Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1543070
56 S P R I N G 2 0 2 6 I C A S Q U A R T E R L Y Since the cases would remain on the ground 24/7 throughout production, we made sure they were relatively watertight. This also meant no air circulated inside them. The modules ended up running at alarmingly high temperatures, but they never failed. I must commend Wisycom for making such reliable and durable equipment (we used the BFLT1 and BFLR1 modules). Initially, we powered the units on in the morning and turned them off at night, but eventually decided to leave them on 24/7, again with no issues. This is a testament to how reliable they are, despite the weather extremes we encountered through the production's four-month run. Real-Life Ratatouille On our first day at the property, we learned there was a rodent problem in the building that would house our Control Room. They assured us exterminators would deal with the vermin by the time we brought our equipment in. It turns out they were … optimistic. We became quite diligent about always closing doors and making sure light fixtures were left on overnight; but here and there we could see holes in the walls or unsolicited stool samples. One morning, two weeks before principal photography, as I turned on the sound cart, I noticed a couple of devices weren't on. I got on my knees, armed with a flashlight, and looked inside the cart. Two wires had been snipped as cleanly as if cut with a surgical instrument. It seems an industrious little mouse had entered the room through a floor vent to sample the merchandise, as it were. Said vent was quickly covered with cardboard, gaffer tape, and a sandbag—for good measure. We must credit our awesome location department, which brought in several cans of peppermint oil spray, Tomcat, and other rodent repellents for the video and sound crews (that owned most of the tasty gear in the building). We sprayed cart wheels, room thresholds, windowsills, and, eventually, thousands of feet of cable that were laid over roofs throughout the property. It would be at least two weeks before I relaxed and stopped checking under the cart every morning. Does OSHA Know You're Driving That Thing? The physical aspect of installing the fiber system turned out to be more arduous than expected. We drove a diesel-powered boom lift (aka "cherry picker") to run cables overhead and install antennas on roofs and tree branches. The lift had a safety switch that disabled it when the ground wasn't level. Since the terrain was quite bumpy, what should've been a quick, two- person operation became an annoying slog, where a third team member followed the cherry picker around carrying three pancakes (one eighth of an apple box), ready to place them under this or that tire to level the machine so the operator could lift the platform and run the cables. Those two days turned out to be quite a team-building exercise… Walk Test? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Rodent vs cable. Some of the antennas that were placed on roofs. Walk Test? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Walk Test! Next, we had to calibrate all those signals. Normally, we'd use cables in pairs of the same length with their antennas aimed at a common zone, poised to benefit from the aforementioned Antenna Diversity function. Though given the nature of our location, we ended up with a series of independent antennas covering a string of smaller zones instead. All our cables had different lengths. We had to compare gain levels between all the cables and balance the signal strength in adjacent antennas to avoid interference or artifacts whenever the actors walked from one zone to another.