34 PRODUCTION SOUND & VIDEO – Summer 2021
THE FOUR-PERSON
SOUND CREW
by Jamie Gambell
"Left track, boom, right track, radios"; the fi rst
words I said into the slate mic on the fi rst shot of the
fi rst scene of my fi rst feature fi lm I mixed. The camera
shooting through the door as two characters go through
it and run down a fl ight of metal stairs following them
down. A simple setup of an HHB Portadat, SQN fi eld mixer,
and just two Audio Ltd 2020 radio mics (with Sanken
COS-11's). It was the only time that my team; myself,
Boom Operator Ben Greaves, and Utility Tim Surrey, would
use those radio mics for the entire show. How times have
changed.
In the decades since that day, the role and workload of the
Sound Utility has grown exponentially; multitrack recoding
on set and the quality of the tools has seen radio mics
becoming more and more prevalent, and, indeed, on some
shows, we live and die by those tools. Good Trouble, the
freeform series that I have been mixing for three seasons,
