Features

The History of Sound in Motion Pictures

Hulfish

The Hulfish material is from David S. Hulfish’s 1909 book, The Motion Picture: Its Making and Its Theater.

It’s an early 20th-century reference to the ongoing development and attempts to create a viable cinema with sound. It also highlights the focus at that moment on synchronization in a primitive mechanical form, ultimately recommending “playback” during filming as the best solution for the time. The bigger technical obstacle still to be solved is amplification, and some very interesting aspects of that technical journey are to come in future additions to this column.

Sound Apps

by Matt Price

With the proliferation of iPhones, iPads and Android devices, there are many new and powerful apps that help us each day. In this edition, we feature a free app designed by Matt Price in Great Britain, called Soundrolling.

Matt explains, “Soundrolling app is basically a natural progression of my blogs and other ventures over the past five years. Gear was coming down in price and more people were buying equipment and getting started, so I felt as a community, we need to better communicate the values and unwritten rules.

I decided to make the app free because to me, the real value is the community; with more people, there are more ideas that have a multiplier effect of helping the people and attracting a wider audience. There are some great ideas coming out of Soundrolling I will eventually incorporate other departments such as editorial and post production sound to essentially be a central source that is as fluid as the community it serves.

“I’ve spent around £2,000-f3,000 on the app with failed attempts and even trying to unsuccessfully outsource it a few times, so I decided just to do it all myself and found an interface that works really well along with £60 a month going to support from others to help implement some features and keep the app with as little bugs as possible. I will be spending about £800 a year in outsourcing some tasks and £97 goes to Apple every year for being a developer.”

Despite his own expenses, Matt is determined to keep the app free.

“I have had over two thousand downloads and plenty of suggestions for more features. I’m really looking forward to how it develops, and I’m currently getting between 1,000-2,000 page views a day.

The more people get involved, the better it will become and I am more than happy to fit pieces of this giant puzzle together.”

HERE ARE ITS FEATURES:

1 – CAMERA CHEAT SHEET

This is where you can view the timecode inputs and audio inputs for major digital production cameras (Arri, Blackmagic, RED, Sony, Canon …)

2 – YOU TUBE VIDEOS

From tutorials on how to recover formatted cards to comparing £1.20 lavalier to a £270 lavalier. I’ve been on You- Tube for more than five years doing tutorials and sharing what I do.

3 – SOUND CHATS

I have more than forty interviews with Dialog Editors, Sound Mixers, Re-recording Mixers, Foley Artists and Boom Operators on some of the world’s biggest blockbusters and Oscar-winning films. These are also available as podcasts and videos.

4 – FINDING LOCAL AUDIO VENDORS AROUND THE WORLD

Finding audio vendors local to where you are at the moment is going to vastly cut down your research time and get you on with the job at hand.

5 – BOOM POLE CHEAT SHEET

This compares more than 125 boom poles in min height/max height/weight/material/locking mechanism and units are in imperial and metric measurements. There is a view to sort them all by weight as well.

6 – FREQ FINDER

Find legal frequencies for countries around the world as sourced by mixers who live or work there, with links to government websites for extra reading. Meaning you can travel around the world and recommend the best ones to build up a better picture. You can also submit scans using your phone camera.

7 – BLOG (BETA)

Over the past five years, I’ve added more than three hundred- plus blog posts to soundrolling.com and I’m in the process of making it easy to find them through this app.

8 – SOUND MANUALS/TIMECODE MANUALS

PDF versions of some popular products along with a firmware checklist with links to manuals and firmware notes. Timecode manuals link directly to manuals and firmware pages also.

9 – FOLEY CHEAT SHEET

I’ve added more than two hundred items and ideas for Foley you can do to make awesome sound effects. I’m building more and more Foley-related material out of my previous articles.

10 – SOUND EVENTS ONLINE AND AROUND THE WORLD

This is a list of sound Meet-ups and industry events for sound people so you can connect with other mixers around the world and in your local area. It’s really simple to submit new listings.

11 – POST PRODUCTION HELP AND FAQS

Here are useful docs for importing and exporting AAF/OMF’s and more, to help explain post to others. The idea is to better integrate editorial and other members of the team with the Sound Department and vice versa to solve those pesky communication errors that can occur with different deliverables.

12 – SOUND TRIVIA/ JOKES

This is a collection of articles I’ve collected from around the web, of trivia for the sound world. Just a bit of fun and light reading, along with some on-set banter.

13 – POCKET SOUND DICTIONARY

Two hundred-plus sound terms explained right on your phone.

14 – WIRING DIAGRAM ARCHIVE

This is a collection for all those who DIY and make their own cables or you want to make sure you are wiring them correctly. This is also useful for different connections to different cameras like the RED.

15 – FACEBOOK GROUP

There is a Facebook group setup for those with the app to easily make suggestions and connect with each other and build a community. I’m also trying to incentivize feedback with polls and prizes.

16 – BUY/SELL FREE

List your used gear and get in front of more than two thousand sound professionals for free. In 2017, listings will be no commission and just £1 to submit. All organized into categories.

Matt is very happy to have all feedback emailed to him at matt@soundrolling. com. Check it out. It’s a free app, so you can’t lose.

When I started my career in playback, the job consisted of playing back pre-rendered video content into TV and computer monitors. Fast-forward sixteen years and our culture has become saturated with display technology. With the majority of people walking around carrying at least one, and often a few screens, on their various personal devices at all times, it’s becoming commonplace to take for granted that images and video should just magically appear on demand. So often the question we’re greeted with on set becomes “We have this new mobile device, can you make it work before it plays tomorrow?” While the playback job has always required creativity and flexibility, the pace of modern technology has pushed things to a new level where, to remain viable in this age of rapid growth, we must blend the roles of traditional playback operator with a hefty dose of software engineering.

Having grown up enamored with technology and gaming, I have a natural tendency to want to figure out how things work. This has been a real blessing in my professional life as I’m driven to want to experiment with and develop for new devices as they appear on my radar. Up until recently, we’ve been making do with pre-made mobile apps and a basic video looping program I developed a few years ago. Now that devices and technology have both evolved to a point where people are able to enjoy advanced video gaming on their phones, it’s become apparent to me that leveraging video game engine software will allow me to become more agile and able to work with new devices as they hit the market. Building content across platforms (iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, etc.) has been a major challenge when working with the current tools used in computer playback. Adobe’s flash program works on some mobile devices but is limited and cannot take full advantage of the device’s hardware and their Director program (which hasn’t been updated in years) can only function on Mac or PC and has very limited support from Adobe.

To excel in the fickle gaming community, game engine developers know that they must harness every bit of a device’s hardware capabilities in order to give the player the best graphics experience possible. To maximize profits, they also need their games to function in a cross-platform environment. Knowing that the graphics I need to build for playback work essentially the same way as a game, it made sense to me to move my development work into a game engine and the one I ultimately chose was Unity 3D. It allows me to be able  to display interactive graphics that can be deployed cross-platform and controlled either remotely or by the player/actor in the scene. While I’ve gotten a few funny looks on set for triggering playback with what looks like an Xbox gaming controller, at the end of the day, the only difference between gaming and this kind of playback is that my software does not keep score … at least not yet!

When Rick Whitfield at Warner Bros. Production Sound and Video Services approached me to do the Sony Pictures movie Passengers, we both felt that it would be the right fit for what I had begun to develop in Unity. The sheer number of embedded mobile devices that required special interactivity with touch as well as remote triggering necessitated a toolset that would allow us the speed and flexibility to manage and customize the graphic content quickly. Early in preproduction, Chris Kieffer and his playback graphics team at Warner Bros., worked with me on developing a workflow for creating modular graphic elements that could be colorized and animated in real time on the device as well as giving us a library of content from which we could generate new screens as needed. Along with this, we were able to work closely with Guy Dyas and his Art Department on conceptualizing how the ship’s computer would function, which allowed us to marry the graphics to the functions in a way that made sense. This integration with the Art Department’s vision was further enabled by their providing static design elements to us so that we could create a cohesive overall aesthetic.

As part of the futuristic set, there were tablets embedded in the walls throughout the corridors. Everything from door panels to elevator buttons and each room’s environmental controls were displayed on touchscreens. Due to the way the set was constructed, many of these tablets were inaccessible once mounted in place. This meant that once the content was loaded, we had to have a way to make modifications through the device itself in case changes were needed. The beauty of using a game engine is that it renders graphics in real time. Whenever color, text, sizing, positioning or speed needed to be changed, it could be done live and interactively without causing the kind of delays in the shooting schedule that would have resulted if we’d had to rip devices out of the walls. This flexibility was so attractive to both the production designer and director that tablets began popping up everywhere!

Screen shot of Unity development software of a hibernation bay pod screen

When we got to the cafeteria set, we were presented with the challenge of having a tablet floating on glass in front of a Sony 4K TV that needed to be triggered remotely as well as respond to the actor’s touch. As the storyline goes, Chris Pratt’s character becomes frustrated while dealing with an interactive fooddispensing machine and starts to pound buttons on the tablet. We needed that to be reflected in the corresponding graphics on the larger screen as they were part of the same machine. Traditionally, this would involve remotely puppeteering the second screen to match choreographed button presses. With the pace at which he was pressing buttons, it made more sense to leverage the networking capabilities of Unity’s engine to allow the tablet to control what’s seen on the TV. This eliminated the need for any choreography and allowed for Chris to be much more immersed in his character’s predicament as well as eliminated any takes having to be interrupted by out-of-sync actions.

From a playback standpoint, one of our most challenging sets was the hibernation bay. With the twelve pods containing four tablets per pod plus backups, there were more than fifty tablets that needed to be able to display vital signs for the characters within the pods. Since extras were constantly shifting between pods, we had to have a way to quickly select the corresponding name and information for that passenger. This was accomplished through building a database of cleared names that could be accessed via a drop-down list on each tablet. Doing it this way, Rick and I could reconfigure the entire room in just a few minutes. Because the hero pod that houses Jennifer Lawrence’s character was constructed in such a way that we could not run power cables to the tablets, we had to run the devices solely on battery power. This required me to build into the software a way to display, without interrupting the running program, the battery’s charge level as well as Bluetooth connectivity status so that we could choose the best time to swap out devices so as not to slow down production.

One of the bonuses to working in most 3D game engine environments is having the tools to write custom shaders to colorize or distort the final render output. This gives the ability to interactively change color temperature to match the shot’s lighting as well as adding glitch distortion effects in real time without needing to pre-render or even interrupt the running animation. Many of our larger sets like the bridge, reactor room and steward’s desk needed to have all the devices and computer displays triggered in sync. Some scenes called for the room to power down, then boot back up, as well as switch to a damaged glitch mode based on the actions within the scene. Although I had been developing a network playback prototype, due to the production’s time constraints, we ultimately ended up having to trigger the computer displays and mobile devices on separate network groups.

Though I’ve since worked out the kinks in crossplatform network control, this served as a reminder that when working with new and untested technology, things can and will fail you. Especially when you’re using development tools that weren’t designed to function as an on-set playback tool. However, the growth of technology is only getting faster. Soon, we will be seeing curved phone displays, flexible/bendable and transparent screens, as well as all manner of wearable devices. And that’s only in the next few years. What happens beyond then is anyone’s guess.

All that said, you can have all the technology in the world but without a great team, it doesn’t matter. Having Rick Whitfield as a supervisor with his wealth of experience and decades of knowledge was invaluable. His years of having to think way outside the box to accomplish advanced computer graphic effects in an age in which actual computers couldn’t create the necessary look allowed him to break down any issues into their simplest, solvable forms. The talented graphics team at Warner Bros., Chris Kieffer, Coplin LeBleu and Sal Palacios, pulled out all the stops when it came to creating beautiful content for the film. The sheer amount of content they produced and the willingness with which they built elements in such a way that made real-time graphics possible borders on being a heroic feat. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have been a part of their team on Passengers.

As much as I am thrilled to be standing on the bleeding edge of technology in getting to merge what I do in playback with new advances like gaming engines, I’m even more excited to think of the day when this will all be old hat and we’ll be on to something newer and even more exciting.

Live-Record for ROADiES

by Gary Raymond

When Jeff called me for Roadies, I was very excited to be working with him, Don and Cameron again. This would be my fourth project with Cameron Crowe. Several of the other department heads were also veterans of Cameron’s films; such as Production Designer Clay Griffith, who I had worked with on Almost Famous, Vanilla Sky and Elizabethtown.

Live Record for Roadies At our first pre-production meeting, Bill Lanham was introduced as the technical consultant. I had planned on providing a simplified stage monitor mix which I had used for similar situations, but Bill wanted to use the bands full rider contracts verbatim. We upped the technical gear to handle thirty-two inputs and a dozen stage mixes with house and side fills in addition to my eight-track sub mixes for Post. Depending on the bands riders, we provided several stage monitors as well as In Ear Monitor mixes, side fill and house stereo mixes as needed. All inputs were split before the mixers and I created two eight-track sub mixes for Post. These were recorded on two Pro Tools rigs, one for backup.

During the pre-production phase, I contacted the Post Editor, Jenny Barak, to determine what they wanted. Although the live records on the pilot episode had been done as full multitrack recordings, Post used an eight-track sub mix to capture the essence of the performances and greatly speed up the mix-down process, and this is what they wanted me to deliver. With the time constraints of television being what they are, they felt they could trust me to give them the elements in a partially mixed format.

This was fun as I have more than twenty years of experience mixing more than four hundred top livetouring bands, starting back in the ’70s with War and Earth, Wind & Fire. My concept with the sub drum mixes was to get a fat sound with plenty of low-end, presence on the snare and air on the cymbal. Essentially, to target different frequency bands with each instrument so the Re-recording Mixer could still manipulate the separate instruments by frequency ranges. I also panned everything to different degrees, which facilitated the separation. At the recent Mix magazine MPSE CAS event at Sony, I had Re-recording Mixers come up to me after our Music Playback Panel to tell me that is often what they will do with summed tracks, which was very cool to find out.

Gary Raymond back in the day on Rock Star I did the drums as a stereo sub mix and all the vocals and solo instruments as iso tracks dry. Some of the bands had very large track counts, so in some cases, I provided guitar and keyboard sub mixes as well. We also had multitrack iso’s on everything, so Post was able to mix efficiently and still have complete control over levels and effects on vocals and key instruments. The entire recording we did was the onstage concert performances. As Jeff and Donovan explained, we decided to have all the offstage “acoustic” performances recorded by them with conventional boom microphone techniques. The only crossover was that we had Don Coufal with his boom to record the room sound during the stage performances so Post had some to play with. For dailies, we fed production the stereo mix that also went to the house speakers.

I had about sixty hours of prep time before we started shooting as there were many aesthetic decisions regarding the look of the equipment. I had provided all the dress and practical concert sound equipment for Almost Famous as I have a lot of Pro Sound gear from my concert-touring days. It was decided that the look would be contemporary, so that dictated flown arrays with digital boards. However, the Art Department took liberties based on aesthetics.

The current digital boards seemed too simple in their looks; instead, production purchased a Yamaha analog mixer, circa 1990s, as it had about a thousand colorful knobs. As far as dress verses practical, there were several decisions regarding the EQ, racks, wedge monitors, side and drum fills.

We did full live recordings of all the bands with their complete rider requirements. The difference in manpower and time is half-day with one music Playback Operator for straight music playback versus a three-person crew and two days of prep and recording for each band with live records. Clearly, efficiencies were improved when we used the same stage for all the band recordings and it was redressed to represent the different concert tour venues. We did do two episodes “on the road,” Halsey at the Honda Center and Phantogram at the Roosevelt Hotel.

There were very few turnarounds as the shots looking at the audience were actually done at the real venues, the LA Forum and Staples Center, and all the stage views were done on Stage 25 at Manhattan Beach Studios, with the exception of Halsey and Phantogram. The Honda Center and Roosevelt Hotel episodes were smartly scheduled after the first few episodes, so by then, we had our system down.

The live recordings resulted in absolutely real and authentic performances with excellent sound quality by all the bands. Timing and other potential problems were avoided because all the dialog was before or at the end of each performance. In addition, dealing with seasoned bands that had been doing the same songs for months or years is a lot different than “cast” bands that are put together for a scene and may not have worked together before the shoot date.

I’m very proud of the fact that the concert performances we recorded; every episode, every scene, every band, every song, every take and every track, we had good recordings. Production never had to reshoot because of our recording team. This included dealing with a citywide power outage at one point, and in some cases, the musically excellent “younger” bands showing up to set with several pieces of gear not working or missing.

We had a great team effort and I want to thank Jeff Wexler CAS and Donovan Dear CAS and their crews plus our team of Bill Lanham, Steve McNeil and James Eric, who worked with me on Almost Famous and Steve Blazewick for their great teamwork and excellent efforts. I also want to thank Prop Master Matt Cavaliero and Head Set Decorator Lisa Sessions for their huge help sharing information during the initial decision-making process and of course, a thank-you beyond words to Cameron Crowe for creating this fictional based on a reality world, that so many of us were able to share creatively with him, the entire production and the audience who watched the show.

by Jeff Wexler CAS and Donavan Dear CAS

Jeff Wexler: When the call came in for Roadies, I knew I had to do it. I was not available to work on the pilot, which they shot in Vancouver, Canada, as I was on a feature. Showtime gave it the green light for a full season and though I was pretty much semi-retired, I really wanted to do the show. Don Coufal and I have done six movies with Cameron Crowe and Roadies would be Cameron’s and my first television episodic. I was a little worried since I had not done any episodic television and heard all the horror stories. But there was no need to worry, Cameron had not developed any of those awful habits, and shooting the first two episodes with Cameron directing was wonderful— just like working on any of the movies with him. It was a bit of an adjustment for me to be doing nine pages a day instead of the one and a half I was used to.

Each episode was to have one or more music scenes and in preproduction, we had lots of discussions about how to do these things—shoot to prerecorded playback tracks, shoot to playback but live vocals or do it all live. Many of the scenes took the form of impromptu songs performed in dressing rooms, hotel rooms, rehearsals, music and dialog, starting and stopping; the sorts of scenes that are best done live. The final decision was to do all the music live record.

I have done lots of music in movies, playback, live recording, concert recordings with remote truck and so forth, and I already knew that the Production Sound Mixer needs to have help doing all of this, whether it is as simple as hiring a Playback Operator or as complex as interfacing with a remote truck for a full on concert recording. I requested that Production hire Gary Raymond and an assistant for any of the live record. We added Bill Lanham to Gary’s crew, a veteran concert engineer who proved to be a vital part of the music crew. Gary was set up to record directly into Pro Tools with all sources in use for the scene. Some of the performances were fairly simple, one person, solo guitar, but others were quite a bit more complex, full on concert setups. I was so pleased to be able to record Lindsey Buckingham singing “Bleed to Love Her,” just Lindsey and his amazing guitar playing, recorded with just one Schoeps overhead. Like so many of the things we have done together, all the “mixing” of this beautiful sound was done by Don Coufal with his fishpole.

It was always the plan that I would do the first two episodes that Cameron was directing— I was really not up to doing the full season so I asked Donavan Dear to come in and replace me. Donavan was so pleased to come onto what turned out to be one of the best TV experiences ever. Don Coufal stayed on the job which helped immensely in terms of preserving continuity on the show, and Donavan was pleased of course, for the chance to work with Don. After the first two episodes, new directors were brought in as is usually the case with episodic, but Cameron was there most days and directed the last episode.

I’m just so pleased that I got to do the two episodes, and be able to work with Cameron Crowe again.

Donavan Dear: When Jeff Wexler asked me to take over for him on Roadies, I said I’d love to do it. A few weeks later, Jeff introduced me to Cameron Crowe. Cameron took a lot of time talking and getting to know me. I’ve done many television shows and never seen a director actually take more than a minute to meet the new Sound Mixer. We talked about our love of music and how it could be used to mold the performance of the actors. This was the first clue Roadies was going to be different. Taking over for Jeff Wexler was very flattering and getting to use Don Coufal on the boom was also something I was really looking forward to.

Roadies Was Different
Roadies was different; from the start, it was essentially a very long feature about music and the people who made it happen. Cameron had decided that he wanted live music performances, which not only meant the performers would perform live, but the sound system would be real from the arena speakers to the concert desk, monitors and amps. Jeff Wexler smartly decided the PA system should be managed and set up by concert-sound experts, so he hired Gary (Raymond) and Bill (Lanham), who set up the entire PA systems a day or two before each performance. I would simply take a stereo left/rght mix directly out their console; the loudness of the speakers was always set to not interfere with the multitrack recording.

One of the other interesting facets of Roadies was the live recordings that weren’t stage performances. There were usually a couple in each show, the artist would start “noodling” on a guitar throughout the scene with one of the roadies, or they would just be singing a song trying to tell a story. This was a lot of fun. We recorded Halsey with one of the roadies, Machine Gun Kelly (aka Colson Baker) playing and singing with two electric guitars beneath the stage. What was most challenging was to get a consistent mix with multiple cameras and different angles in such a poor acoustic environment. This is where Don’s listening was so important. It’s simple to play back a prerecorded track and have the actors lip-sync, or even to live record the first take of a performance, then play back that recording to keep things consistent in future takes. We recorded every shot and every angle live. When the cameras would turn around and change the position of the actors and amplifiers, it changed the properties of the sound. The actors usually could not sing and play the music the same way from take to take. This is why it’s so important for the Boom Operator to listen. There is no formula for positioning a microphone and capturing the same musical tonality, there is only your memory of how the last setup sounded and how to place a microphone for the best sound and consistency. Don Coufal and the editors did an outstanding job in preserving great live performances. More often than not, our biggest problem was the balance between the louder acoustic guitars and soft singing voices—often nudged by Don to give us a little more voice.

Boom Philosophy
There are two kinds of Boom Operators: ‘hard cuers’ and ‘floaters.’ Don Coufal and I are on opposite sides of these philosophies, but I had so much respect and trust of Don that I let him do what he does best. My regular boom operators are always aggressive and cue very hard while getting the mic as close to the frame line as possible, while Don concentrates on listening very diligently to the background ambience and cueing to the voice, creating a smooth, consistent background. Don Coufal is probably the only boom operator I know whom I would trust to use his method.

Don and I had some great conversations about microphones and technique, but when we talked about microphones, acoustics or the tone of a particular actor’s voice, I could see the excitement in his eyes. I knew he was someone I could trust completely. A sound man needs to be excited about equipment, about learning and about ways to approach an actor with a sound problem in a way that will make the actor feel comfortable to accommodate that request.

Don made a believer out of me. Boom Operators have to learn every line in the script and point the mic at the actor’s sweet spot no matter what technique they use. There is a movie/TV difference; in general, a sound crew on a feature has more opportunities to quiet the set whereas a TV crew often doesn’t have time to put out all the ‘noise fires.’

When it comes down to it, the floating style cuts nicely with a bit more background noise, where a hard-cue technique has more proximity effect and less background noise but with a more inconsistent background ambience. All in all, the most important things about boom technique are listening and experience. Don Coufal excels in both of those.

Cameron Crowe: Roadies was very special because of Cameron Crowe, and music is very special to him. There were times during a take that an AD would run over to me and say Cameron wants you to play one of these four songs between the lines or in that moment, at the end of the shot. We always had a playback speaker ready, several music apps and 150,000 of my own songs ready to go at all times. Cameron has his own playback/computer desk that Jeff built for him so he could play music and set the tone for an actor’s performance or set a mood for the crew before a scene. Cameron uniquely communicated with music, he wasn’t a very technical director but he did have an amazing way of tuning and changing a performance with his choice of music. The goal of Roadies was to move people with great music and sound. I was so happy to be a part of such a special show.

by Devendra Cleary CAS

This is the first time I am sharing this experience. In June of 2002, I was the Boom Operator on a movie on the western slope of Colorado. I was now LA-trained and not afraid to show it. On this particular night, we were shooting on a farm, doing a fourteen-hour split day. We had multiple wires, long takes and the boom fully extended with a shotgun microphone in a zeppelin. As I look back and complain about my physical exertion that day, it still pales in comparison to the work of the grips.

We wrapped around 2 a.m., the end of a Fraturday, and I helped to load the sound gear into the truck. I got into my Toyota 4Runner and drove past the grips who were still wrapping in the dark. I headed down the ten-mile dirt road back to our hotel and was driving the same way I did for the past year: as if I was on the 101 freeway.

I was going 60 mph as I hit the curvy part. I fishtailed for a few turns before it was too late to recover, losing control of the vehicle and flipping the truck onto its side into a ditch. I was extremely fortunate, as I could have tumbled over and over, but the ditch stopped me. Escaping the vehicle out of the passenger door, my adrenaline was pumping and I was terrified beyond belief. I paced the dirt road, still in shock, but very grateful I was not seriously injured.

What was I going to do, walk to the hotel, call a tow truck or sleep here on the side of the road? My despair was lifted when I saw a pair of headlights headed my way. It was the grips; they spotted my overturned truck and me. Without any hesitation or conversation, the key grip and the best boy grabbed a cluster of rock-climbing ropes and proceeded to attach a tie-off to the bottom of my truck and to their front tow hitch. It was done with precision and efficiency as if they had done this a thousand times before. Within seconds, they had my truck flipped back on its wheels.

Now what to do with the traumatized Boom Operator? They split up and the best boy grip drove my truck back to the hotel. I was a passenger somewhere, but honestly to this day, I have no idea which vehicle I rode in. What a night.

This was the first week of the movie and up until this point, I think all I did was try and convince these guys how awesome and experienced I was without showing the proper respect that they deserved. These amazing people who came to my rescue humbled me. Colorado Local 7 Grips, I am forever in your debt. I believe they were doing what any grip would do in this situation. I am grateful and have carried my respect for their entire profession since.

We know them as Local 80. The grips are more invisible than we sound and video professionals. The layman may look at them as crew members who put sandbags on camera tripods, hold stands when it’s windy, move set walls, build scaffolds or lay dolly track. But these are gross oversimplifications of the work that these highly sophisticated, and trained professionals do every working day. They are not laborers, yes, they may do a ton of manual labor, but film sets have an uncanny way of utilizing people’s talents in laborious ways. They do so much more.

The first assistant director may be in charge of your safety, but the grips are the ones who are really looking out for you. They keep you safe by properly rigging and operating the cranes, the ‘20 bys,’ camera risers and everything that supports the work of the camera and lighting departments. Now do I have your attention?

I was working on season one of Murder in the First and had my hands full with a “Burning Man”-style set of party scenes with plenty of dialog, playback and VOG for three hundred extras. I had enough time to watch the grips while they mounted a small Technocrane to a Chapman and then take that magnificent rig to its highest point, effortlessly, giving the director exactly what he wanted. Then the director changed his mind and they skillfully gave him exactly what he wanted … again. The key grip was giving instructions over his walkie, taking care of the needs of camera as well as an extremely complicated lighting setup. The grips have to have the same level of sophistication as the camera department, yet they never get treated like the royalty camera does.

I think when we ask them to help us rig a plant microphone, a flag to kill a nasty boom shadow or help video assist rig an antenna, they must be amused at the simplicity of these tasks. These guys and gals are my heroes.

Speaking of heroes: A Sound Mixer whom I have idolized since the beginning of my career by the name of Agamemnon Andrianos CAS, speaks fondly of our grip brothers. He says: “But that dynamic when you’re working with the grips. I put them first because they’re the CEMENT of the whole crew.” Cement. They are rockhardened yet malleable cement. They bond the whole crew together. We couldn’t do any of this without them.

As I moved from Utility to Boom Operator to Music Playback Operator and then to Production Sound Mixer, I felt a divide between the grips and myself. I noticed my Utility and Boom Operator were more acquainted with the grip side than I am now as the Mixer. They knew each other’s names before I did, forged camaraderie before I did and I was envious. Fortunately, this was a multi-season assignment, so I was able to adjust my flawed dynamic and forge the friendships that I needed.

The grip department on my last show was incredible and I cannot let their talents go unnoticed. One day, we were shooting an exterior on New York Street at Fox Studios. The grips were wrangling their daily task of positioning and operating our Technocrane. This in itself was a fulltime job. The grips were also responsible for the massive metal frames that held the silks. Sometimes the wind picks up unexpectedly and the combo stands that are supporting the frames are compromised and need to be additionally secured by ropes for them to be safe for the actors and crew. Like the choreography of a synchronized swimming team, they sprung into action and had the rig secured in under two minutes. They all knew their part; who’s going up high, who’s on what stand. Simultaneously, tying their “sheep shank,” “bowline” or “clove hitch” knots. All low key, under the radar, with speed and always with safety first.

The grips seem to be something different to all of us. To the AD staff, they may just be the equipment movers who are constantly asking them to get out of the open doorways. To producers and UPMs, they are necessary manpower that they would love to minimize, if they can. To the camera department, they are their unsung heroes, for they know they can’t do the job without them.

Local 80 Dolly Grip Adam Eichhorst points out, “We have to have the strength of a weightlifter with the grace of a ballerina.” These guys push a 500-pound dolly with two people on board, hitting precise marks, starting and stopping with absolute style and grace. To the sound department, they are collaborators in shaping light for the Boom Operator. The grips likeliness to assist sound has every thing to do with our relationship with them. Their help can sometimes be “on-the-fly,” as sound is not their top priority. But I have found the stronger and more organic our department’s relationship is, results in more collaboration. It should serve as a lesson on how we interact with every department on any film set.

Why did I want to give praise to the grips? Because I love drawing attention to misunderstood and sometimes underappreciated professionals. There is still a difference in awareness of their intricate contributions depending on whose looking glass we’re looking through. They deserve to be put on a pedestal for what they do. This will only reinforce the grips who already know they are the gods of film production, and also empower grips.

If you’re not already doing so, show the grip side some love. Thank a grip, hug a grip and tell a grip their daily efforts aren’t going unnoticed. Let them know they truly are our filmmaking cement.

by Richard Lightstone CAS AMPS

There is a new buzzword, DANTE. It’s a networking protocol and it is quickly being integrated into many Production Sound Mixers’ workflow. Full disclosure, I am a Dante user, which I had to license by purchasing a Dante-enabled product.

Dante is owned by Audinate, an Australian company, the seeds of which were sown by some former employees of the Motorola Research Labs, shuttered in 2003. Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Aidan Williams explains. “I was constantly connecting my synth to a mixer, to a sound card, MIDI cables, all sorts of different connections,” he recalls. “To me, it seemed like a networking problem. Why make all those different connections when you could integrate it into a single network?” In 2006, David Myers joined Williams to form Audinate

Bruce Jackson, Vice President of Dolby Labs’ Live Division, an early advocate, made the Dolby Lake Processor the first Dante-equipped professional audio device to be used at a performance of Barbra Streisand in Washington, D.C., in 2008. That same year, Lee Elison joined the company, opening its US headquarters in Portland, Oregon.

Dante has played a role in numerous mission-critical events; from the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, the Pope’s appearance at World Youth Day in Sydney, to hundreds of concerts by major music performers. There are more than 170 manufacturers who have partnered with Audinate, representing more than five hundred different products that are Dante-enabled.

How Dante works?

In its simplest form, Dante is a protocol for communicating multiple audio channels over standard Ethernet and IP networks. Audio signals between Dante-enabled devices are routed using Dante Controller software. In the analog world, audio connections are point-to-point and individual copper cables representing each channel. In Dante, the physical connecting point is irrelevant as long as all the devices are connected to the same network, audio signals can be made available anywhere and everywhere. Patching and routing are configured in software and not over physical wired links. Depending on the application, Dante allows up to 512 bidirectional channels of audio to be sent and distributed over an Ethernet network, using CAT-5e or CAT-6 cable.

Dante was built to work on Gigabit Ethernet, so it already rides a fat pipe. Those 512 bidirectional channels can be sent on a 1Gb link, uncompressed, 48kHz, 24-bit audio. Latency can be as low as .25mS. One link can simultaneously carry audio with different sample rates and bit depths. You can also set up a system with multiple network zones, each with a different latency to match the needs of your equipment.

There are other AOE (Audio Over Ethernet) protocols available. The most popular are:

CobraNet

Peak Audio developed CobraNet in 1996. It accommodates up to sixty-four bidirectional channels of audio over a single CAT-5 or fiber-optic cable. You aren’t going to get advanced features like self-configuration, bandwidth adaptation or error correction. Since it’s a digital signal, equipment does have the ability to process the audio, but that’s a function of the manufacturer’s gear, not CobraNet itself.

MADI

MADI (Multichannel Audio Digital Interface) was an AES standard protocol, developed in 1991 and further improved by AMS Neve, Solid State Logic, Sony and Mitsubishi. It is a unidirectional (point-to-point) approach that allows up to sixty-four audio channels over coaxial or fiber-optic cables and less commonly CAT-5 from a few manufacturers.

How to use Dante?

Simply purchase a mixing console and recorder that has Audinate Dante available. Consoles such as the Yamaha 01V96 and 01V96i have a single-card slot to accommodate a Dante card. There are many other consoles that do the same; Behringer, Allen & Heath and the Soundcraft Expressions and Performer series to name a few. Many manufacturers have Dante built in like the Yamaha QL-1, the Sound Devices PIX 260i, the 970 and the Cantar X3.

Dante devices have a primary and secondary port for redundancy, meaning, there are two identical but separate networks providing a failsafe if one of the networks fails. You can disable Dante Redundancy Mode and use the second port to connect to another Dante-enabled device.

Daisy-chaining Dante devices can be done, with caution, but it is recommended to use a Gigabit Switch in a “star” topology to connect to multiple Dante devices.

Gigabit Switches

Gigabit Switches are just that, multi-port switches that can handle high-speed audio traffic with excellent management, often called QoS or Quality of Service. Some of us are using simple 5-port switches, such as the Netgear GS105, which retails for around $40 and can be powered via 12 volts. Others prefer the Cisco brand, starting with eight ports and up. Whatever you purchase, make sure they are not EEE (Energy Efficient Ethernet), also known as Green Ethernet. These units will reduce power to individual switches during periods of low network traffic, resulting in poor synchronization and even signal dropouts!

Dante Controller will also work with other DAW software like Boom Recorder, Pro Tools (9 and up), Logic and Cubase up to sixty-four channels. This is achieved via Dante Virtual Soundcard software.

Dante networks are not restricted to digital consoles and peripherals. You can connect analog equipment to Dante interface boxes that do the A to D conversion.

DANTE SETUPS

Brett Grant-Grierson CAS and Joe Foglia CAS

Production Mixers Brett Grant-Grierson CAS and Joe Foglia CAS have similar setups. With the Sonosax ST8D console along with his Sound Devices PIX 260i, Brett has the ability to record twenty-six channels on the PIX.

Brett uses the Lectrosonics BOB Dante interface as well as the Shure SCM820 8-channel IntelliMix automatic mixer. “The Lectrosonics BOB Dante interface gives me 8 I/O via Dante to the PIX 260i. The Shure SCM820 IntelliMix has two auto mix features, Shure’s IntelliMix and the Dan Dugan automixer, both assignable to the A&B outputs. I use the Shure SCM820 for all the additional cast members and prioritize by the amount of dialog in a scene and then assign the cast with the least dialog to the Shure inputs. All the tracks are iso’d on the PIX 260i, including the auto mix outputs via Dante. I take one of the line outputs from the Shure into the Sonosax, and this gives me the ability to include the automixed cues into my production mix. I can have 26 tracks assigned on the PIX 260i; 8 from my Sonosax AES outs, 8 via Dante BOB and 10 outs from the Shure SCM820 (8+2 Mix).”

Frank Stettner CAS

The setup used on Show Me a Hero involved Frank Stettner’s main cart and an additional sub-mix setup. This configura tion was used for all city council scenes. Frank’s cart had an 8-channel Cooper CS 208D mixer feeding a Lectro BOB. The BOB then fed into two Sound Devices 970s. The sub-mix used a Yamaha QL-5 and a RIO1608 stage box.

Practical mics on camera fed into the RIO1608D off stage. The RIO fed the QL-5. Larry Provost, the sub-mixer, was able to create a sub-mix that fed into a single channel on Frank’s Cooper. Frank was able to mix the single channel in for synching dailies. This was the only analog link between the two setups. All other interfacing between the two setups were done via Dante. The 970s on Frank’s cart were able to record all iso’s from both his Cooper and the QL-5.

Richard Lightstone CAS AMPS

My Dante setup on my main cart is the Yamaha 01V96, the Sound Devices 970 and the JoeCo BBR Blackbox Recorder as backup. I use my cart-based Mac Mini to run Dante Controller and the Dante Virtual Soundcard to Boom Recorder, which is open but only as a failsafe recorder. I also have a Soundcraft Expressions 1 console with a Dante Card for music playback. I run Pro Tools on my MacBook Pro routing the outputs directly to the Soundcraft channels via Dante. The Soundcraft’s Secondary Dante Port is connected to my main cart, where I can route any Pro Tools stem to my 970. Usually the Master Mix and Playback Timecode.

Here is an example of an interesting solution made simple by Dante Controller. I had a wireless connected to the output of an electric guitar for a scene. The wireless is routed to my Yamaha 01V. I was able to also route that signal to a channel on the Soundcraft, where it could be folded back and heard over the playback speakers. This is all done with two CAT-5e cables between the playback setup and my main cart. Elegance in simplicity.

The use of your Dante setup has multiple possibilities beyond the mix cart. Audio signals can be received or sent into different sets, rooms or floors. Audinate has new software they are just rolling out called Dante Via, which will allow different computers and their peripherals, whether it is audio devices or hard drives to all be connected as long as they are on the same network. The software works with Windows 7 (SP1) through 10 and Apple OS 10.9.5 through 10.11. Dante Via enables any USB or Firewire audio device with network connectivity, allowing you to easily expand your Dante system with hundreds of available products. Connect your device and check “Enable Dante” in the Dante Via interface, and it’s ready to connect with your entire network, unrestrained by short cable runs. It will discover all connected audio devices and applications and give you intuitive drag & drop interface for connection management, including routing audio from different applications to different locations at once. Imagine sending your live ADR, voice-over or wild line session directly to the picture edit suite or the Mix stage?

Peter Schneider of Gotham Sound & Communications, Inc., says it best: “The ability to ‘expand on demand’ without fuss is a feature unique to Dante. Any traditional cart can be expanded to accommodate a great number of sources, but no system can do it across such a broad range of manufacturers as easily as Dante can with one CAT-5 cable.”

I want to thank those who helped me in 2014 to set up Dante; Phil Palmer CAS and Scott Harber CAS, as well as Mike Paul of Location Sound Corp, who assisted me with background for the article.

Notes From an A-2 at the Grammys

by Ric Teller

Quite a few years ago, I was working on a show with Murray Siegel in the days when Murray was still on the audio crew. During the show, or maybe it was during rehearsals, my memory is a bit fuzzy on the details, Walter Miller, the iconic director, got on the PL and told everyone that “the floor A-2 job was no career for a grown-up like Murray.” Working as an A-2 in television for more than thirty years, including more than half of the live televised Grammy Award ceremonies, I can tell you without question that Walter was absolutely right.

If you can’t act a bit like a kid, scoot around on the floor, laugh out loud, poke a little fun and have some poked back at you, dance a little, be enthralled by the presence of some music icons, and come out of it wanting more, this job may not be for you.

To be sure, there are challenges in doing the Grammys, not the least of which is that we are under a lot of pressure to perform our stage audio-ballet, or more aptly, a rugby scrum, in a timely manner. We try our best to make everyone happy, the artists, the Director, Production Staff and especially the rest of our amazing Sound Crew. The group of mixers and techs that bring each and every part of our production to the show that you hear on television are supremely talented engineers and more importantly, are very nice people. Together, we have had some true successes including a clean show in 2015 and along the way we have had a few bumps in the road. Our A-2 crew has been lauded in print as an example of audio excellence and after one tough year, derogatorily identified as members of the Santa Monica High School A/V Club. Go Vikings! In 2014, the Grammy road was decidedly bumpy. The dress rehearsal was a train wreck. There is a specific amount of time allotted for each of the 128 items in the show and the only time we do the band-to-band staging transitions in real time, is in dress. We were late on four or five changeovers, band carts arrived on stage slowly and we had several audio and instrument issues. I am not one who believes a ‘baddress’ means ‘good-show.’ I like it all to be good.

In the live show, if something doesn’t work, we quickly evaluate if the broken part of the setup will have a major impact. Let’s say, we are ten seconds away from a performance and the problem is Viola 3 or Snare 2 bottom, or anything else that won’t be noticeable to the viewing audience, we just let it go (damn that Viola 3 mic). If it is something more important, such as a vocal mic, a lead guitar or piano and it is not easily fixable, then we tell the Stage Manager, who tells the Head Stage Manager, who tells the Director and the Executive Producer and they decide the potential impact of a flawed performance. Sometimes they will try to give us a little more time to resolve the issue, a longer tape package and an extended acceptance speech. That twenty seconds or so might be enough time to make a game-saving difference.

It is late in the Grammy show and we are pitching a shutout. After our relaxing eighteen-minute meal break, we cleaned up the band risers, made sure the mics were in the correct positions and secretly replaced a critical problematic cable. All the issues from dress rehearsal seem to be resolved.

Band carts are flying up the ramp, The Highwaymen guitar rig is behaving, and Paul’s vocal in the Taylor Swift number is clean. It is item 108, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis with Trombone Shorty, and we are line checking.

Strings good, guitar good, vocals good, nine RF instrument mics all good. Choir 1 good, Choir 2 good, Choir 3 … not good.

Remember, we are in a live show, musicians are on stage and their performance is seconds away. I pivot and reach down to change the Choir 3 input from Pair 3 in our sub-box to Pair 7, then go to the main box and reach down for the cable on top, barely looking to see if it is the correct one. I know it will be, because Eddie McKarge, my partner on the B-stage, has been sending Pair 7 signals directly to the patch part of my brain. The connection is made, he casually checks the mic one last time and of course, it is good. Shutout preserved and maintained through the end of the show.

The Grammys are in the best way, a collaboration of more than sixty sound people led by our own audio coordinator … err … complicator … err … aggravator, Michael Abbott. Mike has worked on nearly thirty Grammy shows and is in charge of the audio details large and small that make everything work as smoothly as possible. He also runs interference when needed. Without Mike’s guidance, no one would know how RF #8 gets to the final mix. Really, how does it?

Staples Center is the home for three Los Angeles professional sports teams that are all in season during the Grammys, so our access to the venue is quite limited. We begin on the Tuesday, before the show by running thousands of feet of cable. Fortunately, much of the connectivity is done on fiber these days. That big copper stuff is way too heavy. Wednesday, we have an audio meeting to address the specifics of the show and then continue our setup. Rehearsals begin on Thursday and continue for three very busy days.

Finally Sunday arrives. First we rehearse anyone who we haven’t seen yet, next we do a full three-and-a-half-hour dress rehearsal, followed by a three-and-a-half-hour live show. We finish show day with four or five hours of wrapping cable and putting our toys away. It is a very long, fun day.

The broadcast this year was filled with a wide variety of performances. Two of my favorites were AC/DC, who opened the show in fine fashion, and Usher who did a lovely version of “If It’s Magic,” accompanied only by a harp until the last few bars when Stevie Wonder joined in. It was magic.

About that RF #8 question. It originates backstage in the RF rack and gets to the split world via a two-hundred-foot W4 cable. At split world, the RF goes into split C, Pair 8, which is split to the FOH and monitors DiGiCo Rack, the Music Mix Mobile preamp rack, and the Denali Hydra; all on short W4 cables. This signal then goes to those mixing destinations through various forms of fiber. In this example, let’s say that RF #8 also gets a Pro Tools effect. The RF is patched into Hydra 1, Pair 8 and goes to Denali Summit, the broadcast truck, on a 500-foot TAC 12 fiber cable, where it is sent on a MADI stream over a 5-wire coax mult to Pablo Munguía’s Pro Tools mix position located in a nearby Gelco trailer.

After the RF has received the proper Pro Tools treatment, it goes back to split world on a three-hundred-foot W2 cable where it is patched into a music split. Let’s call it split A, Pair 52. That pair along with the rest of the music split inputs goes to the Music Mix Mobile preamp rack on a fifty-foot W4 cable and from there it is sent to the music mix trucks on fiber. RF #8, now a Pro Tools return track, is then mixed with the rest of the music inputs and sent back to the broadcast truck via an AES pair on a five-wire coax. The last stage is where A1 Mixer Tom Holmes combines RF #8 and the entire music mix with any other elements such as audience reaction and sends it to transmission on an embedded fiber. Quite a journey for our RF #8.

As you can imagine, there are hundreds of people involved in a show of this magnitude. It is advanced television. In our little B-stage world, there are audio, video, production, lighting, staging, props and backline people, plus the terrific techs and mixers that come with the artists, as well as some fantastic musicians. I am honored to work with all of them.

Interfacing with our mixers and techs is a true pleasure and I have great confidence just hearing their voices on my headset. Many people feel that they are among the finest at their craft. I can assure you, that is the truth. I would also like to extend my appreciation to the entire A-2 crew including the A-stage guys who really had a lot of big setups this year. The Dish Stage Crew that made bands magically appear on that very small space and the B-side boys who always make my Grammy experience so much fun.

I would like to add a special thank-you to head A2 Steve Anderson for reigning in the chaos that comes when you do a live TV show with twenty-five performances and for helping us stay on track to get through the long days with a sense of humor that Walter Miller might appreciate.

Yeah, probably not.

GLOSSARY

Denali Hydra: Denali is the broadcast facilities truck company used at the Grammys, Oscars and many other television events. Hydra is the stage box for the Calrec audio console found in the Denali truck.

DiGiCo Rack: A multichannel input/output rack connected to FOH and Monitor consoles.

Dish Stage Crew: Performances at the Grammys take place on three stages. The A- and B-stages are stage-right and stage-left sides of the main stage. The third performance area is the dish stage, which is a small performance area in the audience. Our crew is divided into the A-stage crew, the B-stage crew and the dish stage crew.

Fiber: A fiber optic cable for transmitting audio signals from one location to another. The Production Truck, the Music Mix Mobile Truck and the FOH and Monitor consoles are all fed by various systems through fiber.

MADI: Multichannel Audio Digital Interface, an AES standard protocol that carries multiple channels of digital audio.

W2: A sixteen-pair copper connection multi cable.

W4: A fifty-six pair copper connection multi cable.

by Doc Justice

In 1972, George Carlin delivered his famous monologue, “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television.” Today, there is one word that encompasses all of the seven. This one word elicits groans, sighs, rage and disgust.

Reality. As in, reality TV. Gross!

It is the bastard genre of television, where nobody claims responsibility for the lack of parenting. Its fans only confess begrudgingly, its detractors denounce it with gusto. More often, viewers will cry “FAKE!” as one argument against the entire category. Yet, here we are with 352 seasons of Big Brother shot and aired around the world. That number is not an exaggeration.

While all of planet Earth has agreed that reality TV is to be only enjoyed as a guilty pleasure; there are many sound mixers making their living from it. What are the skill sets needed to be a reality TV Mixer?

To answer that, we have to take a closer look at reality as a whole. After all, can a docu-follow such as Real World be treated the same as American Idol, Survivor, What Not to Wear or My Cat From Hell?

Every one of these productions is as different as the individuals who record the dialog. They offer unique challenges and custom workflows, and the people who are tasked with recording these shows must be creative, technically adept, quick to act and often, physically fit.

They are known as Audio Supervisors, and as the heads of their department, they have many of the same responsibilities as Production Sound Mixers on narrative sets. They must choose their gear, manage their sound team, interface with directors and producers, and coordinate with post.

On set, the Audio Supervisor is a different animal altogether. Instead of the usual team of three, the Audio Supervisor might work with a department ranging from one to upward of twenty crew members.

On the docu-follow show Esquire’s Best Bars in America, Audio Supervisor Justin Brunnler works as a one-man band. Justin mic’s up the talent, sends mixes to camera, booms the public and is responsible for all of the audio that ends up on-air. Staying compact is key, since Justin maneuvers through the bars to boom the patrons as they order drinks. His bag has everything at his disposal, a Sound Devices 664 with Lectrosonics 411a receivers with sends for camera and IFB. Production typically visits three bars per shoot day in any given city, so it can be very hectic. His producers put a lot of trust in him, and he has rewarded them with two seasons of successful work. The producers could call a Sound Mixer in any of the cities that they travel to. They could probably get somebody cheaper to take the job. However, they insist on calling Justin, because the risk isn’t worth it to them. Despite all the hours and travel, his demeanor and work ethic are of utmost importance. Justin delivers quality audio with a smile every time.

ABC’s The Bachelor has aired eighteen seasons, and that doesn’t include all of its spinoffs. Audio Supervisor Jeff Fusting, multitracks the audio for thirty-two individuals including the contestants, host and bachelor. Working with a Yamaha CL 5 in the house and a Yamaha CL 1 on the road, Jeff is able to rout all of his record tracks, to the story producers who are monitoring story beats, and the director. Those thirty-two frequencies of cast transmitters are only the start. There are also 12 ENG rigs each consisting of a Sound Devices 552, 4 Lectrosonics 411a receivers and UM400a transmitters for camera hops and IFB. Along with the stereo camera sends and IFBs, there are a total of sixty-three frequencies floating in the air at any given time. Yet, coordinating those frequencies is a simpler task compared to staffing the show. Shooting takes place close to twenty-four hours a day, so scheduling more than twenty Sound Mixers per season can be a challenge. The team is vital to a smooth operation, and Co-supervisor Dan Norton helps to coordinate the ENG Mixers. If it all stopped there, it would be easy. Throw in the carnets, the earwigs, the PLs, and of course, the bikinis, and it is plain to see how difficult it is to capture audio for this show. Yet Jeff is there, season after season, making it happen efficiently and effectively.

To change gears completely, take a look at American Ninja Warrior on NBC. This is another beast of a show, with microphones all over the place. John Steigerwald collaborates with rental house Clair Broadcast to create a system that doesn’t miss a word or a splash. Capturing all of the sounds is no simple feat as it is one big obstacle course that contestants must race through. John uses shotgun mics including Sennheiser 416P and plant mics like the Shure SM91 to not only capture the dialog, but all of the sounds in the obstacle course. His A2s run the course alongside the contestants with parabolic dishes to make sure no footstep is missed. Talent are wearing Sennheiser SKM5200s with Neumann capsules. Since the show sets up its giant obstacle course in cities across the country, above all else, efficiency in engineering and packing are key. All of the rack cases, mics, wireless and recorders have been whittled down to just a combination of eleven racks, trunks and workboxes. John’s extensive background in touring has led to an expertly finetuned package. The Audio Supervisor job on this show is as much of a challenge as climbing Mount Midoriyama itself. Audio Supervisors in reality TV must always take advantage of new technologies and systems. Multi-boxes begat Aviom Digital Snakes, which gave rise to MADI and Dante. Routing audio to different cameras, decks, Producer IFBs, Story Stations and PL is paramount to the job. Data management, mic wrangling and on-the-fly troubleshooting are all part of the everyday process. Sometimes it is a wonder how the jobs are accomplished. These productions learn very quickly that hiring the right Audio Supervisor is the single most important step toward sound satisfaction.

The job of the reality TV Audio Supervisor is really not too different than that of the narrative Production Sound Mixer, and yet, it is. Audio Supervisors work as hard and care just as much as those in the scripted world. One isn’t better than the other, one just presents a different myriad of challenges than the other. The average Audio Supervisor is much more than the shows that require the “sound-mule” to wear one hundred pounds of gear.

Reality TV may have earned its own stereotype as dirty and cheap, but all Audio Supervisors should be applauded for their work. Next time you talk to somebody who makes their living off of reality TV, strike up a conversation and ask them about it.

Just don’t do it in public, or somebody might think you actually watch the stuff.