Production Sound & Video

Summer 2019

Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1152338

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Many years ago, I was on a commercial with the late Leonard Nimoy as spokesperson, and he was justifiably annoyed with the production company for their many screw-ups, such as the car with no air conditioning that that picked him up for the 3-hour ride to the location. My boom operator had to work very hard to get a quiet mounting for the radio mike, since his wardrobe was 100% polyester, including the necktie. The rehearsals were fine, so Leonard went back to his motor home to await the "magic hour" for shooting. Magic hour arrived, but Leonard didn't. As the light was fading, he finally showed up, not in the best of moods, as the A/C in his motor home wasn't working very well either. He was hustled into position on the set and the director yelled "Roll!" As the dialog started, so did the clothes rustle, on every fourth or fifth word—definitely unusable. My experience told me that he had messed with his tie while away from the set, and it will take a complete rip-out and re-rig to fix—at least two to three minutes of the at-most ten minutes of usable light remaining. The director was one of my regulars, very talented, but stern and disdainful of incompetence. Fortunately, he trusted me. Unfortunately, he trusted me to the point that he wasn't wearing headphones because he needed to listen to one of the clients during the shot. I immediately got up, during the take, and told him the sound was N.G. and I needed two minutes to fix it. He wasn't pleased with the news, but called "Cut!" I headed directly for Leonard, because I had already taken the necessary items with me before I left my cart. I re-rigged the lav in a minute-and-a-half, and put the Nagra into "Record" even before I sat back down in my chair. Because of the crucial nature of the situation, I knew it would not look good if I merely sent in my boom op, even though they could handle the problem as well as I (or perhaps even better). Seeing me dealing with the lav, my boom op had automatically brought a I'm not uncertain—am I? LEVEL UP to extreme performance Introducing the D2 Digital Wireless Mic System ® Dante® is a registered trademark of Audinate Pty Ltd . • 8 channels in a single RU • 24 Bit/48 kHz digital audio for studio grade sound quality • 3 receiver diversity modes • Backward compatible Digital Hybrid Wireless® transmitters! Leverage your current investment!

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