Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1122919
18 I t's hard to believe that I have been so fortunate to have mixed Modern Family for ten years. It's been a great ride and I'm very humbled by the three Emmys from nine nominations and similarly, five CAS Awards among eight nominations. Of course, I couldn't do it without my crew and it's a long list; Preston Connor was the main Boom Op for the first three seasons. "Serge" Popovic took over and is still with me. Second Boom/Utility was Dan Lipe for the first five seasons, and then William Munroe took over. We regularly have an additional Boom, so thanks to Dan Lipe (who came out of retirement the last two years), Peter Hansen, Jacques Pienaar, Richard Geerts, Corey Woods, Ken Strain, Noel Espinosa, Craig Dollinger, Brian Wittle, John Hays, Danny Greenwald, John Sheridan, and Mark van Kool. My regular Pro Tools Playback Operator is Mark Agostino. Modern Family is a two- to three-camera show where we approach every scene as a oner. It certainly presents chal- lenges when you're trying to capture good dialog because one camera is going to do a wide, another a single, and the by Stephen A. Tibbo CAS MY DECADE WITH MODERN FAMILY third, maybe a two-shot. We developed communication with all of the operators to understand how each scene is going to be shot. "We're wide for the first two lines, then we're in tighter, and then on a specific line, we're going to pop wide again. But here are the wides and you guys should be able to boom everything." When I began the series, I realized that there was at least one scene in an episode with as many as twelve to fourteen actors! I started with a Deva and a SD 788, and a Yamaha 01V96. Initially, I broke the ISO's out on two recorders. The first nine ISO's were on the Deva, and the remainder of the ISO's on the 788. I recently upgraded to the O1V96i and record to two Sound Devices 970's with Dante and it's just made my life easier. I have the two 970's next to each other and my monitor out of the recorders is fed into an A/B box. On Recorder A, I have it set to listen to a solo of the mix. Recorder B is also in solo mode and I can quickly switch over to the B machine and hear any ISO. I can track down problems. I got used to doing it on the Deva where I just put my finger on the screen and solo a track, and it's almost as fast.