Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1487667
Winter 2023 – LOCAL695.COM 43 specialty CAAVMIC cable from the Remote Audio company (a Trew Audio company) to tap into the flight communications connected to the boom mic of the flight helmet the actor is wearing. The aerial crew provided me with an interface cable built to connect to the modern jet used in Top Gun: Maverick, but unfortunately, the 1940s era Corsair plane we were using on Devotion was not compatible with this custom cable. The next stop was contacting a company called Bell's Aviation, which specializes in historical flight gear. The owner said he could make an interface cable for this 1940s plane, but the pandemic had disrupted supply chains. The part we needed was not going to be available until well after we would be done filming the scenes. We could not escape the fact that this 1940s technology was too old school for our modern recording solutions. So we had to get creative. Our first attempt was connecting a Lectrosonics SPDR Stereo Portable Digital Recorder to the original Sound Devices Mixpre so we could take advantage of the superior limiter in the Sound Devices unit. This was another piece of equipment purchased years ago that had not been used in quite a while. This and a couple of plant mics mounted around the cockpit were to be connected to the Mixpre mic XLR inputs, providing us with what we believed would be a workable solution. During a test flight, this proved not to be the case. The noise level in the cockpit was way too high to record any usable dialogue and the Mixpre pan pots kept getting hit by the actors knees. Back to the drawing board. Our next idea evolved over time to become something workable. The sound team experimented with using a red dot, black Sanken COS-11D padded lavalier wired under the actor's chest to see if that gave us the sort of clarity and quality we needed. It was an improvement to be sure, but still not quite up to par. Thankfully, our Sound Utility, John "Hank" Martin, is pretty handy at rigging and soldering, so he was able to thread the COS-11D into the flight helmet mic boom. Only by using this lavalier mic that was almost touching the actor's mouth were we able to cut through the deafening noise and record something intelligible. Best of all, the setup passed inspection by our Director of Photography, Erik Messerschmidt, ASC, who was confident that it would not be seen on camera. In the end, our compact rig consisted of the Sanken COS-11D wired directly into the flight helmet mic boom and plugged directly into the Lectrosonics SPDR Stereo Portable recorder and powered by an Ambient Eumel. Dual mono recording right track recorded -5db to be lower with limiters on both. In addition to filming during flight, we had about a week and a half on Video Wall stage where each of the actors would film coverage shots in the plane on a buck rig that was synchronized with the LED backdrop. The Director and First AD both needed to be able to communicate with the actors in the buck rig (a full-sized gimbal mount which is used to articulate the plane to simulate flight), so an earwig was requested. This made me nervous. The uncomfortable helmets the actors needed to wear were often pulled off in frustration at a moment's notice. The real possibility of my one remaining Phonak Invisity ear wig falling into the bottom of the cockpit floor where it could be stepped on or fall into any of the small dark crevices made us come up with a new solution. The Sidekick 3 IFB single-ear monitor from Bumblebee has a cable so thin as to nearly be invisible when properly hidden and had just become available for sale. Version three was now universal for either right or left ear. The first two generations required you to choose either the left or right ear. We