Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/778398
34 W I N T E R 2 0 1 7 C A S Q U A R T E R L Y I can remember the first time I recorded double-system sound. Actually, I should correct that, it was single system since it was recording sound directly onto a film camera, the "CP16." I was "moonlighting" as a news sound recordist in 1983. Back then, I worked for the BBC as an audio assistant in Belfast. On our days off, sev- eral of us would work for news freelance cameramen. These were fearless cameramen like Patsy Hill, Cyril Cave, and Jim Deeney, who covered the political strife in Northern Ireland that became known to many as "The Troubles." My sound equipment was simple: one Sennheiser 816 microphone, two cables, and a pair of headphones, with an umbilical cord to the camera. Sometimes we might have one radio mic, but that would be rare. Working in news was a tremendous training ground for a sound recordist because you learned to do so much with so little. Now, since my early film sound recording days, the type of work that I do has changed considerably as has the amount of equipment that I use. In fact, looking a couple of years ago at The Parade of Sound Carts seminar that CAS hosted, the sound mix- ers' "footprint" keeps getting bigger with a little more of everything. However, a project that I did almost three years ago that was released in May of 2016, offered me a chance to get back to doing what I did all those years ago which was, keeping it simple. Last Days in the Desert is a film that I worked on for 24 days in February of 2014. The project was directed by Rodrigo Garcia and produced by Julie Lynn, Bonnie Curtis, and Wicks Walker. When I got the call, I was told we would be shooting in California; that was a big plus and the cast would be Ewan McGregor, Ciarán Hinds, Ayelet Zurer, and Tye Sheridan. The storyline was to be set 2,000 years ago. It would be a religious parable, and we would be shooting in the Anza- Borrego State Park. When I went on the tech scout, I was amazed by the beauty of this particular area. It is the largest state park in California and the second largest in the continental United States. As sound recordists, we get the opportunity to visit so many locations that one would never think of or get an opportunity to visit. Borrego State Park is one of those. We had to get into a retired military personnel carrier to take us into the remote locations that were a 30-minute bumpy off-road ride into the desert, far away from highway traffic. The driver of these amazing vehicles was owner-operator Joe Raffetto, from Desert Tours. When he's not delivering film crews deep into the badlands, he has an amazing tour operating business. I understood from the initial scout that we would have to put together a portable sound package capa- ble of being hand carried by the sound crew: boom David Raymond, utilities Zach Wrobel and Eric Bautista, and myself. My biggest concern was generator noise in what became the quietest environment of my recording career. You can imag- ine my relief when our DP said that for our day work we wouldn't be doing any set lighting; it would be natural light. And to make things even better, 90 percent of the film would The Camera Department also had to carry enough batteries to keep going through the day without resorting to have AC power for their charging stations. " "