Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/830490
C A S Q U A R T E R L Y S P R I N G 2 0 1 7 37 I would have the knowledge to say to a director while on set, "You won't be able to fix that in post." That is very admirable. I tried to get my hands on anything and everything related to audio. I have an innate curiosity for all things audio and love learning. I believe that you must continue to find new chal- lenges or else your skills begin to atrophy. And it shows with the different types of audio positions you've held throughout your career. How did you first get into live broadcast programming? Dick Clark Productions was the first to give me a shot in live TV with the Soap Opera Digest Awards. Definitely sweating on that first one! But that led to them hiring me for the Golden Globes and then the Academy of Country Music Awards. What were you handling on those jobs? For the first seven years, I handled all the production elements and music mixing live. As the shows and music acts became more complicated, I asked for a separate live-music mixer and was able to bring Biff Dawes on board to handle all of the live/ live performances—and he's been with me ever since. How were you dealing with inputs then? In the analog days of the ACM Awards, I had a main console which handled the production elements and performance vocals. Then I was surrounded by consoles of different sizes and configurations to handle the various band inputs. I had to create a cockpit-like situation so every fader was within arm's reach. Of course, these days, not only have we separated the production mixing duties from the music mixing duties, we all have digital consoles. That means higher input and output counts in a much smaller footprint and snapshot recall capa- bilities as well. Were you also dealing with comms? On certain smaller shows, yes. On larger shows, the comms were given to a separate crew. Let's discuss Grease Live! Obviously, a heavily scripted show. I'm used to live-scripted awards shows and I worked on sit- coms for 15 years, which are also scripted. That gave me a lot of experience cross-fading between microphones. With Grease, it was the combination of live production and unrelenting cross-fades between microphones and transitions between scenes. It was the hardest show I've ever done! With the continuous transitions and scene locations, I'm try- ing to imagine mic configurations and placements. How early on did you start addressing them? In early November, two months before the show airdate, all of the creative and technical departments had a meeting. The wardrobe and hair departments were part of that meeting. Wardrobe was very familiar with incorporating mics and wire- less packs since they came from Broadway and were the best in their field. We gave them a wireless pack and DPA mic as an example of the mics we were using and they designed pouches and ways to conceal the gear into the wardrobe. For example, for some of the wigs, they'd put two DPA mics and two packs in the wigs when possible. Also, the A2s we hired knew how to deal with the logistics of changing mics and packs during wardrobe and hair changes. Given how large the cast was, how many dialogue inputs were you dealing with? We had 54 wireless microphones, including backups which had to work everywhere at all times. Dave Bellamy at Soundtronics designed an antenna system so mics would work all over the set at Warner Bros. He had to coordinate frequencies with the Warner Bros. lot because of all the other projects going on. We stopped at 54 because, basically, we ran out of frequencies—so it was because of physics! All actors retained the same input. We had two pre-hear positions where audio assistants would check mics constantly to let us know if something was having an issue. If it was, and knowing that my hands were busy mix- ing, they'd re-patch it on the fly so the backup would land in the same fader as the primary. We also had a few fishpoles, a couple of Fisher booms, and some area mics for ambience and perspective. How did you set up your console? Principals were assigned dedicated faders. Secondary characters important to each act would land in different positions. My J. Mark King