Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1277927
Things Are Built for a Reason Soon after the screen test, I was sent Tony Kushner's impressively large (that's an understatement) security- encrypted script. It was a monster for sound. A literary masterpiece, of course, but a monster! Twenty-two characters talking, singing, dancing, and all in the same scene! And not just one scene, but a multitude of them! In addition, there were massive 10-plus page dialogue scenes that all seemed somehow to be in motion, walking, running, fighting. Then there were period cars, period props, machinery, and costumes… You get it. To top it all off, 85 percent were on location all over the streets of NYC (and New Jersey) in the heat of the summer! Obviously, the game changed. At that point I realized, to quote a famous Spielbergian quote, "I'm going to need a bigger boat." I decided to go for broke (literally and figuratively) and build the Ferrari of sound carts; a state-of-the-art beast capable of handling what was to become a 78-day Broadway show performed on the streets of New York City. I'd never worked with Steven before but his reputation precedes him: a director who's on set 15 minutes before call with a lens in his hand and expects the same dedication and competence from everyone around him. A level of work where there's no room for error. Evolution So where do you start? The tools and priorities of what we do have changed radically since I became a mixer. Back when I first entered the business (when Moby Dick was a minnow), it was all about the Nagra, everything else was secondary. The Nagra was the Mercedes of the era and almost as expensive. The next major technical development was the multi-channel mixer: Sela, Sonasax, Cooper, which allowed us to mix multiple mics to a stereo Nagra two- track. In that day, no matter how many mics you were mixing, if you didn't open the correct fader at the correct time, that sound wasn't ending up on that quarter-inch tape. We weren't laying down ISO tracks, we were mixing every mic to two tracks. The crazy thing is, just a few years earlier, production mixers were mixing everything to a mono track! If you needed more tracks, you had to use fatter tape. On The Doors and Private Parts, I used two-inch analog tape recorders to get the 24 tracks needed. It seems crazy now. Wirelesses were comparatively still young and developing, but fast becoming a necessary tool on every cart. The limitations of those wirelesses were many, including range, sound quality, distortion, overloading at the head, large transmitters, transmitters that ran hot… The next addition to a production mixer's arsenal came at the end of the '90s with the digital recorder. First was the prosumer DAT (which I hated because of its low bit rate, but did use it for effects due to its compact size). Then around 2000, discs made their entrance. First came the Fostex four-channel MiniDisc recorders, which were pretty good. From there, digital recorders developed rapidly, allowing eight- track recording. They are now one of the most reliable and least expensive components on a cart. For reference, today, a digital recorder costs about the same as one or two wireless channels. Lastly, digital mixers are beginning to make a strong showing in our field due to the need for more channels, physical size, weight, flexibility, and the potential of Dante connectivity. Wireless I hated wireless. As an analog mixer who loves nothing more than a boom in the sweet spot, I went kicking and screaming into the wire-everyone world, to the point where I'd talk the older established actors (who hated wearing wires) into saying they didn't want to wear wires (unless, of course, I said it was necessary). But the world has changed. Big time! Production mixers today live and die by wireless. Everything is wireless; our booms, every actor wired, IFB's, Comteks, earwigs, god mics, antenna systems, wireless speakers, and everything else. So considering all that, the first building block of my cart—the heart and engine—would be the wireless system. But which one? Five months prior to filming, I sat down with Peter Schneider from Gotham Sound to plot our course. There is no one better than Peter to figure out technical complexities. The first step, he called all the big wireless manufacturers to give us private demos of their newest technology. Each demo lasted about 2-3 hours while Gotham Sound filmed each one. The great news was that each company has made leaps and bounds in advancements. It was a On Across the Universe in Liverpool recording group vocals for "Hey Jude"