘Pre-Record’ and Twelve o’clock is ‘Record.’

There are also six function buttons that take you to numerous shortcuts depending on what position the main selector is in.

Michael Krikorian states, “One of the major positive things I have experienced with the Cantar-X3 is the responsiveness of Aaton when it comes to firmware requests. They listen and respond. When you’re buying a recorder like this, you get the folks that built it, not just product specialists.”

Whit Norris adds, “They have been one of the most responsive companies as far as coming out with software. Despite being in France, Aaton responded to any issues or to anything I wanted to change. They addressed it very quickly and would have beta software within a couple of weeks. But they really were listening to myself and to others on improvements we wanted and acted very quickly on that.”

Michael talks about the sound report features. “I have been using the sound report function on the X3. It gives you the option to lay out your sound report to suit your preferences. You can change and move around your header info, not unlike doing a spread sheet. It lays out your scene, take, file name and tracks in a standard sound report format. I have been debating about using the sound report from the X3 only but for now, I will snap a report as a backup in each recorded folder as I still continue to use Movie Slate.”

One of the criticisms of the early Cantar-X1 and two buyers in North America was its Euro-centric functionality. The design of the Cantar-X3 seems to certainly address this market and goes beyond.

Lee Orloff CAS explains, “Coming to the end of long stretch as a Nagra D user, it was apparent that the writing was on the wall, the days of linear recording in our industry, digital or analog, were numbered. I, like many, were intrigued by Aaton’s new Cantar design. It moved on and off the cart seamlessly, felt good in the hands with its hybrid retro layout and was very easy on the ears.

Early adopters I imagine, started using it for similar reasons. But it never captured a wide audience here in the States. Was it just a bit too French? There were issues that didn’t fit our production workflow, not the least of which was the lack of realtime mirroring, that in the days of slow DVD dailies delivery brought about real challenges for the production mixer. Its native monophonic file format created another one. The beauty of the evolution of the recorder in its current incarnation, is that Aaton has addressed the early design challenges of the first and second-generation machines, keeping the qualities which made it so attractive, while adding current and future leaning functionality in a package with far more intuitive user interface than ever before.”

I marvel at the design team’s logic in being able to put so much and more in one highly technical recorder in Aaton’s Cantar-X3.

You Tube videos on the X3

Features

WAGING WAR:The Production Sound Team Goes Into Battle with Christopher Nolan on Dunkirk

The History of Sound in Motion Pictures

Sound Apps

Live-Record for ROADiES

The Radio Frequency Spectrum Puzzle Part 2

WIRELESS MICROPHONES

REPORT AND ORDER FCC 15–100

169 MHZ–172 MHZ BAND

944 MHZ–952 MHZ BAND AND ADJACENT 941 MHZ–944 MHZ AND 952 MHZ–960 MHZ BANDS

UNLICENSED OPERATIONS IN THE 902 MHZ–928 MHZ, THE 2.4 GHZ AND 5 GHZ BANDS

1920 MHZ–1930 MHZ UNLICENSED PCS BAND

1435 MHZ–1525 MHZ BAND

3.5 GHZ BAND

6875 MHZ–7125 MHZ BAND

RECOMMENDATIONS

WAGING WAR:
The Production Sound Team Goes Into Battle with Christopher Nolan on Dunkirk