Another useful little gadget

Anyone who knows me, knows that I'm a big fan of low-cost solutions to problems. Anyone can solve a problem if you throw enough money at it.

The trick is, to solve the problem while throwing little or no money at it!

How about this? Here's a nifty little shoulder mount that I found at B&H:

Great huh? Girl not included (sadly) but it's still a nice shoulder mount, for $59.95 with free shipping from B&H.

Another cool thing is that the camera can slide about 6" along the top of the mount, so you can optimize how you want to look through the viewfinder. And the hand grip can be placed in about five different positions. Plus, the entire mount can be placed on a tripod (or monopod) without removing the camera.

It's simple, affordable, and very useful.

Is it as good as some of the $500 shoulder supports? Of course not. But for an inexpensive solution to preventing those shaky arms (and shaky video) after holding the camera for a few minutes, it works great.

All I need now is the green light for my documentary project, and I'll be likely using this before the end of the week!

Documentary: Dissent or Disloyalty

Now that I'm back from my week-long vacation on the sailboat, I'm ready to get back to work!

This is a short documentary I created last September, after attending several very contentious political events during the lead-up to health care reform. It is one of the over 300 videos I have on my Youtube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/CTBob and be warned: quite a few are crappy production-wise, but posted for sheer fun or news value)

Now that I've completed the FITP program, I'm currently in talks to arrange a zero-budget political documentary, which will quite possibly begin production next week.

I'll keep you updated about that, and also other creative projects I'm working on. In the meantime, please watch "Dissent or Disloyalty?" Comments and/or criticisms are welcome; but please be gentle, as I'm still learning this stuff!

FITP: Day 20

(Go back to Day 19)

(If this is the first time you're visiting my blog, please start at Day One of the Film Industry Training Program to follow my progress. At the end of each post is a link to the next day's entry!)

(Disclaimer: please note that my opinions are strictly my own, and don't reflect the opinions of the Connecticut Film & Digital Media Workforce. In fact, many of my opinions don't reflect what is commonly thought of as "consensus reality" in any way, shape, or form!)

The final day of the shoot! Wow, that was a fast four weeks! It was a perfect day, sunny with low humidity, which was great because we were shooting all exterior scenes.

Tracy mixes a scene early morning. Our call time is 9AM and we got completely set up and the first take shot before 10AM, which is incredibly fast to get everything set.

The next scene I mixed a total of three mics with two actors outside the car and two inside. We had two actors with radio mics and a boom covering the actors in the car.

I boomed a few takes of the actors talking and then fleeing in their car, then Colleen had to sit in the back seat to mic the actors while a camera mounted on the door was filming.

Pat boomed a scene at the car, and by then it was starting to warm up a bit.

Director Richard Dobbs sat in the back seat to shoot a scene, while Samantha mic'd the actors like Colleen did in a previous setup. The back seat of a Chrysler convertible is small enough to start with, and then having two people with video and recording equipment trying to work in there is quite a task.

It's a wrap! After loading out and packing up Chat's car, we posed for one last group photo by the sound cart. Chat bade us a very fond farewell soon afterward as he needed to drive about three hours to get home tonight.

Clockwise from upper left: Atanas, Jon, Tracy, Dan, the sound cart, Chat, Fred, me, Samantha, Colleen, Pat.

At the wrap party at Aunt Chilada's on Whitney, I shot this photo of Marty Lang, who wrote the screenplay, Chuck Miller, and A.D. Danielle Rigby, whom I let know that I learned an amazing lot about the A.D.'s job simply by watching her.

Finally I got a photo with Angelo DiGiacamo, the Director of Photography who took some time the other day to coach me about how to work on a set. I thanked him for his honesty and congratulated him on his retirement, which begins today. He'll still be involved in the business, but on the teaching side.

We all felt sad that this incredible experience was drawing to a close, but we'll stay in touch and hopefully get to work together again. I can say now that I had a wonderful and challenging time, and it was intense at times but also very rewarding. I feel fortunate to have had this opportunity to learn, and after I get back from vacation next week, I'll start looking for a job.

And now, here's some video goodness for you:



I'll post more updates after I get back from vacation next week, but for now I'm beat and going to sleep. Email me at futuredv *at* yahoo.com if you wish to contact me.

Especially to offer me a production sound job!

FITP: Day 19

(Go back to Day 18)

Another 10-hour day on location. We all got to do some cool stuff today.

Samantha mixes a scene while Pat "thirds" for the Sound Crew. Thirding is basically a utility person/cable puller, who supports the mixer and the boom op.

Director Richard Dobbs (center) discusses blocking a scene with actors Marty Lang and Greg Nutcher. Marty also wrote the screenplay.

After lunch there was a scene that required Atanas to stretch out the boom pole about 12 feet to mic the actors. Usually it requires a bit of muscle to hold the boom steady at that distance. After a minute or so you start getting trembling in your arms.

Well, Atanas got to test his muscles because this was a scene where the director wanted to keep trying new things while keeping the cameras rolling. Meaning Atanas had to hold the boom over the actors the entire time without letting it dip into the camera frame, nor drifting too high that it loses the sound.

Which is all well and good if the scene goes for a couple minutes. But Richard kept tossing out ideas to the actors while the roll was going, and I noticed the timecode on the digital recorder creeping up past three, then four minutes, I began getting concerned for Atanas.

Then Richard ran through a bunch more ideas, and the timer hit six, seven, then EIGHT minutes (for a SINGLE take, mind you!) and I really began to worry. As soon as the director finally yelled "cut" somewhere just shy of nine minutes, I ran onto the set to help Atanas. The poor guy was soaked in sweat and clearly flayed, but he toughed the scene out and did an amazing job with the boom. It wasn't my turn to boom but I decided right there and then to relieve him. He was relieved all right, and the first thing he did once he was disconnected was to grab his water bottle and take a giant swig out of it.

I boomed a couple of scenes and did a good job, then went back to the sound cart to see where else I could help. We were well into the afternoon by then, and were on our way to finishing up the rest of the interior scenes.

This is a shot of the living room set where a couple cameras were set up. We had an "A" camera and a "B" camera for many scenes, and that made it challenging for the boom operator because they had to watch TWO frame lines.

Our dear instructor must have had a taxing day trying to whip his sound crew into shape, because during some interminable delay waiting for the cameras to get ready for a scene, Chat rested his head on his arm and took a short vacation to snooze-land.

By the way, it clearly is weird how camera crews can take all frickin' day to set up and tweak their cameras to perfection, happily holding up production for hours if needed; but if the sound department takes more than two minutes to properly resolve a mic issue, they all look at you like you're preventing them from eating Thanksgiving dinner until it gets cold! I mean, c'mon guys, how 'bout a little respect for the people who invented the concept of "talkies"? If it wasn't for us sound-dogs, movies would simply be shadows moving on a wall.

Although, our Director of Photography Angelo DiGiacomo is very much a sound crew's kind of guy. He was very attentive to our needs when it came to video monitors, and the few times he needed to point out our mistakes, he did so in a very low-key and constructive way. He's a great guy.

Back to Chat's snoozing. The best part is when the flash from my camera woke him up! I didn't even know the flash was ON, so there were TWO very surprised people involved producing this photo. Thank god I didn't try to snap a photo while on the set; the director or A.D. probably would have killed me!

And I'd have deserved it, too.

Now I'm gonna get some sleep. Tomorrow is the final day of the shoot. No way do I want to be late!

Click here to go to Day 20

FITP: Day 18

(Go back to Day 17)

Today was the Green Team's day, and it dawned sunny and quite comfortable compared to the steam bath we'd just spent the last two days enduring.

Colleen, Jon and I were on the set, mixing, booming and thirding for most of the day. It was fun but challenging at times.

These are the two cameras that filmed most of the scenes today. I got to boom a 6'5" guy in a room with a 6'11" ceiling, or so it seemed. "Tiny" just doesn't leave a lot of headroom in any shot with a low roof. But I mic'd him anyway and didn't dip the mic into the camera frame while dancing just above the frame line. Too bad there wasn't much in the way of dialog, but not every scene has a lot of talking in it.

During lunch we all gathered in front of the location for a team picture, hence mostly everyone wearing the FITP crew shirts.

Green Team member Jon mixed while I was out on the set. We had a few bizarre headphone issues, which led to me being sonically blasted through my cans while I was booming. They're called "cans" because back in the old days, they used two tin cans and a length of twine to communicate with people. If you believe that, there's definitely a bridge in Brooklyn that you'll want to snap up at the first opportunity.

Anyway, my "cans" were so goddamned loud that the camera and A.D. crews motioned for me to shut it down as they got ready to roll. Being in Sound means never having to say you're sorry; and it definitely means that you should NEVER be the fucking cause of a sound problem! I actually never physically felt someone's eyes drilling into me until I told the director and A.D. that we needed to hold the roll for Sound.

And the drilling continued as we took a couple minutes to solve our problem; which, speaking of drilling, made me feel about as popular as BP right about then.

I had to unplug my phones from the jack because there's no volume control on it, and when the A.D. calls for "sound", I'm supposed to listen to the mixer say "speed" on my cans and relay that back to them. But being unplugged is better than being deaf, so finally someone called out "speed" from the other room. Eventually we figured it out, but my ears were ringing for the rest of the day.

Green Teamer Colleen boomed the scene that will likely get the biggest laugh in the film, but in this picture you can't see the actor she was miking who was lying face down on the floor right behind her, pretty much wearing only a pair of skimpy underpants.

She was a trooper and flawlessly boomed quite a few takes over several setups before we relieved her. Colleen seriously rocked today, and she proved that it's not just the biggest (and noisiest) assholes who can do a great job in Sound! She's a star.

Chat tasked me with mixing the most technical scene of the day, our final shot outside. We had to deal with three talking actors walking from around a corner, up a slate walkway while being filmed from a dolly, and into a small porch area. And a bit of a breeze. And about a 30-minute window before it got so dark they'd have to light the entire goddamned area, which obviously nobody was thrilled to have to do.

Good. No pressure. Just the way I like it.

I had to decide on how to mic it. Knowing that Chat firmly believes in "Boom it until you can't", I designed a two-boom scheme that had Jon using the long shotgun to follow the actors from the corner up to the porch, and then Sam using the short shotgun to catch their dialog as they turn to enter the house.

Well, after a rehearsal we could see that there was no way the shotgun could pick up the actors before they rounded the corner, so Chat called for a wireless lav on "Tiny". A take or two later and we realized that Paul needed a wireless lav also. Which gave me a total of FOUR mics to mix, which was a fantastic challenge.

I did screw up a bit by not checking if the second boom was properly connected to the mixer when we decided to go for it. It wasn't, and although I found and fixed the problem quickly, Chat looked at me and said grimly, "That's one!"

Jesus, I thought, bad things usually come in threes! I better make sure I do everything right from here on in and keep Chat at "one"!

We ran through a few more takes, and with the light leaving, we needed get some usable tracks. Chat mixed one take just to be sure, then he had me mix the final two takes. I got the last one nearly perfect, although if we didn't have to worry about the light, I would have liked to do one more to really nail it.

But overall I'm very pleased with how it went today. The way Chat teaches is that he constantly pushes you way the fuck past your comfort zone, which can be nervewracking but also gives you the opportunity to shine.

I don't know if I officially "shined" today; but without a doubt I definitely "glowed" a bit!

And, considering how far we'll all come in the last 18 days, I feel pretty durned good about it. Two more days, then we wrap. Honestly, I can easily do this for another month!

Click here to go to Day 19

FITP: Day 17

(Go back to Day 16)

Day 2 of the shoot!

Daniel handles the boom while Chat discusses the scene.

Tracy mixes a scene while Colleen watches. The kitchen is still ridiculously small, and the monitor didn't work because they ran longer cables to get them out of the shot, so everyone who worked the board was mixing "blind".

During lunch Chat decided that it would be a good idea to have a Sound Dept. meeting so he could go over strategies to ensure the best chance of success during the shoot. For some reason Samantha has started making goofy faces at me each time I take a picture. She's probably just getting back at me for crossing my eyes at her right before her line during a dramatic scene were acting in together.

My team members Jon and Colleen listen to Chat, along with Fred who was the boom op for much of this afternoon. When Chat asked if any of us had any suggestions on how he could do a better job, I almost suggested "Maybe you could scream at us a bit more!", but I was worried he wouldn't get the joke and then actually DO it!

It's kind of a running gag, and when some folks from scripts asked how it was working with Chat, I replied, "Oh, he's the bestest and nicest guy you could ever meet! Of course, I'm suffering from Stockholm Syndrome!"

Which is a joke, because we all love and respect Chat and enjoy working with him, and his stories make what could easily be a dry and boring subject into an entertaining learning experience. Yes, he does occasionally let us know when we're behaving in a particularly doltish manner, but then he goes out of his way to explain WHY what we're doing is wrong and the best way to correct it. Plus, he's very generous with praise when it's merited, which makes us all want to do a great job and actually earn that praise.

The reality on a film set is that you need to think and to act in a way that will guarantee a successful production. Any screwing around or inattentiveness is enough to get you tossed out of a job, and possibly blacklisted from getting any other jobs! Chat is making sure we know the lay of the land and avoid the pratfalls that many people take in this business.

And I think he's fuckin' awesome for being a no-bullshit instructor, and I'd highly recommend him for anyone who truly wants to learn the subtleties of this business, even if it doesn't perfectly match whatever romanticized fantasy about working on a film set consists of.

A dolly track for a scene we'll likely shoot tomorrow. The missing apple box in the foreground was pilfered for a scene we were shooting in the house.

D4N, which is saying "day for night". On our call sheets, the daily schedule given to us the night before (we hope), it shows the interior party scenes as being filmed at night. So a blindingly bright shaft of light beaming into the middle of the set during a supposed nighttime party scene might ruin some of the magic we're creating.

The way to solve it is to screen the windows with black fabric, and in this case also put a weather resistant shield over it. Which is what they're doing on the upper floor windows.

The screened-in room on the three windows on the left is the "video village", a roughly 12x18' space our six non-working (at the moment) sound crew shares with a lot of script supervisors. Who are a fun and jokey bunch, but when I look at the endless amount of paperwork they have to process, it makes me happy that I'm in Sound.

Inside the "controlled chaos" of a location film set. By the end of Day 2, the overheated set was starting to smell like a 1940s era Vic Tanny Gym!

Okay, so I'm always on the lookout for interesting photo-ops when I have my digital camera with me. Here's a license plate I noticed as I turned off on exit 34 of the Connecticut Turnpike.

Nothin' like letting your freak flag fly!

...on your license plate, even. Hey, something tells me there's some fur-lined cuffs and a riding crop or two in this fella's trunk!

I think in order to convey my new chosen interest, I'll apply for a vanity plate myself. How about this one:

"SNDDOG"

Click here to go to Day 18

FITP: Day 16

(Go back to Day 15)

First day of the shoot! I got there plenty early today, well before the call time. We were shuttled from the university parking lot up Mt. Carmel Rd to the location about 1/2 mile away.

When I got there I helped set up the "video village", which is a screened-in porch where the Sound Dept. people who weren't directly involved in the shoot (we split into three teams and each day one team is the "A Team") could listen in on headphones and watch on the monitor. Also we shared the space with the approximately 144 script supervisor trainees, or so it seemed in the very cramped and excessively hot space! Did I mention it was in the 90s today?

We managed to watch the monitor as the scene was shot, and we also took turns going inside and watching the Blue Team do their thing. We all couldn't go in at once because it was much too small a kitchenette the sound cart had been parked in.

Daniel, Colleen, and Tracy all trying to look like they're not about to expire from heat prostitution (goddamned spell checker! I tried to spell "heat prostration", but you get one lousy letter wrong and it automatically assumes you want to talk about whores! Probably it's better not to draw any conclusions.)

Samantha, Tracy, and Atanas in our ultra-luxurious sound suite, otherwise known as the "smallest kitchen in the known universe".

Patrick was booming the scene here, which is a party and has some pretty funny dialog. Pat did a great job miking the actors.

Chat gives Samantha some pointers about mixing the upcoming scene. Chat is taking a fairly hands-off approach to the movie, making us do nearly all the work. When this film is done, we'll all likely remember which scene we mixed.

Leah, who plays the scheming Christine in the film, listens to Director of Photography Angelo Di Giacomo describe how the scene is to be filmed.

We ended up running about 1 1/2 hours late today, and we didn't get everything done that needed to be. But today was largely about set up and getting everything (including the 2nd camera that didn't show up until late) in place, and by late afternoon I could see the entire crew was getting into a rhythm. I'm sure tomorrow we'll make up for lost time and hopefully get back on schedule.

Despite the cooling rain squall that swept through around 2PM, it was very hot and physically tiring most of the day. But craft services provided some very acceptable fare, and Script Supervisor Virginia McCarthy thoughtfully provided a couple of trays of baked snacks, which were a big hit, so we got through the day mostly intact.

That's Day One of the shoot. Tomorrow we'll do it all over again.

Click here to go to Day 17

FITP: Day 15

(Go back to Day 14)

UPDATE: Now this post comes with video goodness!



Friday was the last day of pre-production. After this, we start our shoot on Monday.

This morning we got pink pages. Scripts are often revised and updated as the production day approaches. The first script is printed on normal white paper. Then, when they change something, the pages they send are blue. Often you'll get just the pages with changes on them, with a cover sheet that instructs you to replace which page numbers with the new pages.

The next revision is typically pink. There's a whole spectrum of colors they use to make changes to the script, and if there's enough revisions eventually you'll get back to a white script. So now I've got a tri-color script. In this case, the pink pages are the final pages. After today, any changes will be made while shooting.

The big pre-production meeting. This is some of our department, gathered to hear the department heads discuss each scene and any production issues that might come into question. (L to R: Atanas, Colleen, Daniel, Chat, and Tracy)

Danielle Rigby (center) led the meeting, reading each scene and opening up the discussion. We finished around lunch, and now everyone is theoretically on the same page.

After lunch we had several hours to get everyone some experience with mixing sound. This is Samantha watching the action on her monitor while changing levels.

Colleen watches intently as the scene progresses. We each got a chance to mix, boom, and third all afternoon.

Because a sound crew is typically three persons (the sound mixer, the boom operator, and the "third" or cable puller/utility person), and the location is much too small to have everyone involved in every scene, Chat divided us into three 3-person teams, to trade off jobs over the course of the shoot. I have Colleen and Jonathan on my team, and we're the "Green" team. The other teams are "Red" and "Blue".

Being the creative types we all are, we chose creative nicknames. The Blue team became the "Blue Angels". The Red Team became the "Red Horde". Which was immediately bastardized into the red "whores", and then they were tagged at various times with the Red Harlots, the Red Tramps, and the Red Courtesans (me being all literary, and which someone misheard as "cortisone").

When Chat asked what the Green team wanted, Sam chimed in with "Green Goblins"! Oh great, not my first choice at all. I wanted the Green Hornets, or the Green Flash, or even the Green Team. "Goblins"? Eh, not so much. Oh well, maybe we can get "Hornets" to stick on Monday...

Anyway, we finished our final scenes (and I was "ADA Sutherland" when called upon to act, and you can ask Colleen, but I totally nailed that character!!!) and began our load out. We had to meet the Ryder truck at 4:15, so we trundled all our gear downstairs from the Law Center to the parking lot. Tracy, Colleen and I did the actual delivery at the location as Chat released some of our classmates who wanted to depart early to miss the Friday traffic. I was going sailing that night and didn't mind staying a bit longer, since there was a full moon and the weather was awesome.

That SUV belongs to Chat. I love how he's a dyed-in-the-wool liberal with a 2004 Kerry-Edwards sticker on his car, along with a Kucinich for President sticker on the other side. He's aware of my political leanings, but I don't think he's had a chance to read my ConnecticutBob blog yet. I'll have to send him the links to my Kucinich interviews.

We finished the load out at the location before 6, and my immediate impression was "Holy shit! How the fuck are they gonna get an entire film crew in that tiny house?"

Well obviously, we'll see. And we'll probably be incredibly impressed at how well the instructors manage to bring together all the disparate elements of a shoot into a sort of controlled chaos.

Call time for Sound is 8:30 at the North Lot. Something tells me I'll be there plenty early.

Click here to go to Day 16

FITP: Day 14

(Go back to Day 13)

Today we started with finishing up our cable training with using multimeters to troubleshoot bad connections. That took about an hour, and then we piled into a van for the short ride to the location scout at the house where we'll shoot next week.

Director Richard Dobbs led several production departments including Sound on a walk-through of the various scenes and camera placements. Each department asked questions on production issues that have anything to do with their area of responsibilities.

The location scout cleared up several issues we had, but there are still some things that we won't know until the day of the shoot, so we'll just have to be ready with many different contingency plans. One thing we do know is that if it's as hot during the shoot as it was today, we're gonna fry our asses during the exterior scenes! Plus, the house is so small that only three Sound dept. people can be inside during a camera roll, meaning the rest of us will be stuck outside.

Then we got back to the school, and broke for a short lunch so we could get back to running scenes and practicing with the sound equipment.

This is me mixing a scene where three actors were all mic'd differently; one with a stashed carioid mic, and two with both a stashed hyper-cardiod and a short shotgun on a boom. The scene required constant mixing depending on the dialog and action. It was challenging at first but I managed to find levels that worked and I had a lot of fun learning how to do it.

Click here to go to Day 15

FITP: Day 13

(Go back to Day 12)

"Welcome to Hogwarts!"

There's something about the brick walls and all those gothic lanterns hanging around the Law school lobby that reminds me of a Harry Potter movie. If the staircases start moving around on their own, I'm outta here!

Which was the setting for another morning of learning the boom mics various patterns and techniques to provide the optimum sound coverage.

John holds the boom while Chat talks on his phone. The mic was sensitive enough for us to hear both sides of the conversation through our headphones. Sneaky!

Chat hides a lavaliere mic in Daniel's tie. The mic was pushed up into the knot to make it invisible to the camera, but the sound was still good.

Chat wears my hat with a lavaliere mic taped into it.

The little red circle at the top shows the edge of the tiny mic in the hat. It turns out that this is pretty much perfect for the mic.

After we practiced outside for a few hours, we were assembled and listened to director Richard Dobbs talk about the film business and the shoot we have coming up next week. It was nearly the end of the regular day, but we hung out for a bit because it was Marty Lang's birthday! And we got cake!

Then we gathered back up in our classroom for a special after-hours session about soldering connectors on cables! I brought my tools, including a butane-fueled iron and my trusty plug-in pencil iron, and worked with some of my classmates who, unlike me, maybe haven't been soldering stuff since Reagan first entered the Oval Office.

Here's Colleen, failing miserably at not grinning while I took this photo:

And here's Samantha, showing why she is indeed too cool for school, by soldering wires while wearing her shades indoors!

We wrapped up around 8:30PM, making today a loooong day. And much like after last weekend's aerial lift training, I'm similarly pleased to announce that yet again nobody was killed during our dangerous training activities.

Which made it a good day in spite of it being our 13th together!

Click here to go to Day 14

FITP: Day 12

(Go back to Day 11)

We're getting closer to our student film shoot that starts on Monday.

We began with a lecture on filtering the sound signal to "clean" it from unwanted frequencies. Then we rigged a couple of mics and experimented with various filtering schemes.

To most people, they don't really notice these kinds of things when watching a film. But it's very obvious when a sound mixer doesn't do his job right and some glaringly obvious audio problem takes them right out of the story they were watching and makes them ask, "What the fuck was that awful noise?" when an annoying sound crops up that should have been taken care of in the mix.

Then we broke to visit the wardrobe department, so Chat could instruct the wardrobe trainees about lavaliere placement on actors, and we learned about various costume material from Danajean Cicerchi, who did the Day 5 lecture about wardrobe.

I normally don't worry about wardrobe too much, but there's always been a question that I've pondered now and again, especially after seeing a movie scene with female nudity in it.

The question is, which department is responsible for what is commonly called a "merkin"? Props or Wardrobe? Because really, even though an actress physically wears a merkin, they almost always look adorably like some kind of cute and furry pet, which technically would make it a prop.

Well, a few days earlier when I chatted with Danajean at lunch, she answered that question indirectly (because I didn't have the courage to come right out and ask it) by saying that anything an actor wears is considered wardrobe.

Which immediately spawned the next logical question (which I also failed to ask), "Is there such a job as a "merkin fitter", and if so, who do I have to kill to get it?"

Alas, there's one more career I'll have to add to my list of things I'll likely never become, right after "astronaut" and before "spokesmodel". Such is life.

After lunch (where I managed to avoid locking my keys in my car) we dragged the sound cart outside to learn how to deal with intrusive background noise. We set up on the patio right next to the pond with the giant fountain in it, providing a very audible white noise to work with.

Unfortunately, it started to sprinkle, and after hoping it would stop to no avail, we dragged the cart back into the law school lounge area.

So while the World Cup was playing on the lounge TV (goddamn those awful fucking vuvuzelas!) we ran lines on a scene from "Working Girl" (1988) with both actors mic'd with lavs and also boom mic'd.

Well, I'm starting to think that Chat has a sick sense of humor, because the scene called for Harrison Ford and Melanie Griffith to have their awkward wake-up conversation after she got drunk, passed out, and woke up in her underwear in Harrison's bed. Of course, Chat called for guys to play BOTH parts. Twice!

Actually, Chat was proving a point that when doing this sort of work, accuracy to the script's requirements isn't nearly as important as getting the sound levels and techniques right. In theory it makes perfect sense.

Guess who got to read some of Melanie Griffith's lines?

Maybe I should be thanking Chat. There's nothing in the world that cures you of the ability to be embarrassed more than reading Melanie's lines about waking up in her underwear while Harrison leeringly delivers his suggestive lines back at you. And all the while, non-FITP law students wandered in and out of the public area pretty much non-stop. It was a lesson is just how weird the film business can be!

We finished up with our lovely production and went back to class. There, we talked about Pressure Zone Mics (PZMs) and the mysterious Seven Things a Boom Operator Must Know. Which turned out to be about Nine Things, but who's counting? It's all good!

At 5 we were called down to the big hall to pick up our snazzy 2010 FITP T-shirts! Yay, free shirts! This course just keeps gettin' better!

Click here to go to Day 13

FITP: Day 11

(Go back to Aerial Lift Day)

Our third week started with a pop quiz, then a lecture about "phasing". Chat then led us on a practical demonstration of both "electric" and "acoustic" phasing, which are both very important when working with two or more mics on a set.

Around 10AM we were interrupted with a request to join Grip & Electric at the School of Communications for a practical lesson in placing mics on a real "set", which in this case was the school's production control room. We spent about an hour learning how to deal with issues like boom shadows ("I'm bein' followed by a boom shadow, boom shadow boom shadow." Yeah, thanks SO much for planting that awful song in my brain, Tracy!)

We also learned about setting up furniture pads on C-stands to dampen the sound in a space. Garrett, the Head Grip, showed us how to safely assemble the framework needed to support one of those pads.

During lunch I stupidly locked my keys in my car. Luckily, today was a very warm day, and I'd cracked all four windows about an inch or so. After I got done cursing my stupidity (which is pretty much guaranteed to be a daily event for me, so it wasn't a biggie) I started thinking about fixing the problem. I took note of the situation:

Fact: my keys were in the ignition.
Fact: the windows are slightly open.
Fact: when I looked across the interior from the driver's side, I could see the electric lock switch on the passenger door, right near the armrest.

Okay, so maybe if I get a long enough stick, I can put it through the crack in the driver's window, across to the passenger door, and finesse the electric lock switch into popping all the locks.

Now where was I going to get a long enough pole to do this? Hmmm...

Ah, maybe not. Chat's boom poles are worth more than I make (made, when I was employed) in a week, and the idea of using one of his fine carbon-fiber instruments to rudely jab my door jamb was less than respectful.

So I considered it my last option before calling Triple-A.

Then the bright idea to stroll over to Grip & Electric entered my mind. Probably because barely an hour earlier Garrett had told us that we were welcome to come by during lunch hour and fiddle with the equipment if we wanted. Inspiration is always better when it's served nice and fresh!

I walked over and asked Garrett if he had anything that would meet the parameters needed. We searched around a bit, then I noticed a 12-foot 1/2-inch square length of wood trim. It seemed plenty rigid enough to do the job. I took it over to the car, and using my best boom op talents fed it through the window across the car and to the switch. A little swipe to the left and the locks popped open! In all, it took maybe 15 seconds after getting to the car. I returned the wood and thanked Garrett for his help.

In the afternoon we ran a couple of scenes for mic work. The one above used a single boom and a stash mic out of view on a chair. Here's Chat mixing one of the takes:

Everyone got plenty of chances to work the booms and to listen to the results of others doing it. And act. Yes, we all got chances to act! Suffice it to say, I'm not going to need to work on any acceptance speeches anytime soon. At least not for acting.

By the end of the day Chat said that, as a class, we were really starting to "get it". The class is beginning to gel together as a team.

This thing is starting to rock!

Click here to go to Day 12

FITP: Aerial Lift Day

(Go back to Day 10)

Today was the special Aerial Lift certification course, which is a requirement to get into the union, IATSE Local 52.

While I have no idea if I'll someday join the union, I figured having another certification would be a good thing, especially for the very reasonable $50 fee for the course.

After about an hour-long presentation, we all took a written exam, and then headed out to the off-campus lot where the two lifts were parked. One, pictured above, is called a "boom", and can reach about 40' into the air. The other, which you'll see in the video, is called a "scissors lift", and extends straight up about 20'.

The weather was as nice as could be for today's course. Instructor Adam Drummond commented on how he's run into all sorts of crappy weather in the countless training programs he's run, but today was absolutely perfect. Coupled with a great view of the scenic Quinnipiac Campus, it was awesome.

When I made it onto the boom, I asked Adam if we could extend it up to the maximum height so I could take a photo, to which he readily agreed. The picture didn't do justice to the scene below, but I enjoyed the view anyway so it was cool.

After my foray onto the two lifts, I managed to avoid tipping them over or running into Adam's SUV with them, so I was awarded a Certificate of Completion for OSHA 29 CFR S.1926.453 Aerial Lift Platform (Scissor & Boom). The cert is good for three years, after which I'll have to take the course again to re-certify.

I can't wait!

Click here to go to FITP: Day 11