Production Sound & Video

18 PRODUCTION SOUND & VIDEO – Spring 2021 Clockwise from top left: Sound World during prep; testing comms; modifying the breast plates of 1940 equipment to accept wireless feed to head- phones and mic/transmitter lines; soldering new working headphones into 1940's equipment. a dedicated Communications Mixer (with its own operator) to mute and open the speaker/mic channels as required. The mics themselves were given to the set painters and painted the exact same color as all the other wires, conduit, and set walls so they literally disappeared in plain sight. In fact, all of our cables some five hundred feet in all were painted so that we could wire the set as needed. Next was the "Sound Phone" as the Navy calls it. This was very similar to the Bitch-Box except it is a private one-to- one connection handset for the captain to talk to the various departments. Again, all 1940's equipment. I decided that the preferred solution for this issue would be to rewire the insides of the phones and send the production audio from the actors directly to the earpiece. I took apart the phones removing the voice module and reinstalling a working headphone driver from some old 7506's, wired in the driver, ran cable through the handset down to a one- eighth-inch jack so I could plug it into an IFB which could be hidden on set. Now I could route the signals I wanted to whichever phone was needed. This required however, a discreet IFB channel dedicated to "Sound Phone." The third major equipment used by the Captain (Hanks) on the bridge (pilothouse) was a ship-to-ship radio telephone referred to as the TBS (Talk Between Ships). This allowed the Captain of the convoy to talk directly to the other ships in the convoy so as to help keep the convoy together on this dangerous Atlantic crossing. As our Director wanted these conversations to be live rather than have a script supervisor read the lines, the TBS also had to be fully functional. The TBS is a unique piece of equipment with a unique look and was very hard to source. Any mods would have to be very carefully done so as to not upset the Production Designer and Set Decorators! Again, I must take time to thank all those that helped me get access and were patient as I took the equipment apart to figure out the best way to make it work for our film needs. It was not possible to replace any of the phone cords and as the unit was totally full of non-working parts, anything I did needed to be remote from the TBS itself. Testing the connections within the unit and the handset, I used the existing 1940's wiring to connect a replacement headphone driver, then added a discreet cable coming through the set wall to another IFB (another channel). The signal sent to the TBS was going to be from voice actors, off screen and off gimbal, so I set up a VO station close to my Comms Mixer with up to three "push to talk" handheld PA-style mics. This would ensure no unwanted signals when not in use or any cross talk if more than one actor was playing the various convoy ship roles.

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