Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1500728
Summer 2023 – LOCAL695.COM 57 the workload generally goes into hanging mics. On the Dane Cook special, we had to pull many stops as he wanted to do the special in an unusual place—his backyard. His house was in the Hollywood Hills, so loading in and logistics were an absolute nightmare for all involved. Luckily, he owned the house across the street as well, so we ran our base of operations from there over fiber on a crossover. My main challenge was getting a full-sized LCR line array PA system to Dane's top balcony while I was three stories down in his garage recording and mixing. Another thing was wind protection for twenty-six crowd mics. We rigged a combination of wired and wireless mics, hanging in spaced pairs along the perimeter, and an Ambisonic mic from above. We had the post contract on this, so any mess we made was ours to clean up. The game is to get full-bodied crowd sounds with all mics in sync and to run the PA quietly to give you enough separation in post for control. We had a Shure Axient System for his handhelds and Midas DL32 on the side of the stage, feeding into a Midas M32 at the FOH mix position via AES50. We daisy-chained the FOH to me downstairs in the garage on my Midas M32R into three backup recorders via Dante. This was a cool configuration as I could set the master trim and preamp controls from my mixer, and my FOH guy could do trims and such upstairs. One thing I love about comedy stuff is prep days; you'd never see that on a film set. It's also been a real pleasure meeting the other factions of A2's and comms people who are 695 members—usually, we'd never cross paths. They are highly intelligent, great to work with, and quite skilled. This gig showed me the importance of offline technical prep so that life can be easier on the day.