Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1525020
Fall 2024 – LOCAL695.COM 27 CF cards from the 744, so I was turning in BOTH the CF card from the 788 and the 744. Also, the paper sound report sheets were getting harder to find, and various software options for creating electronic sound reports began to be available. I started with Sound Report Writer, and still use it, though I believe support for it has ended. It also generates a PDF file, which the post people found more accessible than the CSV files generated by the 788. The other casualty besides DAT was the DVD-RAM. The blank discs were increasingly rare. The post house had to move to a different archival protocol, since they no longer had access to hard media. The CF cards were sent to the post house, copied, and returned to be reformatted and used again. I installed an external CF card reader/writer, with the 788's firewire output. Now I could turn in three CF cards, one from the 744, two from the 788. The original crystal Comteks were getting long in the tooth. When I sent one in for repair, the note came back, "THIS WAS MANUFACTURED IN 1978!" So I replaced them with the 216 MHz models. As we have all discovered, no matter how many Comteks you carry, there always seems to be demand for more. I have fifteen now. My request for the next generation of IFB receivers is to contain a GPS chip so they can be tracked. Or the capability to be geo-fenced: They let out a screech if they are accidentally taken home … just a thought… I upgraded to a 664, with the 788 as backup. I replaced the Mackie panel with the Sound Devices CL-12. I now had the ability to create a separate private Comtek feed for the sound crew. Then the world changed again. When COVID hit, we were in the middle of episode seventeen, in the middle of a scene. Mid-day on March 13, 2020, we were sent home and that episode was the last that aired that season. In a typical year, we would start a new season beginning late July or early August. With COVID, we didn't begin until September, after several weeks of Zoom meetings to figure out a safe filming protocol. The COVID restrictions brought along major changes to the way we worked. Firstly, they added a third camera on a telescoping crane. All the Camera Assistants were separated from their cameras and worked the focus remotely, away from the cast peering at small video monitors. The third camera made it necessary to wire all the actors all of the time, since the third camera made booming a scene nearly impossible. The storyline that season involved COVID in the lives of Grey- Sloan Memorial Hospital. The actor doctors had to wear a PAPR mask: PAPR=powered air purified repirators. The entire head was covered with an inflated mask, the front was full-face visible clear plastic. On the belt was a battery-driven air pump, about as loud as a hair dryer. The air came up the back through a wide tube, and spilled out over the actor's forehead. If the blower was turned off, the clear front would fog up almost immediately. To mic these actors, it was determined that "ear set" mics were the only option. There simply was no place to hide a lav in the mask where it would not be seen or hit hard by the incoming air. It became necessary for the actors to wear earwigs to hear each other. The ear-set mics had to be taped to the inside of the masks since they shifted a lot if hung over the ear, making matching difficult. Surprisingly, this setup worked, as the isolated mics inside the masks so close to the actors' mouths, eliminated most of the fan noise. The only time the fan blowers were a big problem was if the masked doctors were around a patient's bed, who wasn't wearing a mask. We did what we could with turning off mask fans if possible, but with three cameras and three different angles, this was also challenging. When the COVID season brought the third camera, I was able to bring in an extra utility person. They were sequestered with the cast in a separate area and were wired there. We still use three cameras and I still have an additional utility. Three timecode Mike 'Fuzzy' Anderson