Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1197261
40 There were a lot of days where we were at the mercy of the schedule, at the race track in the morning racing the cars around when the light was nice and low, and the image looked pretty. Then in the afternoon, we would shoot all the dialog around Pit Row. That location was at the Agua Dulce Airfi eld in the desert. In the morning, it's nice and calm, and then by the afternoon, there are 40- to 50-mile-an-hour winds, visually you can't really tell the wind is blowing and it was also 110 degrees, so it was just hot and sweaty. We had to be very careful in the way we radio miked the actors, making sure they were wind-protected, good sounding, but not buried, as they were just wearing T-shirts. Craig Dollinger is my Boom Operator and is terrifi c at radio miking the talent. We shot with two, three, Located in southern Jordan, near the Saudi Arabian border, the Wadi Rum Desert looks a lot like Mars. (Photo: Giles Keyte) and four cameras so the radio mics were the rule for the majority of the fi lm. They were Lectrosonics SSM's with Sanken Cos 11's. For any of the sequences in the race cars with Christian, Matt, and Tracy Letts, we were on the Biscuit Rig from Allan Padelford Camera Cars. This is a custom-built drivable process trailer with a very powerful (and noisy) GM 32 valve Northstar engine. We used DPA 60 series lavaliers here, miking both the actors and planting another in the vehicle, allowing us to capture the loud performance dialog and yelling as we traveled the track. The camera was in the car so I dropped a bag rig with a Sound Devices 633, a couple of Lectrosonics 411 receivers on the seat beside the actor to be as close as possible to avoid any RF spray from the process trailer engine. We'd hit record and let it go as they drove. I piggybacked the audio into the microwave video transmitters so Director James Mangold and everyone else could hear the dialog in Pit Row. In any scenes where Christian talks to a driver in another car next to him, we had another receiver into the 633, and once the driver was in the frame, maybe ten feet away from the camera, we had reception on his mic for his line. Early on in the schedule, fi lming the Shelby Cobras, we hard-lined a couple of lav mics for the engine and exhaust into the 633 so we could record the sound of the engine, the car racing around the track, and the actors' dialog. That was our go-to standard. The picture race cars, the GT40, and the Ferrari did not have their original engines, so we knew that postproduction would later record the authentic cars. Four cameras are rigged around Christian Bale (portraying Ken Miles) for a racing scene shot at Willow Springs International Motorsports Park. The action continues with the assistance of what the filmmakers call the "Pod-Car."