Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1179544
Text and pictures ©2019 by James Tanenbaum CAS, all rights reserved. Ha Noi audio booth (I took my shoes off inside, but kept my black socks on) In 2012, I went to Viet Nam to train audio engineers for VTV, the state-run TV network, and was paid $17,075 plus expenses for the 6-week trip. (I would have gone for free, but I didn't tell them that.) The JB-1 features a display and menu system, which allows for ease of use and display of timecode and settings. It reads, generates and jam syncs to all standard frame rates including 23.976 for High Definition shoots. The JB-1 features an automatic jam sync capability, which senses the incoming timecode rate. Cross jamming of different rates can be accomplished as well. I'm not being sexist—there are large numbers of women in scientific, technical, medical, and managerial positions in Viet Nam. At present, I continue to mentor by taking phone calls from other mixers, giving advice and feedback to equipment manufacturers, and writing articles for Production Sound & Video magazine. THAT'S A WRAP To wrap up, in the early '80s, if I remember correctly, I got a call for an interview for a low- budget feature. Thanks to a production office screw-up, another production mixer arrived at the same time. The secretary was embarrassed, but there was no problem—it was Bruce Bisenz, with whom I was on friendly terms. I got in to see the director first. Soon after the interview started, he told me that he didn't want "good sound," and explained: "I'm tired of the re-recording mixers messing up my sound. I want the background sounds, birds, traffic, stuff like that, mixed in with the dialog so they can't change it from the way I want it." This was against everything I had learned so far, because not only could unexpectedly-low level dialog not be pulled up without increasing the ambient sounds, and thus calling attention to the change, but many backgrounds, like traffic, were unpredictable, and could suddenly drown out an otherwise wonderful performance. I had recently bought a new Nagra IV-S recorder (2-track/stereo, but before timecode) and politely suggested that I could record the ambient sounds separately from the dialog, so he could adjust the relative levels to his liking later, and then mix them together before giving the mono track to the editor. "Thanks, but no thanks. Don't call us—we'll call you," was his reply, though more judiciously put. I think Bruce overheard all this, and told the director exactly what he wanted to hear, because when I ran across him somewhat later, he told me he got the job. Then the project folded.