Production Sound & Video

28 PRODUCTION SOUND & VIDEO – Winter 2021 he wanted an ankle pack, calf pack, in the small of his back, or hidden in his jacket. Daniel could base his decision on the action he was required to do, rather than where a 'bulge' would be less visible, because the SSM simply didn't cause bulges in the costume. There were times when we asked Daniel to wear two radio mics, especially when he was in military webbing, because of severe head turns in action sequences, and clothing rustle the webbing can create. This generally happens on one side of the body but not the other, meaning that if radio one had a rustle on it, radio two on the other side of Bond's chest was clean. Each mic was assigned their own track on the Zaxcom Deva 24. We didn't overuse this strategy. Daniel was being very generous in letting us use two mics, and we didn't want him to think it was a 'belt and braces' situation, so we only asked when we felt we really needed it, explaining why, and Daniel kindly accommodated the request. The rest of the cast were assigned Lectrosonics SMB transmitters and DPA 4061 mics unless there was a specifi c costume that required an SSM and a 6061; for instance, Ana De Armas's stunning ball dress. Robin Johnson, my other 1st Assistant Sound, is responsible for frequency mapping all the radio mics and comms, so he assigned a general plan that would allow me to run twenty radio mics at all times, only having to adjust and fi ne-tune specifi c frequencies if we had issues on location. We were actually incredibly fortunate that during the making of No Time to Die in Norway, Italy, Jamaica, and the UK, we didn't come up against any negative frequency situations, and apart from a few minor tweaks, our frequency plot remained the same throughout the fi lm. Vehicles are a huge part of what makes a Bond movie. Oliver Tarney asked me how I was planning to mic up the vehicles and I was happy to use whatever workfl ow he preferred. Whatever he asked me to do on main unit, I would also ask our Second Unit Sound Mixer, Tom Barrow, to mirror. Oliver asked for a stereo pair of lavaliers on the exhaust region of the cars that were being featured in each scene. He also asked that we use 'spot mics' (lavaliers) on any other parts of the vehicle that we felt gave interesting sounds. We would generally try to place a lav in the engine bay and then think about other unique sound effects the particular vehicle would give us. In Jamaica, Bond was driving an old school Land Rover, so it was the gear shift that had an old, grinding sound to it which I thought would mix well with the stereo exhaust tracks and the engine bay track, to wrap the theatre audience acoustically in exactly what it sounds like to be driving one. This was how we treated each vehicle—fi nd the stereo sweet spot on the exhaust and then add spot mics to pick up the other effects that would build a unique sound of each vehicle. I knew on No Time to Die we were going to come up against some huge SPL's for extended periods, as a lot of the vehicles were highly tuned and would be driving at high speeds with tire squeal, etc. There was also a bunch of motorcycles to consider. This motivated me to buy some specifi c lavs for the job. As I am extremely happy with the famous DPA frequency response—i.e., pretty much fl at from 20Hz to 20kHz—and I wanted to stick with the brand I knew and trusted, but I wanted to know I had the headroom to cope with anything, so I purchased some DPA 4062 lavaliers. These are acoustically the same as our favourite 4061, but give another whole 10dB of headroom, with the max SPL a huge 154dB. As soon as we tested them, I knew they were a great addition to the kit. They could be mounted very close to sound sources to make the effects we were recording clean of other unwanted noise, and were virtually impossible to square wave. These 4062's became our 'vehicle kit.' Tom Barrow and our second unit sound team did the same. We were ready to start shooting. We had been through each scene formulating a creative plan for our approach to the sound recording, and then putting together a technical plan to help us achieve our creative aims. The fi rst week would be a pre-shoot in Norway, shooting the fl ashback scenes. This meant I needed to get my old Nagra IV-S TC from its display in my screening room at home, and check it was still working. It was, and just putting batteries in it, and loading a roll of quarter-inch tape had me reminiscing about the start of my career. The texture of the alloy case and the feeling of the record lever in my hand were so wonderful to feel again. The Nagra had not been used since 1995, so I decided I had better get it checked over. Back in the day, the man who had regularly serviced the machine and converted it to timecode was the famous David Lane, who has since passed away (RIP). I knew there was another famous London-based Nagra technician who collects, repairs, and deals in old Nagras, a former Sound Mixer called Mike Harris. One of the issues was fi nding quarter-inch tape stock, and thankfully Mike had a source in Paris, and ordered some. Mike did a fantastic job servicing it and resetting the tape bias for the new brand of tape we would be using, as the old BASF 468 tape is no longer available. Mike said the machine was in perfect condition and saw no reason why it shouldn't display the same bulletproof reliability in Norway that Nagras have always been famous for. In Norway, a signifi cant percentage of the scenes would be fi lmed on IMAX cameras, and for that reason, I wanted to record on our usual Zaxcom Deva 24, alongside the Nagra. We could supply our usual ISO tracks to Oliver and his Post team, and I completely understood Cary's wish to have an old school analog feel to the recordings. I also wanted to use two Schoeps Super CMIT booms to give Sound Post the best opportunity to remove the camera noise. Using two Super CMIT's takes up four tracks, and I also wanted to radio mic every actor, so I knew we would potentially be running up to ten tracks on this part of the fi lm. I recorded my mix onto the Nagra to serve as a reference for Oliver to create a 'Nagra sound' from my Deva 24 ISO tracks, it would give him the ability to remix and de-noise individual tracks, rather than being forced into doing a more general de- noise on the Nagra mix track. If I only supplied a mono mix on quarter inch, I worried that it would potentially lead to ADR. As per my usual workfl ow, it was my aim to supply Sound Post with

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