Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1399159
Fall 2021 – LOCAL695.ORG 23 an interior, I decided to employ the Super CMIT's, as they would be helpful at reducing the footfall from the dancers (I also had our 2nd AS, Ben Jeffes, removing the shoes of any dancers whose feet were not in shot), but I also knew the Super CMIT's would be great at reducing, if not removing, the 35Hz thumper track. One of the issues of using a thumper is that sometimes the sub bass can rattle the set, or the glasses on the shelves behind the bar if they are touching, so there is a certain amount of audition time, playing the thumper before the shoot begins, and walking around to find rattles and reduce them. This can be by simply removing offending items, getting a standby carpenter to nail stuff down, or working with the set dresser to adjust any set dressing that is noisy. Once this is achieved, it is a good idea to use a volume that is loud, but just below the threshold that will rattle what is left, as the rattles could well be within the dialog frequencies and won't be as easy to remove. I also put a very gentle slope 90Hz low-frequency cut onto the mix track. This is something I rarely do—I usually record completely flat with no bass cut, unless we have wind on the mics on an exterior, but I felt it was helpful to gently reduce the thump from the dailies and I knew 90Hz would not negatively affect the dialog. We used three booms, all of them with Super CMIT's, as there were some very hard spotlights and mirrors in the club. We all felt that employing three booms would reduce the likelihood of shadows or mics in the mirrors, and reduce the swinging by placing a boom on each character. The scene worked really well and when I phoned Picture Editorial the next day to ask how much of the thumper they were hearing in the Avid, they said, "What thumper?" When I explained what we'd done, the 1st Assistant Editor couldn't believe he couldn't hear it and told me he would go into the ISO tracks and have a listen, as they had only been using my mix. When I called back, he let me know that on his studio monitors he could not hear the thumper on any of the booms or the lavs. This was really great news! Our next location was the beautiful city of Matera, Italy. Constructed in 10 BC, it resembles a city in the Middle East. It is one of the oldest cities in Europe with its original architecture still intact. This location brought its own share of physical issues due to the restrictions on vehicular access, which meant carrying the sound cart and ancillary equipment up and down thousands of stairs per day. It was extremely physically demanding. For this work, we reduced the weight of my usual Eurocart, which is based around an alloy-tubed Ursta cart, which UK readers will be familiar with. We already run a very light 100Ah lithium battery on it, but for Matera, we removed anything that was not strictly necessary. We probably reduced its weight by around 10kg (25 pounds). I don't like working in a bag for a lot of reasons; mainly the difficulty in watching three or more cameras without my usual monitors, and the compromises regarding radio and comms reception. I will go handheld in extreme circumstances, but for Matera, we decided to build an extremely lightweight cart for situations where we wanted to have access to all of our radio mics, sound crew comms, and picture monitoring, but in a location where it was impossible to carry our 80kg Eurocart. Our lightweight cart was the Cannibal Industries/Tone Mesa "Super Zuca" cart. These are great little Zuca carts, expertly modified for our industry to add some extra strength where required whilst still retaining the extremely lightweight and small footprint of the Zuca. I basically mirrored the equipment and capabilities of my main cart, but without the large 12-channel Audio Developments mixer board that I like to use. The Super Zuca housed a Zaxcom Deva 16, a Sound Devices 688 (for safety copy and additional output routing), a Lectrosonics Venue field receiver, along with a slightly simplified version of our Sennheiser RX/TX array for sound crew comms. This tiny cart was powerful, but could be carried up multiple staircases by From top: Arthur Fenn and Robin Johnson booming Bond (Daniel Craig) and Moneypenny (Naomie Harris). Robin picking up the car door slam and Arthur waiting curbside for the dialog; Daniel Craig; Simon Hayes checking the Schoeps MK41 placement on the plane rig.