The Coffey Audio Files - Spring 2009

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THE COFFEY AUDIO FILES Production Sound Post Production Hardware Software Tech Tips Interviews News The Stunt Man: PRODUCTION MIXER’S CUT by Jim Tanenbaum VOLUME 21 | ISSUE 1 | 2009 Dinner: Impossible by Jay Hartigan www.coffeysound.com The Unit: Mixing with Kevin Compayre Sound Mixer Mark Weingarten On Mixing Zaxcom TRX-992 First Look at Zaxcom’s newest Wireless Boom Transmitter ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: Slumdog Millionaire Resul Pootuky takes us behind the scenes of Danny Boyle’s masterpiece. American Idol Kamal Humphrey shows us the ENG side of the unstoppable reality show. NCIS Interview Steve Bowerman sits down with The Coffey Audio Files for a Q&A. Fostex LR-16 A detailed look at their new 16-track Live Recording Mixer.

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Coffey Audio Files

Transcript of The Coffey Audio Files - Spring 2009

THECOFFEY AUDIO FILES

Production Sound Post Production Hardware Software Tech Tips Interviews News

The Stunt Man: PRODUCTION MIXER’S CUTby Jim Tanenbaum

VOLUME 21 | ISSUE 1 | 2009

Dinner: Impossibleby Jay Hartigan

www.coffeysound.com

The Unit:Mixing with Kevin Compayre

Sound Mixer Mark WeingartenOn Mixing

Zaxcom TRX-992First Look at Zaxcom’s newestWireless Boom Transmitter

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:Slumdog MillionaireResul Pootuky takes us behind the scenes of Danny Boyle’s masterpiece.

American IdolKamal Humphrey shows us the ENG side of the unstoppable reality show.

NCIS InterviewSteve Bowerman sits down with The Coffey Audio Files for a Q&A.

Fostex LR-16A detailed look at their new 16-track Live Recording Mixer.

www.sennheiserusa.com

Introducing the Sennheiser EM 3732 Advanced Wireless ReceiverThere’s never been a wireless system as flexible or powerful as Sennheiser’s new EM 3732. It’s loaded with features designed to make your life easy - so you can concentrate on the performance rather than your gear.

• 90 MHZ switching bandwidth• Do it yourself tuning in 5 kHz steps - maximum flexibility• Very intuitive menu settings - fast setup• Ethernet port for computer monitoring and control.

Integrates all NET1 functionality• New compander circuit is backward and forward compatible

with all Sennheiser 3000 & 5000 series pro wireless gear• Daisy chain up to 16 channels without the need for an

external antenna distribution system

EM 3732: the wirelessdream machine

coffey_ad_0908.indd 1 9/30/08 10:21:31 AM

The Coffey Audio Files2009Volume 21, Issue 01

President: John Coffey, C.A.S.

Editor in Chief: Steven Wolstrup

Advertising Inquiries: Contact Steven Wolstrup at (323) 876-7525 or via email at [email protected]

Publishing: The Coffey AudioFiles is published with postage paid in the State of California. This publication may not be quoted, reproduced or reprinted in any form without the express written consent of Coffey Sound, LLC. Printed in the USA. All images are copyright of their respective owners.

Coffey Audio Files Online: Visit us online at coffeysound.com and download the free PDF copy of this and other issues of “The Coffey Au-dio Files” magazine. This PDF may be freely distributed, but may not be quoted, reproduced or reprinted in any form without the express written consent of Coffey Sound, LLC.

Interested in Contributing? Please contact us via email at [email protected] or by telephone at (323) 876-7525.

03 Coffey’s Brew A Message from the President. 04 In Memoriam - Jean L. Clark 04 Acadamy Award Nominees

09 Slumdog Millionaire Resul Pookutty

06 The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Mark Weingarten Cover Story!

25 The ENG side of American Idol Kamal Humphrey

42 Audio Glossary (O-P)

06Mixing The UnitKevin Compayre

09NCIS Interview

Steve Bowerman

15Dinner Impossible

Jay Hartigan

29The Stuntman

Jim Tanenbaum

THE COFFEY AUDIO FILESPhone: (323) 876-7525 | Fax: (323) 876-4775

3325 Cahuenga Blvd W | Los Angeles, CA 90068

IN THISISSUE

Table of Contents

THE COFFEY AUDIO FILESPhone: (323) 876-7525 | Fax: (323) 876-4775

3325 Cahuenga Blvd W | Los Angeles, CA 90068

39Lectrosonics UM400/450

and SM Series Cheat Sheet.

44Zaxcom TRX-992

K-Tek Klassic Traveler KitFostex LR-16 Live

Recording MixerSennheiser EM 3700 Series

COM Rack-Mount Receivers

Tech Zone:

Product Highlight:

production in its tracks. The SAG “negotiations” + a severe recession = a perfect storm in Hollywood. Even the top feature mixers, who can usually pick and choose their films, have been struggling from the lack of work, once all the big clout actors and director’s pay-or-play contracts finished their principal photography. Studios are making massive cutbacks across their businesses, especially those tied to the business climate outside of Hollywood. Our business is one of the few to prosper in bad times, but mega-companies such as News-corp and GE are slashing across all their divisions. There is even a move to require that Hollywood workers will have to procure 400 hours to get health insurance. As though it wasn’t hard enough for many to qualify with 300 hours now? Those who do 3-camera shows, commercials and ENG were always on the 300 hour bubble. This comes as studios require more workers to be available for production jobs on the day-call assembly line for 2nd unit crews on television shows, something that didn’t even exist ten years ago. Most of those workers will be lucky to consistently make the 400 hours for health insurance as many only can find inconsistent work 2 or 3 days a week. Studios could save lots more by cutting their own waste and increasing shooting efficiency. They could take a sharp knife and cut more of the above-the-line costs, starting with the number of them on a show? We often see a dis-con-nect between upper echelon corporate studio strata and what really happens down on the set. Since so few actually come from the production trenches, they just can’t know what they don’t know. But we do. We know that waste is enormous in all above-the-line areas, but they still continue to lower below-the-line overhead disproportionately as expenses have increased exponentially when each show tries to outdo the other in production value. Episodic television has become mini-movie making. Conversely, many good cable shows have shown that it’s entirely possible to have a reasonable episodic budget that centers on good acting and well written scripts. We all know tv should really be all about a quick and inexpensive master shot and then immediately going in tight for overs and close-ups. Bingo, on to the next scene. No huge stunts, cranes and wondrous set-ups that take for-ever to shoot as giant masters. Big master shots usually only get used for a few seconds of screen time anyway. There are some good models out there on cable now of prudently shot episodic tv series, wrapping in under 12 hour workdays,

by just one producer who is trusted to handle it. It was done for years and years that way and can happen again. The good news is that we are in a resilient industry which does better in hard times that most other businesses. The masses will continue to pay for the best entertainment products offered through tv, theatres and the internet. Within 90 days of the SAG situation ending, there will be a huge rush to make many films. Every studio has enormous backlogs. There will actually be too much work as feature mixers will not be able to serve all their clients at once. It will be a great time for tv mixers and boom operators who would like to work on features. It also means fewer television mixers available in the labor pool, so there should be plenty of work all around. I feel that the worst has peaked. This industry again proved it’s recession proof with record final numbers of a billion dollar plus box office in 2008. The pendulum’s going to swing back to better days very soon. The grand experiment to save money, by going to more primetime game and talk shows, will run its course. Advertiser money, though scarcer, will still want to bet their money on the shows that people watch. Networks that filmed few, partial or no pilots, have seen that experiment backfire on them as their rating dip from the weak line-up. Bad decisions, such as putting Jay Leno in the 10pm time slot to take away 5 hours of episodic programming, will fail! Viewers and advertisers will reject their boring fare in favor of better enter-tainment choices on the other networks and any saving from paying many millions to talk show hosts won’t negate the lack of immediate and back-end revenue. The short-sightedness of not generating back end money alone, from repeats and DVD sales of season’s series, will cost them more in the long run. Eventually the studios will stumble back to the old tried a true ways again and fix what’s broke. Productions will again be shot on reason-able budgets that still make a good product. After all is said and done, sanity will prevail again. In the future, studios will ask sound crews for our ideas on how to save money….well maybe not, but start warming up your fingers and ears. There will be a happier ending coming soon in our future. I can’t end this without mentioning the fun part of our business, the awards season. It’s that time again, when sound people are briefly appreciated for their efforts. Our past issue did a story on Wiley Statemen’s fine work on WANTED, for which he has garnered another Academy Award nomination. Check it out online. This issue has stories on two more production mixers nominated this year. It has been my great enjoyment to deal with Mark Weingarten as he chats in his own words about mixing The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and conversing with Resul Pookutty, who mixed Slumdog Millionaire. Good luck to all the nominees.

Enjoy the issue,

John Coffey,President of Coffey Sound LLC

I can’t sugar coat it. We all know the state of our industry has been damaged. SAG’s has strung out a final resolution for so long that a de-facto strike was caused. If there was going to be a strike, it should have already hap-pened months ago and been over by the end of ‘08. Instead, the unresolved tension froze

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COFFEY’S BREW: A Letter From The President

Jean L. Clark: In Memorium

IN MEMORIAM – JEAN L. CLARK10/18/45 – 1/12/09

By Jim Tanenbaum, C.A.S.

Jean L. Clark, my long-time boom operator and close personal friend of 35 years, passed away on January 12, 2009, from complications of a pacemaker replacement. He is survived by an older brother, Larry, who is not in the industry. Jean was “one of Hollywood’s best kept secrets”, as he was fond of saying. While most mixers are very particular about the boom operators they hire, Jean was very particular about the mixers he would work with (“with” not “for”). In all the years I knew him, I doubt that he had worked with a dozen mixers more than once. I

don’t suffer fools gladly, but Jean didn’t suffer them at all. (He had tried mixing, but quickly realized that his talents did not lie there.) Jean was born in Decatur, Illinois in 1945, and had a checkered career before booming. Junior college didn’t really suit him, so he tried bartending, and then Golden Gloves boxing. He “could’a been a contenda” as a professional boxer, but after a year, decided that he didn’t like having his brains bounced around inside his skull. His sparring partner, and friend from his teenage days, (now cinematographer and director) Don Jones, convinced him to try Hollywood. Jean started with a brief stint as an actor (as J. L. Clark), and got one of his first parts because he not only looked like a redneck, but wore dentures (courtesy of an unblocked boxing glove) that the character needed to remove during the scene. In addition to Don Jones, the late director Gary Graver used him in several films, including “The Boys”. But acting wasn’t Jean’s forte either, and he moved on to work crew as a grip and electrician (on indy shoots where most posi-tions were interchangeable), and boomed, too. I met Jean in 1974, when I agreed to record a low-budget exploitation film that a friend of mine was directing. When I couldn’t find any boom operators to work for $50/week flat, the DP (Don Jones) prevailed upon Jean to take the job, even though he was leery of working with me, because he felt that he wasn’t up to my level of talent and experience. (Back then, I didn’t have all that much of either; I just acted like I did.) Jean immediately impressed me with his talent, if not his months of experience, but more importantly, his personality was a perfect match for mine. Even on the first day, he didn’t hesitate to tell me when he thought I was screwing up.

View the rest of this article online: http://tinyurl.com/bxw8o9

Jean L. Clark and Jim Tanenbaum C.A.S

Best Achievement in Sound

Nominees:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008): David Parker, Michael Semanick, Ren Klyce, Mark Weingarten

The Dark Knight (2008): Ed Novick, Lora Hirschberg, Gary Rizzo

Slumdog Millionaire (2008): Ian Tapp, Richard Pryke, Resul Pookutty

WALL·E (2008): Tom Myers, Michael Semanick, Ben Burtt

Wanted (2008): Chris Jenkins, Frank A. Montaño, Petr Forejt

81st Annual Academy Award Nominees for SoundBest Achievement in Sound Editing

Nominees:

The Dark Knight (2008): Richard King

Iron Man (2008): Frank E. Eulner, Christopher Boyes

Slumdog Millionaire (2008): Tom Sayers

WALL·E (2008): Ben Burtt, Matthew Wood

Wanted (2008): Wylie Stateman

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I’m a new mixer, so when John Coffey worked with me recently to pick up some union hours, he asked if I wanted to introduce myself to you. I said sure, because it gets my name out there to those of you I haven’t met yet, and allows me to thank some people who’ve helped me along the way. I’ve been working on the CBS military drama, “The Unit.” Since the show’s inception, I was the Boom Operator with Sound Mixer Sean Rush for season 1 and then with Paul Lewis who mixed seasons 2 & 3. It was during those 2 seasons that I was given the opportunity to mix some of the show’s second unit thanks to Kris Wilcox. Kris, our Utility Man at that time, brought in some of his mixing equipment for me use. After Paul Lewis’s decision to leave the show prior to the beginning of season 4, Pro-ducer, Vahan Moosekian and UPM, Jeanne Van Cot called me on speakerphone and asked what I was doing for the next 9 months. I said, “Working with you?” “How about as our Sound Mixer?” replied Jeanne. I accepted their offer, and began working as the show’s Sound Mixer at the beginning of season 4. “The Unit” is based on the book by Eric Haney, and is arguably one of the most difficult shows to produce on television. With horses, helicopters, 50 caliber gunfire and massive explosions this military drama focuses on

the lives of an elite group of Delta Force soldiers known as The Unit. From liberating hijacked airplanes to battling enemy armies in hostile cities, these warriors do it all. With intense plotlines set all over the globe each episode brings new challenges for the cast and crew. Recreating foreign/exotic environments in the greater Los Angeles area usually means remote locations and demanding shooting schedules. The crew prides itself on physicality and ability to perform well under all conditions, whether it be trudging to the top of a mountain in the Santa Clarita Valley, running equipment on only battery power or filming in the pouring rain on the Universal back lot. Future episodes promise to be even more spectacular as the cast and crew try to top themselves each week. I knew I had some big shoes to fill following Sean Rush (whom I had worked with for 6 years on CBS’s “JAG” and learned so much from), and 2 time Emmy Award winner, Paul Lewis. Moving up as the Mixer on this show was per-fect for me because I already knew everyone and had their support. From the show’s DP, Krishna Rao (which helps with the wide & tights), to the shows ADs, Brett Dos Santos and Robert Papazian, Jr., it’s been a smooth transition. Upon becoming the Sound Mixer, the first thing I did was to surround myself with an experienced crew. Richard Kite (who I can’t get to sit down) and Marcus Ricaud, who

COVER STORY

Kevin CompayreIntroducing

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is a great Boom Operator. What I decided to do with my guys is to have them boom every other episode, because after 9 months on set, things can become a bit stressful. I bought the 788T as my main recording device (which is working just great) and I run at a 48.048K, 30ND and 24BIT. The first episode I mixed was written and directed by David Mamet, who is also the Executive Producer of the show. On my drive into work that morning I had some jitters but felt confident in myself and in my crew. The first scene was on location. We had 5 radio mics in use, gunfire in between dialog, David Mamet rewriting scenes in between takes and giving background artists dialog (I’m not kidding). I had worked with David before on this show and on his feature film, “Redbelt”, so I approached him with my sound concerns. He proceeded to tell me a story about a man, gave me a book to read and said, “Do I look worried? You’ll be fine.” After that conversation I felt pretty good but I knew that I still had to deliver. Between each take I would listen to the playback and we were getting it all. The next day I called Associate Pro-ducer, Nick Bradley, to ask him how the day sounded. He assured me that everything was fine and I acted as though I already knew that, but was just calling to check in. Right after I hung up the phone with Nick I said, “THANK GOD.” Nick and his post/editorial crew have been very helpful. I asked Nick to call me with any feedback, things to be careful with or to look out for and I’ve also sat in on post-production mixes. I am really enjoying myself as a sound mixer. I now think back to 15 years ago when I was doing free-bies and deferred pay movies with Shawn Holden (who is a great mixer and a beautiful person doing feature after feature. Way to go, girl!), to doing video assist-assist with Mike Hogan on the feature film “Hard Rain”. Shawn used to say to me, “You just wait…when you start mixing, you’ll see.” She was right. Thank you for all of your sup-port and advice. Thanks to Forest Williams, who I called coach on “Melrose Place” because of how he was teaching

me the ropes. Special thanks to the 2nd unit mixers Greg Cosh, Kelly Rush and John Salcedo. I’d also like to thank Todd Russell, Peggy Names, Willie Burton and Brett Grant-Grierson. Anyone that knows me knows my story. I am very fortunate to be in this position.I live 10 minutes away from the stages, and I’m on a hit show with a great cast and crew. I know this will not last but I’m sure enjoying the moment. I come to work with a good attitude, check my ego at the door and do a great job. ONE DAY AT A TIME…

*John Coffey’s Note: I worked with Kevin and was very im-pressed. He has a fantastic personality and you’ll be hearing great things about him in the future!

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Richard Kite, Kevin Compayre & Dennis HaysbertMarcus Ricaud & Kevin Compayre

Some call it a wart.

Digital Hybrid WirelessTM

US Patent 7,225,135

PS. If you already have an SR, your authorized service center can convert it to an SR5P.

Having two wireless mic receivers inside the camera is very appealing, but some cameras have only one audio channel enabled in the slot. So, the somewhat unsightly appendage shown here brings both audio channels out the front of the receiver in a balanced con�guration through a 5-pin (TA5M) connector.Thus, you have the SR5P.

The receiver still resides in the camera slot, with the audio channels connected through external cables.It may not be pretty, but it is a useful workaround.

Since front and rear panel outputs are both active, you also have some options in a bag system, like feeding a recorder and a mixer at the same time.

Please call or email with any ideas you may have about other applications for the SR5P.

(or even with a good wart joke)

9 The Coffey Audio Files | Issue 03 2008

Working on Danny Boyle’s latest film was one of soundman Resul Pookutty’s most difficult but rewarding assignments. Cherag Cama reports from the set of Slum-dog Millionaire. “We have a film with Danny Boyle; are you free on these dates?” said a voice on the phone. Sound designer Resul Pookutty wondered if he heard correctly. “Is that Danny Boyle of Trainspotting?” “Yes” came the answer… As a film school student, he had a poster of the film in his hostel room. Unbelievably, 12 years later, he was getting a chance to work with the director who had made one of his favourite movies. Free or not, he was on. Three aborted meetings later, Mr Pookutty finally got to meet Danny face-to-face for a pre-production trip to India. They discussed the script of Slumdog Millionaire, the movie that Danny was planning to shoot on various locations during 2008. Due to prior commitments, Mr Poo-kutty could not attend the first week of trial shooting, but when he was finally able to join the unit, he found that this was not going to be a ‘regular’ shoot. ‘The way they were shooting was completely mad for Indian conditions,’ he explains. ‘Things were go-ing haywire. They were not shooting shots, but complete scenes, all in one go. Danny had decided to adopt this

approach for the film so, unlike a traditional shoot where we have one film camera on set or location, here we had multiple cameras rolling, and entire scenes were being shot over and over again. Danny also decided that he would not shoot using just one type of medium, but use different media. So he had film cameras, high-definition cameras and still cameras modified for motion picture capture on memory sticks. He had a whole bunch of cameras on loca-tion and he would use any camera at any time.’ As a production sound engineer, Mr Pookutty had to adapt his techniques accordingly. Multiple cameras on location meant close-ups and wide-angle shots being canned simultaneously, which required the boom mics to be positioned in such a way that they were not visible in the wide shots, nor in the frame of any of the other camer-as. And when there were multiple takes of the same scene, the cameras in a second take would not necessarily give the same frame or the same magnification as in the previ-ous take, so every retake was actually like a new shot. The boom men really had their work cut out for them. ‘Covering a complete scene on location [noisy Mumbai streets during the peak summer season with a huge crowd of onlookers] with four cameras simultaneous-ly, posed its own set of challenges,’ Mr Pookutty recalls. ‘I had a team of more than 10 people with me at times,

Resul Pookutty

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIREBy Cherag Cama

The Coffey Audio Files | Issue 03 2008 10

because I needed a ton of gear to get the job done.’ This meant that, along with a Cooper Sound CS208D mixer on his sound cart, there were Sennheiser MKH70, MKH 60, MKH50, Neumann KMR81, KMR82, Sanken CS-3e and Schoeps MK4/MK41 shotgun mics. ‘Since it was shot on location with multiple cameras, I had to use radio systems on everyone – RMS 2040, RMS 2020 and Lectrosonics 400 series,’ Mr Pookutty explains. ‘And since I also had to keep my rig as mobile as possible, I de-cided to go for the Deva 5.8 multitrack recorder – we got a brand new unit down for the film. I also had a DAT backup running, at all times. With multiple boom mics, multiple radio mics, an elaborate communications chain, feeds to cameramen, Danny and script supervisors and so on, I had my hands full.’ One of the cameras used on the shoot, a high-def-inition SI2K digital camera, posed the biggest challenge. This was essentially a lens with a data cable running into a computer, which digitized the signal and stored it on an external hard drive. The entire arrangement was contained in a suitcase, on top of which, stood an LCD monitor. This was made up specifically for cameraman Anthony Dod Mantle to use on this film, because the locations for shoot-ing were very crowded areas, and it would have been very difficult to rig a normal film camera. The small size of the digital still camera was a distinct advantage, but the down-side was that it was very unstable when used as a hand-held. As a solution, the camera company devised a gyro

system for it, much like the type used on telescopes and binoculars on ships to compensate for movement at sea. This enabled the cameraman to get super smooth tracking shots. The result? Cameraman happy; soundman not. The gyro system had motors that made a lot of noise, which in noisy outdoor locations would be masked by the ambience of the location, but in quiet indoor locations presented an unacceptable level of noise. Mr Pookutty’s solution was to devise a ‘blimp’ using a steel frame, some glass wool and leather that covered the gyro and cut out the motor noise. Soundman happy; cameraman not too happy, as the blimp was heavy and cumbersome. But the show must go on. ‘Danny would often use the second HD camera to shoot extra shots on the side,’ Mr Pookutty offers. ‘For ex-ample, in a scene that was being shot inside a movie hall, he would ask for the digital camera to be sent independent-ly to record some hand-held shots of the crowd watching the movie, people passing in and out of the theatre and so on. Being such a small camera [with the rest of the attach-ments all nicely packed in a shoulder bag], the cameraman could easily walk down the aisle taking these shots. To capture the matching audio, I would then have one of my assistants walk with a hand-held Sony PCM D1 flashcard-based digital recorder, something I had carried in my kit purely for back-up purposes. This tiny recorder saved my skin many a times when Danny decided to use the fourth or fifth camera.’ One of the main sequences of the film hap-

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pens on the television set of Kaun Banega Crorepati (the Indian version of the Who Wants to be a Millionaire quiz show), and this posed another set of challenges. Danny Boyle wanted it to be true to the TV format with nothing changed, so an exact replica of the set was created and the TV shoot was duplicated in all details. There were about 10 video cameras to cover the video shoot and the game was played out as it happens on TV. For this, Mr Pookutty had to first set up a complete TV sound rig including radio mics on the host and participant, audience mics and a PA system for the live audience with the show music being played back on the floor – just as it is done for the televi-sion version. Now for the film shoot – this was carried out si-multaneously with four HD cameras and four film camer-as. This required two hidden lapel radio mics, two Sanken surface mics hidden in the computer monitor screens in front of the host and player, a 5.1-surround mic to record the ambience in true 5.1, as well as audience mics. Effec-tively, there were two shoots taking place at the same time. Here, Mr Pookutty added a further Deva 5.8 as the track count had gone up – one TV mix, one mix for the film edi-tor, one multitrack recording of the show (on the two Deva 5.8 recorders), PA to television audience, the headphone mix to the director and script supervisor, signals to two back-up DAT recorders… There was also the Sony PCM-

Resul Pookutty, John Coffey & Dennis Maitland at CAS Awards 2009

The Coffey Audio Files | Issue 03 2008 12

D1 hand-held recorder in the audience. Once again, the job required the recordist to multitask. ‘My colleague Ashwin Balsaver [the recordist on the real Kaun Banega Crorepati] gave me direction as to how he had done the shoot, and his help was of great value. Also, my past experience of having worked on multi-camera television shoots came in handy.’ To get a good ambience track, Mr Pookutty im-provised a technique that he had never used before: ‘Since we were shooting on this big set with a live audience, I decided that it would be great if we could capture the surround signals with a surround mic. I decided to use the Holophone 5.1 microphone to do the job. However, with 10 cameras trained on the action it was not easy to position the mic, so I devised a pulley system with cables and other paraphernalia that enabled me to suspend it just below the lighting truss. Using the pulley, I could noiselessly swing the mic down to an appropriate position when required, and any time there was a wide-angle jimmy jib shot to establish the scene, the Holophone would be right up near the lighting truss. Once the shot was done and the cameras moved in for closer perspective shots, I would have the

surround mic swung lower again to capture the surround from the right spot. ‘I must give credit to Danny for supporting me on this,’ he continues. ‘When we started the shoot on the set [of Kaun Banega Crorepati], the first day was chaotic. I was totally in a fix, given the complexity of the situation and given what I wanted to do. The second day, we worked out the pulley and sorted out all issues of miking. From the third day onwards, it was smooth sailing. I know of no one who has swung a Holophone mic like this. I don’t know if that was the best way to do the scene, but time will tell if it has worked or not.’ When there were shoots at outdoor locations where an extremely mobile gig was required – such as on the train rooftop - Mr Pookutty had to configure a portable set-up to match the same quality and track configuration as the regular cart. Here an SQN mixer was hooked up to the Deva recorder. ‘In Agra, we had outdoor scenes where the camera was on a Steadicam and the operative was on a Segway scooter,’ he says. ‘My boom man, Ghulam, had to run to keep pace with the action. I eventually put him on a motorized scooter to follow the action.

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13 The Coffey Audio Files | Issue 01 2009

the scene, or ask them to stand and say their lines if they were standing. If the artists were walking in the shot, he would ask them to dub their lines while walking. The same boom man who was on location was used with absolutely the same gear in the ADR studio and we boomed all ADR lines this way.’ While listening back to the ADR lines, Mr Boyle would ask Mr Pookutty to mix-and-match ADR lines with the location soundtrack, so a scene could end up with lines from location and from ADR in the studio. His logic was that if it was OK to spend three months on the film edit, it was OK to spend three months on the soundtrack edit. This kind of attention to detail was something Mr Pokutty feels is sorely lacking in the Indian mainstream film scene, and he certainly enjoyed working the dialogue tracks in this way. ‘In one scene, the gyro noise was too disturbing, so we re-recorded the whole scene – but then, we found that without the whining of the gyro, it was just not sound-ing right,’ he recalls. ‘So we only ADR’d one character, notched out the high-pitched whine of the gyro to a man-ageable level and kept it in the scene – it added a certain tension to it that both Danny and I liked. So a noise, which I thought was disturbing during the shoot, actually came to be of use to us.’ At times, Mr Pookutty and Mr Boyle experiment-ed with multiple mics on a character during ADR, in order to get certain sounds or effects. Crowd ADR lines were done with multiple mics, and indoor scenes and outdoor scenes were recorded differently in different locations. The movie score was composed by A.R. Reh-man and recorded in London, where the remaining sound design work was completed, and then mixed at Pinewood Studios. Slumdog Millionaire received a tremendous re-sponse at the Toronto Film festival and at the London Film festival. ‘It was the most difficult, yet the most satisfying project I have worked on to date,’ concludes a satisfied Mr Pookutty.

After the shoot was complete, an elaborate post-production procedure began. Having become accustomed to the accent of local artists during the shoot, Danny Boyle found it difficult to understand the dialogue when he was back in the UK editing the movie. At one point during the post, he felt he needed to ADR (replace the dialogue) the entire film, but after hearing a temp mix where the UK sound design team had pulled out all the multitrack ele-ments, he was convinced that the material Mr Pokutty had captured with so much hard work on location was good. In the end, it was only necessary to use ADR where there were clarity issues, the accent was not right or the ambi-ence was too noisy. The entire dialogue track was created under Mr Pokutty’s supervision. ‘Doing ADR with Danny was an eye-opener,’ Mr Pookutty says. ‘He was not averse to ADR and felt that a new performance would emerge during the process. He would ask artists to sit and do ADR if they were sitting in

From Left: Gulam Shaik-Boom Swinger, Mushtak Shaik- Sec-ond Boom swinger & Resul Pookutty - Sound Mixer

*Reprinted from Pro Audio Asia. www.proaudio-central.com/

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Q: What does NCIS stand for?

A: NCIS is the Naval Criminal Intelligence Service, a U.S. Department of the Navy law enforcement agency that among other duties investigates crime within the Marine Corps and the Navy and which the CBS/Paramount show is based upon. The show has a very talented ensemble cast led by Mark Harmon and we’re currently in the middle of our sixth season. NCIS has hung around the top five in ratings for most of this season and just before Christmas, it was the #1 most watched show in television. So contrary to belief, crime does pay.

Q: Is it a difficult show to mix ?

A: Challenging. It’s become much easier, though at times it’s not unlike golf with its share of self-loathing. A typical master is three pages and five or six wires with a Steadi-cam roundy-round. Coverage is two cameras and then we’re able to use two booms but still mixing the wires for a stray line here and there. Our first season was pretty interesting but we have it down now. It’s not without it’s

moments, but like most sound crews we work very hard at making it seem easy. I think most of us would agree that overall production sound has become a more difficult job for everyone these days.

Q: Does each actor have his or her own track?

A: Always. Everyone wears a wire. On the Deva 4, tracks one and two are mix tracks and each character has their own labeled iso track. When we have seven wires work-ing, track one is the only mix track and my Sound Devices 702T backup becomes the protection mix tracks. With my Cooper 208 I pre-fade everything, but with the limited turnaround time in episodic TV giving editorial a solid mix track is crucial. Like we used to do on 4.2’s.

Q: So the cast doesn’t mind being wired all the time.

A: No, this is the best cast ever. Michael Weatherly, Sean Murray, David McCallum, Cote de Pablo, Pauly Per-rette, Mark Harmon and our producers have created a team where everyone works together, guest actors ,day

Mixing NCIS Q & A with Steve Bowerman

15 The Coffey Audio Files | Issue 01 2009

From Left: Tom Thoms, Jeffrey C. Hefner, Mark Harmon & Steve Bowerman

players,….everyone. The talent understands that by each having an iso track, Dale Chaloukian our dialog editor, can often replace a noisy line or missed cue for the mix thereby minimizing looping. The show is almost entirely produc-tion track now. Each episode has a crime scene with five, six, seven actors and Dales’ work here has saved a ton of time. If we could only stop the busses on Third and Olive, life would be perfect. Q: Who’s your crew.

A: Tom Thoms is boom operator and Jeffrey C. Hefner is cable and 2nd boom. Wonderful guys! Tom and I have been together for ten years and we have the great fortune of not having to discuss the shots or talk much regarding the scene. It’s the mixer/ boom operator finishing each others sentence deal. When I boomed for Dave Macmillan and Peter Kurland it was the same. Jeff Wexler and Don Coufal have it as well as any team that’s been together for awhile. It’s huge in any craft. Tom is solid, always fighting the good fight. The three of us enjoy our good luck. We laugh a lot. It’s great.

Q: What’s on the cart

A: Let’s see, My Cooper 208D and my Deva 4 , Sound Devices 702-T back-up.. A six-pack of Lectrosonics 411 receivers and 2 additional units for wireless booms . The transmitters are 400s and two or three SM’s for the ac-tresses . We use Sanken with the wires, Schoeps CMIT 5U’s for boom (beautiful sounding mics), and Shoeps CM5/6’s depending on the shot and set we are shooting on. We shoot six to eight pages a day for twenty six episodes a season everything works great , totally dependable . I have

a MacBook here someplace and my New York Times of course.

Q: All wireless?

A: Yes. As much as I prefer the sound of a cabled boom, it’s not practical with all the Steadicam we do. Looking at future of wireless in our business we may return to it. That’s an issue that no one seems interested in addressing in a serious way, none of the powers anyway.

Q: Post?

A: We transfer at Encore Hollywood and mix at Todd A/O. Mike Walker at Encore knows everything about everything audio, so he’s a huge help in answering any workflow or any post questions. Our dubbing mixers, under the watch-ful eye of post supervisor Josh Rexon, are Aaron Levy and Ross Davis. Very talented mixers who make the show sound as good as it does.

Q: Sounds like a good set.

A: With his military background, Leon Carroll our NCIS tech advisor, has brought the Chief of Naval Operations through to visit, Iraqi vets, lots of big brass and they gener-ally leave laughing. It’s a luxury to have a job nowadays but to come here each day and be around this cast and crew is just good fortune. I wish it on everybody.

Q: Anything else.

A: Yes, I owe Kenn Fuller a steak the size of Texas.

The Coffey Audio Files | Issue 01 2009 16

For years I have considered myself something of the king of improv. Having done most of Christopher Guest’s unscripted comedies, taken a turn with Robert Altman, as well as many other projects both scripted and unscripted, I felt that I had essentially carved out a niche as the guy to call when you weren’t exactly sure what was going to happen, but you wanted to make sure you got one hundred percent of whatever did happen. Working with David Fincher on Benjamin But-ton was the polar opposite of that. No filmmaker I have worked with before has ever been as precise, meticulous and technically proficient. He is completely assured of what he needs or doesn’t need from a particular frame. Every technical detail is worked out in advance. Any question is considered and answered thoughtfully and concisely. Benjamin Button was a script that had been around for quite some time. Several scenarios involving multiple actors playing Benjamin at different ages had been considered. Fincher and Brad Pitt were the ones to say we can make this picture with one actor playing the part for all the ages. How this was to be accomplished was an extremely complex process involving multiple techniques, some previously attempted and some never

before tried. The results, in my opinion, are nothing short of spectacular. To portray Benjamin as an old man, a technique called “facial replacement” was used. Various actors of different body types whose heads were covered in “blue screen,” material played Brad’s body. Later, we shot Brad’s face with multiple cameras, as he acted to playback of the other actors playing his body interacting with the other cast members in cut scenes. It is actually Brad’s sync dialogue, Brad’s face, Brad’s performance in the scenes where other people are playing his body. Eventually in the movie, Brad’s body is actually played by Brad. An interesting manipulation was done to achieve young Daisy’s (Cate Blanchett) voice. It is actually Cate Blanchett’s voice recorded in ADR then altered by Supervis-ing Sound Editor Ren Klyce to sound like that of Cate as a little girl. There were several things I had heard, as rumor, about working with David Fincher. (1) He has a certain very specific way he likes the set to run. (2) The sound mixer is not to call “Speed”. (3) There are no visual slates. (4) He routinely does many many many takes of a given shot. Was this the case? Enter Wayne Tidwell, Fincher’s long time collabora-

Sound Mixer Mark Weingarten

17 The Coffey Audio Files | Issue 01 2009

The Coffey Audio Files | Issue 03 2008 20

tor, the man at the helm of the s.two video capture rig (the hard drive array that recorded the entire film). Benjamin Button was primarily shot on HD using Thompson Viper Cameras feeding their data through fiber optic cables to multiple s.two recorders. Wayne explained the process. Fincher had the s.two’s designed to automatically lay down a visual slate at the top of each segment (to save time). I would call Speed to Wayne and Wayne would call Speed to Fincher. I fed the s.two’s an AES signal of my mono mix for dailies, and the s.two fed my Deva V 23.98 TC from a

single Lock it box with a Y cable, my cart and two NTSC video feeds. No need for sticks as matching TC and auto-matic visual IDs rendered them unnecessary. After a bit of tweaking in the beginning from Steve Roach of s.two it all worked like a charm. Ultimately Wayne and I worked it out that I wouldn’t say anything unless I didn’t have speed, in which case I would yell it out (something I had to unlearn on my next film). Once I got used to the method I settled in. And yes, we did many many many takes of many many many shots. Often one immediately after another -- roll-cut, roll-cut-roll, etc. This could be exhausting at times for both man and machine. I can’t say that my Deva V performed flawlessly, but it stood up to the rigors of this process very well. There was a point when it crashed repeatedly and had to be sent off for service, but to be fair, the s.two’s had their share of hiccups too. All things being equal they both held up pretty well. Early on in production, I ran into the age old sound conundrum of two cameras shooting simultaneously, one framed wide and the other tight. We were filming on a train station set. Picture if you will, the big room of Grand Central Station in New York City. Mr. Cake, a man who

“No filmmaker I have worked with before has ever been as precise, meticulous and technically proficient.”

builds a clock that is central to the story of Benjamin Button, is giving a speech from a platform high above an assembled crowd. In the tighter of the two cameras he was in a medium close up, the wider camera saw practically floor to ceiling of that enormous room. I went to Fincher and mentioned that we could make Mr. Cake sound better than his wire by using the boom mic, if we were to do a couple of takes with the tight camera only. David said, “Show me where you would like the mic to be.” My boom operator Larry Commans was way up near the ceiling on a scaffold high above the room. As he reached out to put the

mic right over Mr Cake’s head, not only was the mic in the wide shot, but a good 15 feet of boom pole was diagonally across the frame as well. David said, “That’s fine. Leave it there. I’ll paint it out.” I thought, “I like this guy”. There were other similar situations where the same question was asked, and painting the mic out was not an option. Each time, a solution was found that allowed us to make every shot of the movie sound right. The story of Benjamin Button spans from 1918 to 2005. Starting as we did in 1918 New Orleans, we had a lot of period cars. It turns out that Packards were beauti-fully constructed quiet cars in every era, but Model T’s sound remarkably like really loud lawn mowers in M-S Stereo. Throughout the picture, I recorded lots of stereo ambience with a Schoeps pair. As for recording music on set, I have always favored live recordings that give the listener a sense of the space in which the recording was made. I like to achieve this by making use of many different Schoeps arrange-ments MS Pairs, BLM’s on cards and other individual isolated mics. I had the good fortune to have hired Aaron Zeller as my third man in New Orleans. Aaron was the person responsible for all the live recordings and Pro Tools playback on the film RAY. He has a different approach

19 The Coffey Audio Files | Issue 01 2009

“...No one is more acutely aware of what a collaborative art filmmaking is than a member of the sound department”

This series of photos demonstrates the “Facial Replacement” technique used to allow Brad Pitt to play himself facially at all ages throughout the film.

to live recording, which is to close mic everything and make a very tight sounding, almost studio recording. I decided to do both independently, Aaron with his PT rig, me with my Deva. In the end we would combine all the elements into a single PT session, and it was a mix of the two recordings that was used in the final edit. There were several live music records in the film. We stuck with our dual recording method for all of them. In prepping the first music recording, I set up and labeled many different headphone presets in the Deva: Mono, Front Left Right decoded MS Stereo, 5.1, and 7.1. In addition to all the principle mics, I took one mic and put it on the floor of a closet pointed at the wall, for a very off / distant perspective. I thought this would be useful if they wanted to continue the music through other later scenes upstairs, giving the perspective of the music coming through the floor. When we recorded the music I invited Fincher to listen through the Deva on a set of headsets at my cart. As we listened I toggled through all the different headphone presets (very cool Deva feature) and explained to him what each one was. I saw him light up. The “mic in the closet. That’s the one I’ll use.” Of course that was the one he liked best. Throughout the course of the film we had a battle with camera noise. The Viper cameras have several very loud front-angled fans that never shut off. We attempted all sorts of fixes. We lined various parts of the cameras with foam, got cloth Barneys made and covered them with Furni Pads. I also had the manufacturer give me the specs of the internal fans (size, voltage, cfm) and bought several with identical specs on the internet and sent them to the camera house to see if replacing them would be a solution. No go. The terrifically patient and cooperative camera assistants, John Pingry and Jonas Steadman tried it all. In the end, we found that whatever we did that helped minimize their sound, ultimately strangled and potentially overheated the cameras, causing them to wheeze (i.e., be even louder) and at times shut down completely. I asked Ren to listen to some of the scenes from the early days of shooting to see if he felt, as I, that the noise floor was too big. He confirmed that he thought it was a problem ( I cannot stress how helpful it is to have your sound editor on board from day one, especially if it happens to be someone as talented and supportive as Ren). It was then that we put the Schoeps to bed for good, and brought out the Sanken CS3e’s. The amount of isolation that the Sankens provid-ed enabled us to bring in absolutely usable tracks. I cannot say enough about my fondness for those Sanken mics. Much later in the schedule we shot Cate’s hospi-tal bed scenes on stage, where she gives a barley audible deathbed performance. During day one of shooting, I told David that the camera noise was a real issue that needed

to be addressed (in these scenes even the Sanken’s rejection wasn’t enough). On day two, he brought in two of the near silent Sony F 23 cameras. The F23’s enabled us to get one hundred percent usable tracks on barely audible material. See the movie, you’ll understand immediately what scenes I’m referring to. I would like to acknowledge that no one is more acutely aware of what a collaborative art filmmaking is than a member of the sound department. It is nearly impossible to do a great job without getting involved in some way with almost every other department. To that end, on this movie I had the pleasure of working with by far one of the best crews I have ever worked with. Across the board: Art – Camera – Dialect – Electric – Editorial – FX – Grip – Hair – Locations - Make Up – Production – Props – Transportation – Wardrobe. Everybody was extraordinarily helpful and supportive. How often does the Gaffer say to you, “When I got here the generator was too close, so I moved it over there. Let me know if that’s going to be OK.” How often? On this movie it was S.O.P. Benjamin Button is a film I will always remember, not only because it was an amazing, interesting, unusual filmmaking experience, but even more so because Nancy, my wife, became pregnant on the weekend before I left to start filming in New Orleans. A few weeks after we finished principal photography our wonderful sweet son Oliver was born. Which was just a few weeks before we started shoot-ing on the facial replacement unit. As Benjamin was born, so was Oliver. Oliver made his own contribution to the film. His giggles and coos were used for those of Benjamin at one year old (or is it 79 years old?).

Crew: Mark Weingarten Sound Mixer` Larry Commans Boom Operator Aaron Zeller 3rd Man (New Orleans) Mark Fay 3rd Man (Los Angeles) Ren Klyce Supervising Sound Editor.

Equipment: Deva V Deav II Sanken CS3e’s Lectrosonics of every vintage Sanken Lav’s Sonsax SXS 10 (analog)

File Format: BWF’M 24 BIT 48.000 23.976 T.C.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0918319/

The Coffey Audio Files | Issue 01 2009 20

The Food Networks’ “Dinner: Impossible” is a unique blend of a standard reality show and a cooking theme. The show is produced by Shooters Post and Trans-fer, and Marc Summers Productions. I am the primary mixer on the show and one of the three owners and found-ers of Shooters Post and Transfer based in Philadelphia. The show is centered around its’ Hero Chef, Robert Irvine. Roberts’s weekly challenge is to compose gourmet meals in not so gourmet environments. Our producers keep ratcheting up the challenge to get Robert to stumble. This keeps me and my crew on our toes. Everything is wireless and unscripted. Typically the majority of the show is captured at a “home base” kitchen set where the show more resembles the typical style of a normal cooking show, but cooking as fast as they can. Here I record Chef Irvine, his two sous chefs, and any number of drop-in guest sous or celebrity guests who may show up at any time. The kitchen set can be chaotic. It’s shot with at least 4 cameras that are constantly moving, shifting their focus from one character to the next. The kitchen envi-ronment can be extremely noisy, making it a soundman’s nightmare. From the beginning I decided that this was going to be a double system show. The cameras only have onboard mics with Denecke SB-2a time code sync boxes attached to them, no wireless receivers… no tethers. This

gives the maximum amount of flexibility for the camera department as well as the sound department. The show is recorded over a 8 to 12 hour duration to a Fostex DV-824 8-track, non-linear recorder in conjunction with a backup Fostex PD-6 with an EX-12 docking station. I use a mul-titude of Lectrosonics 400 series radio mics to send each character to their own individual track. The PD-6/ EX-12

The Coffey Audio Files | Issue 01 2009 22Jay Hartigan and his sound cart

is used mainly to record the action during disk changes in the DV-824. Since the action never stops, neither can the audio recording. Some episodes require “home base” to move several times during the shoot day. The whole system can live on two Senior Magliners and be relocated in just a few minutes. This is a road show. We’ve done this

show on a desert island, an ice hotel, a cruise ship, and even a moving train. We never know what the producers will come up with next. The Dinner Impossible sound department also employs a mobile 2nd unit to cover all the action that takes place away from the home base kitchen. This is an off-the-shoulder operation that requires coverage of multiple characters for multiple cameras. For the first four seasons we used a PD-6 to perform all the recording duties of the mobile unit. For the past two seasons, they’ve been using the newer PD-606 and it has performed very well. The PD-606 is vast improvement over the PD-6 while still maintaining the look and feel of the PD series recorders. Having a full-sized optical drive is a great advantage and being able to mount the internal HD or optical drive is another huge advancement. Track-arming is more flexible as well. We can arm any combination of tracks and the re-

“The show is recorded over an 8 to 12 hour duration to a Fostex DV-824 8 track non-linear recorder in conjunction with a Backup Fostex PD-6 with an EX-12 docking station.”

corder will shift all the metadata into its proper place. New battery management software combined with the ability to seamlessly switch between the two onboard batteries has taken the stress of running out of power out of the equation. The Fostex recorders’ ability to record to hard disk and DVD-RAM simultaneously is a great feature. The

disks come out of the recorder and are immediately copied via a laptop computer to a LaCie Rugged external drive. This hard drive is the media that is delivered to production editing. The files are copied to the network at our editing facility at Shooters and quickly returned to me for the next episode. The DVD-RAM disks become back-up and deliv-ered to The Food Network at the completion of the season. Our producers came to me and said they needed to transcribe a large portion of the show, with time code. Ok... the mobile unit already has a half a dozen radio receivers, along with a boom and support gear. Add a transcription recorder? NO. I decided to use the stereo bus tracks of the PD-606 to record the transcription tracks. The PD-606 can record 6 analog inputs with a 2-track stereo buss mix: eight total channels. I also use the PD-6/EX-12 in a 2 track mode to record the menu planning segments for transcrip-tion tracks only. Back in post, the two stereo bus channels

23 The Coffey Audio Files | Issue 01 2009

Fostex DV-824, Fostex PD606 and an RME Fireface 800 Jay wiring up the talent.

Sound within reach Tel. [email protected]®

ZEPPELIN® WINDSCREENS • KLASSIC POLES • ARTICULATED POLES • AVALON POLES • SHOCK MOUNTS • MIC SUPPORT PRODUCTSw w w . k t e k b o o m s . c o m

KTek_CutActor1.3PCoffee:Layout 3 7/7/08 1:02 PM Page 1

are separated out from the production tracks via a Fostex program called BWF manager and then converted to mp3s with time code via another very handy piece of software: BWF-Widget Pro written by Courtney Goodin. Both pieces of software can process the audio files in batches so it is a pretty fast efficient process. The files are sent to our tran-scriber over FTP and a few hours later, our producers have time-coded transcripts in their hands. Back at the “home base”, all eight channels of audio are fed from the recorder to a rack mounted remote monitor station at our video village via a Muxlab CAT5 Balun. In the rack is an eight-channel monitor mixer, Lectrosonics T1 transmitter, a Fostex RM-1 rack mounted stereo monitor, a Kramer Electronics digital delay, and a video quad split generator. Using the eight channel moni-tor mixer, our director can dial in any of the eight micro-phones he or she wants to listen to at any time. The show is “called” live by the director who monitors video assist

feeds that are transmitted via the Boxx System, WIFI to the village monitors. WIFI inherently has a 13 frame latency so a digital delay on the monitored audio is needed to re-synch picture and sound for video village. The four video signals also arrive to the village via a Muxlab CAT5 balun system. The CAT-5 system is inexpensive, works very well and gives us virtually unlimited range between video vil-lage and our recording station. I’ve strung CAT-5 from one end of a passenger train to the other so we could monitor kitchens at opposite ends. We are now in our 6th season of Dinner Impossible and the missions in the kitchen continue to evolve challeng-ing the audio department even more. The experience we have gained on this very technical and fast paced shoot has proved invaluable on other projects.

Jay Hartigan on the set of Dinner: Impossible Jay’s Sound Table

Among all the reality television shows produced in LA, American Idol is the show which has consistently gained the favor of the American viewer. My fortunate ex-perience of working on the show for the past few years sur-rounded by an amazing team of professionals, has helped to bring my sound game to a much higher level. I have been able to explore more creativity with technical sound and most recently with my direct involvement creating the ENG Audio packages for the show. With this article I hope I can offer some insight about how we do the ENG Audio for American Idol and also a bit of the “color” that comes from working on what Nielsen has reported was TV’s most popular show of 2008. Having come from a background in episodic tv, I was a bit skeptical about the whole “reality” genre at first. That is, until I realized how technically advanced a reality show can be wired for sound. A control room setup on the show can have over 20 wireless mics on talent, multiple hosts with earwigs and multiple plant mics, confessionals, playback and multiple ENG crews following around cam-eras mixing to tape.

I’ll begin with an overview of the schedule. Sum-mer to fall is Audition time for American Idol. This last summer we hit eight cities including San Francisco, Phoe-nix, Louisville, Kansas City, Jacksonville, New York, Salt Lake City, and Puerto Rico. Yes, Puerto Rico! When we first hit a city there may be as many as 15,000 screaming hopefuls anticipating to be the next American Idol. In late January the show resumes its live taping, which continues through late May. We shoot all the interviews, home stories, and celebrity packages throughout the season. I also work on another show called American Idol Extra, which keeps me busy on the studio days as well. It’s quite interesting to watch the process as thousands of aspiring kids come in as “hopeful nobodies” at the beginning of the auditions and by the end of the season a handful of “hopeful somebodies” emerge as full fledged celebrities, vying for the very real chance to be the next American Idol! Let’s get technical. This year I have all the ENG audio mixers using the stereo Zaxcom wireless system to not only send by wireless to camera, but also to record a time code backup. The system consists of the TRX900

25 The Coffey Audio Files | Issue 01 2009

Kamal Humphrey On The ENG Side Of

Photo Credit: Michael Becker

stereo transceiver coupled with the RX900s stereo receiver. The input of the TRX900 with the stereo adaptor is line lev-el. The RX900s can also be set to output line level, which ensures the beefiest signal going to tape. The TRX900 can easily be powered off of the bds power distribution box in the bag and also makes coordinating a bunch of differ-ent crews on one block a piece of cake since two channels can be sent over one frequency. This is especially handy as I not only coordinate all wireless frequencies for all the ENG crews in conjunction with the Idol Studio crew, but also, frequently, with the other shows on the CBS Lot. In addition to the ease of frequency coordination, I have all the crews recording time code backup on the trx900 2 GB mini SD card. Up to 12 hours of stereo audio can be recorded on one 2 GB mini SD card. In our case we get timecode (jam) off of the Panasonic varicam cameras. The master time code is generated from the studio control room, which we refer to as “the truck”. At the end of each day we down-load the cards and archive them. The backup has already saved my butt more than a few times over the last couple of seasons. The Zaxconverter software makes retrieving the sound a cinch. The start and stop timecode that you want from a particular segment are entered and it spits the file out in a 48khz 24bit wav file or in whatever size you may want. Post production has been able to sync the files with picture.

The Zaxcom IFB-100 transmits IFB audio, timecode and remote control signals to the TRX series digital wireless transceivers on a single RF carrier using a 2.4 Gigahertz sig-nal. It allows monitoring of the wireless return from camera and also allows the receiving of constant timecode from the camera and start and stop record on the TRX900. In ad-dition to the Zaxcom hops, my packages are composed of sound devices 442 and 302 field mixers and also Lectroson-ics 411a RX and both the UM400 and the MM400 TX with COS11 Sanken and Countryman B-6 lavaliers. Sennheiser MKH416 and the Schoeps CMIT shotgun microphones are on the fishpoles and the fisher boom. This year I implemented the Deva Fusion for the auditions. I recorded to a 32 gigabyte compact flash and mirrored in real time to an external hard drive. I used a schoeps shotgun on the fisher boom and supplemented with a plant mic. I highly recommend the compressor, EQ, notch filter package. Applying some soft knee compression eased everything from the recording of nervous contestants’ whispers to the sounds belted out at the top of their lungs. There is no take 2 on this show. The 3band EQ and the notch filters helped to eliminate a lot of unwanted ambience due to air conditioning and singing lights (no pun intended). When we get to the Randy, Simon, and Paula portion of the road auditions, I do all the sound bytes with Ryan Seacrest

The Coffey Audio Files | Issue 01 2009 26Photo Credit: Michael Becker

as he comments on the events surrounding each day of audi-tions. Normally I clip a Sanken COS-11 to his lapel with an attached UM400a TX. Coming from the episodic world all of this is a nice breath of fresh air. I also chase him around while he interacts with the contestants before and after their auditions. I use pretty straightforward stereo split boom on the left with lav on the right. Mr. Seacrest is a blast to work with, but he definitely keeps you on your toes. He is always on, and you never know what to expect. Remember, on a typical day Ryan Seacrest has already done several hours of live radio before ever arriving at the studio. The guy is a consummate professional and misses no beats. Recently, he accidentally dropped one of my UM400 TX off of the balcony at the Kodak theater. Woops. Though unnecessary, he immediately offered to pay for it out of his own pocket. What a nice guy! Working on American Idol has given me the chance to really appreciate so much that is to be found in, well…America!! I have enjoyed seeing everything from the grain farmers in rural Mississippi to the Quakers in rural Penn-sylvania. There is nothing quite like eating thick, oat-rolled Chicken Fried steak and homemade pecan pie made from pecans that came from the pecan tree in the front yard of a Mississippi home! It’s such an interesting process work-ing on the show from start to finish just as it is, I’m sure, for the viewers to watch from the beginning to the end of

the season. It is amazing to watch 100,000 actual contes-tants “up close and personal” get whittled down to the top 50 and then get further whittled down to the top 2. One of my favorite things on the show is shooting the home stories across the country as it has shown me so many slices of American life. I am also always entertained by the variety of folks everywhere that come out of the woodwork to audi-tion! During the regular season, ENG crews cover just about anything that’s not on stage such as personal inter-views and home stories about the contestants. Each week, right before a contestant sings, a 30 second package of these interviews is shown that “showcases” all our ef-forts. We sometimes shoot these interviews the day before they air. No pressure! As the season winds down, and the number of contestants decreases, they get to rehearse under the guidance of different celebrity mentors, which we also cover. These mentors usually personify in some way a theme of the week such as “Motown”, “The 70’s”, etc. We typically cover the celebrity mentor shoots with 3 to 4 Pa-nasonic varicams. Each camera has an ENG audio mixer. We typically split the responsibility between all the cam-eras and have everyone isolated to tape and to the Zaxcom backup. In the past couple of years, we have worked with Diana Ross, Mariah Carey, Jennifer Lopez, Gwen Stefani, Tony Bennett, Neil Diamond, Barry Gibb, Dolly Parton,

American Idol Season 7 Winner David Cook with Kamal Humphrey on a private jet.

27 The Coffey Audio Files | Issue 01 2009

Quincy Jones, and Andrew Lloyd Weber. Could these shoots be done with one or two sound people and a multi-track setup? Yes, of course. The thing is, in these types of shoots Creative (department) likes to have the flexibility to shoot multiple beats, at the same time, in different locations. The more sound people, the merrier! That’s what I say. I’d like to take this opportunity to offer special thanks to American Idol cameraman Owen Smith and to the crew of American Idol ENG mixers Bennie Mcrae, Chris Tront and Daniel McCoy. Studio crewmembers Jeffrey and Debbie Fecteau, Phil Valdivia and Greg Ferrera merit my special thanks as well. All in all my experience on American Idol has been and continues to be great. It sounds funny but I really do look forward to watching and hearing the next American Idol! The American Idol story continues with Ed Greene on the live show in the next issue of “The Coffey Audio Files.” Stay Tuned!

Other notable recent jobs on which Kamal has worked are: CW’s” Hitched or Ditched,” Sound Supervisor for “Running The Sahara” a feature length Documentary with Academy award wining Director James Moll. While 3 months in the Sahara, his sound cart was built into a Toyota Landcruiser, with multiple ENG crews shooting “Run and Gun.” Capturing Dialogue in a sandstorm anyone? Also Survivor China and Survivor Cook Islands, Biggest Loser 1-3 and Beauty and the Geek 1-3. When he’s not working on these type of shows he loves to sit on his cart and mix single camera pilots and films.

The Coffey Audio Files | Issue 01 2009 28Photo Credit: Owen Smith - From Left: Kamal Humphrey, Bennie Mcrae, Chris Tront

Of all the films in my 40-year plus career, “The Stunt Man” is my favorite, both as a film, and as a film to have worked on. Along with Truffaut’s “Day for Night”, I think it is one of the two best movies about moviemak-ing ever made. The storyline concerns a megalomaniacal director, Eli Cross (Peter O’Toole), filming an anti-war movie set in WWI Europe with a temperamental leading lady, Nina (Barbara Hershey) and an ineffectual leading man (Adam Roarke). Then their stuntman is killed in an underwater accident. Because his body was washed away, the company tries to cover up the death, but the lo-cal police become suspicious and want to close down the shoot unless they can see that the stuntman is still alive. Cameron (Steve Railsback), a young man fleeing the law for a petty offence, comes upon the scene, and is offered a chance to hide by impersonating the dead man, and learn-ing enough to replace him for the rest of the shoot. Eli gives him the nickname “Lucky”. A romance develops (or does it?) between Cameron and Nina, but Cameron is worried that the director will kill him in an highly-visible “accident” at the end of filming, to take care of the original death and his involvement in the first cover up. Like most mixers, I started out on low-budget, non-union exploitation films. From “Mondo Perverto” in 1968, I worked my way up to recording “Phantom of the Paradise” for Brian De Palma in 1973, the high point of my non-union resume. In 1977, the IATSE roster opened up, and I was able to join. Shortly thereafter, Paul Lewis, the production manager of “Phantom”, called me to see if

I was in 695 yet, and when I said “yes”, he hired me to mix “The Stunt Man”. At this time, the IA contract had given up the third person, so I would have to do the show with just a boom operator. Since I had no idea of what I was getting into, I agreed. After all, I had done “Phantom”, a musi-cal with many complex setups, with just a boom operator. David Schneiderman boomed, moved the playback speakers around, and ran all the cable. I operated both the recording and playback Nagras, and moved my own sound cart (some of the time). So how hard could it be? Meanwhile, all was not going well in pre-produc-tion on “The Stunt Man”, and it was put on hold. To say I was disappointed would have been an understatement, to say the least. However, I soon received a consolation prize. One of the directors of my early exploitation films, the late Richard Compton, called me to do a TV movie about pop singers Jan and Dean. Of course, I accepted at once – I des-perately needed union shows on my resume. But that job got put off too. Then the “TSM” was on again. And then Richard phoned to tell me his show was going, too, under the title: “Deadman’s Curve”. But now I was not available. I recommended Lee Strosnider, whom Richard had used to do sound transfers on the first film I recorded for him (and also co-produced). [See Lee’s article in the Coffey Audio Files Winter 2008.] Then “TSM” got delayed again. Lee graciously offered Richard’s show back to me, but before I could accept, “DC” also was pushed back. I made a deal with Lee: whichever show actually went first, I would do, and he the other. Finally, “The Stunt Man” went first, and

THE STUNT MAN: PRODUCTION MIXER’S CUT

Copyright © 2009 by J.M. Tanenbaum, all rights reserved.

By Jim Tanenbaum C.A.S.

Lee wound up doing “Deadman’s Curve”. None of the non-union boom operators I previously used had managed to get in the union when I did, so I went with the recommendation of several IA mixers I knew. Cal Marks was a mixed blessing: on one hand he was an excel-lent boom operator; but on the other, he was an “old-time” union man (even though he was still young). He continu-ally told me how things were done “in the union”, and turned his nose up at my unorthodox techniques. While it was true that I had reinvented the wheel on my own, and discovered that square wheels didn’t work, I did find that oval ones had a few unique advantages. My main package, which heretofore had been com-pletely adequate, consisted of two Nagra 4.2s, a Sela 4-pot mixer, four Vega radio mikes with Sony ECM-50 lavs, one short and two long fishpoles, and half a dozen Sennheiser condenser mikes. I did have some early dual-frequency Com-Teks, but I preferred to hardwire the director’s and script’s headphones to get the full frequency and dynamic range of my audio. Backup equipment included a Sony “professional” stereo cassette recorder (with an external crystal and adapter cables to put sync pulse on one of the audio tracks), a Shure M-67 mixer, and an assortment of oddball mikes. I had several hundred feet of mike and du-plex boom cable, and (fortunately) decided to make up a lot more. I figured that this show might be hard on cables (and it was), and since I plant a lot of mikes, I wanted to have a goodly supply. I started out with about a thousand feet, and had to build even more during production.

Another thing I knew had to be improved was my cart. I had been using a very clever but not very rugged (until I reinforced the weak spot-welds with brazing) fold-ing tea cart sold by Sears Roebuck, stacking my second Nagra on top of the first one on top of the Sela, and put-ting the four radio receivers on the bottom shelf (where I couldn’t see their meters without bending down). While its light weight and compact size was convenient, free real estate on my old cart was at a premium, and I knew I would need much more for “TSM”. I found a company that manufactured the food carts airline stewardesses push down the aisle, and had them build a custom, scaled-up version of the Sears cart, using heat-treated aluminum panels, and wheels from the ambulance gurneys they also manufactured. Overall, it was worth the $1,000 it cost, but certain design shortcomings became obvious during shoot-ing, and I was kept busy making field-expedient upgrades and repairs. The first day of “The Stunt Man” was an ear-opening experience. I had never worked with such a huge crew (well over a hundred), and as one of them, I was expected to have a fully-professional level of knowledge and expertise. But I soon discovered that my previous ex-perience, as well as my equipment, was totally inadequate for a job of this magnitude. Unfortunately, it was too late to turn down the show – so I faked it. (If you say anything with enough confidence; most people will believe it.) I learned on the job, and bought more gear as I went along. And I wasn’t the only one. The Stedicam was still in its

The Coffey Audio Files | Issue 01 2009 30

infancy, and required more than occasional tweeking. Since there were no small quiet cameras (a la Panaflex), I had to work with the operator to design and construct a lightweight barney out of closed-cell-foam for the Arri 2C it used. The scene where Peter and Steve ride in a basket lifted from the beach by a construction crane parked at the top of the cliff, and are swung over to be deposited in front of the Del Coronado Hotel, was the first real challenge I faced. There was continuous dialog between them as they walked up to the basket, got in, and throughout the ride. From previous experience, I knew my radios were good for several hundred feet, especially since the actors would be up in the air, so I didn’t anticipate any serious problems. But Murphy’s Law always works. (Actually, it fails just often enough that you can’t trust it.) On the day, I found out that the crane’s diesel engine emitted a loud, low-pitched throbbing, which triggered the limiters in my radio mikes, and rendered them unusable. The director (Richard Rush) made it clear that looping was not an option. Fortunately,

I’m not afraid of heights. Actually, I am, but I gritted my teeth (actually, I did something else with another part of my anatomy) and squeezed myself into a corner of the basket behind camera. Cal boomed the first part of the dialog as the actors walked along (with lots of headroom) until they got close enough to the basket for me to cross-fade to an 815 I was handholding, while Cal put down the boom and connected the cables from the Nagra’s mike inputs to the power supplies of the ECM-50’s that were gaffer-taped to the actors’ ankles, and disconnected the cable to his boom before we took off. And he managed to accomplish all this while they were climbing over the railing to get in the basket. Then I used the two lavs for the rest of the shot. Jack Palinkas, our key grip (who also plays a crew member in the film), had it far worse: he was roped off to the outside of the basket, hand-holding a 4x4 shiny board. When Jack, the camera operator, and I, all got back to our rooms that night, we found a bottle of champagne and a thank-you note from Peter. The Del Coronado Hotel is a fantastic building: incredibly complex architecture that has been repeatedly added to over the years. And we added a few turrets and dormers of our own for the film as well. There was a major scene to be shot on the roof, or rather, all over the roof, and there was not a level portion anywhere. Construction built camera platforms that would sit level on the various slopes, and offered to build one for me, too, but I was having trouble getting hit-free signals from the radio mikes (no diversity in those days) at the few positions where I would be off-camera (all five of them). Here I was saved by one of those rare failures of Murphy’s Law. The hotel was built entirely of wood! And the floor immediately under the roof was accessible and had hallways that ran the length and breadth of the structure. All I had to do was set up down there, and push my cart around until I was directly under the action. For a couple of Stedicam setups, I rolled my cart along during the shot, following the actor’s path as best I could. A.J. Bakunas, one of our stuntmen, also played

31 The Coffey Audio Files | Issue 01 2009

the part of the A.D. In one of his stunts, he had to roll down the slope of the roof, and fall over the edge. But dur-ing the take, his roll started to get off course, and instead of stopping and requiring the multiple-stunt shot to be done over, he kicked off a dormer he was passing and corrected his trajectory. It wasn’t until after the successful take that he discovered he had broken his ankle. That’s why, part-way through the movie, the A.D. suddenly sports a cast on his leg. Sadly, A.J. was killed two years later in an air-bag failure while working on the movie “Steel”. We went to the American River in the Sacramento area to film the bridge scene. Our schedule originally had the move take place over a weekend, but a last-minute slippage pushed it to Monday night of the next week, and therein lay a problem. The company had arranged to rent duplicate camera, lighting, and grip packages in Sacra-mento, and then fly the crew up after the day’s work in L.A. But I had been using my own sound equipment, and was leery of rented gear, especially as there would be no time for me to check it out. And locating a rental house up north, establishing an account, and making arrangements for its delivery to the set would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for me to accomplish during the workday. Then there was the added cost, which at that point in my career was a major consideration. I had no choice but to transport myself and my equipment, using my 1976 Inter-national Harvester Scout II (an S.U.V. before they were called that). I packed my personal luggage the night be-fore, and brought it to the stage. During the day, I preload-ed the pieces of equipment that weren’t needed and others when they were done with, and when we wrapped, quickly tossed everything else in on top. I drove all night, and ar-rived well before the call time on Tuesday. Fortunately, the call sheet was thin, and I managed to get a few hours sleep. Murphy failed once up north, too. The winter weather turned really nasty, with heavy rain and high winds. If I things had gone as planned, I would have had to work out in the storm, trying to cover myself and my cart with tarps and grip clips. But I had my 4x4 Scout, and was able to set up my equipment inside and drive off-road close enough to the set that I could run cables out the windwing (remember when cars had those?) and stuff rags around them to keep the water out and the heat in. Only Cal had to brave the elements, and get drenched and nearly frozen in the process. (The trip back to L.A. was made over a week-end.) Making “TSM” was just a crazy as making the movie-in-the-movie was. Sharon Farrell, who played the hair stylist, improvised during a rehearsal and flashed a group of actors playing extras in the movie who were waiting to have their hair done. This was a big hit, and she took to flashing our crew unexpectedly. Several of the other actresses joined in. Unfortunately, among the crowds of onlookers our shoot attracted, were some civilians who

were not amused. Word came down from on high that there will be no more – repeat, no more – flashing. Period. Meanwhile, our construction crane operator had been giv-ing the cast and crew joyrides in the basket, lifting them a hundred feet above the hotel. Sharon and a couple of other women went up – and then their pants went down. They

The Coffey Audio Files | Issue 01 2009 32

mooned the crowd. (“Hey, we didn’t flash anybody.”) Barbara was both friendly and professional, and al-ways cooperative when the sound department needed some-thing from her. After several weeks, I had the vague feeling that I had worked with her before, yet I was sure I hadn’t – I certainly would have remembered it. She didn’t remember ever working with me before, either. Toward the end of the production, we got around to shooting her nude scene with Steven. Afterward, I told her that I had indeed worked with her before – I just didn’t recognize her with her clothes on. After Roger Corman had finished shooting “Boxcar Bertha” in 1971, he decided that the picture needed to be “heated up”. His production manager, the late Beach Dickerson, built a boxcar set in the vacant lot next to his house, and called me in for a couple of hours to record a nude lovemak-

ing scene with Barbara and David Carradine (her husband at the time). We both had a laugh over that memory. The next day, I was relaxing in my chair between setups, and had my legs sticking out. Barbara came hurrying by, and stumbled over them. Although it was not my fault (she was taking a shortcut behind the camera and other equip-ment), I apologized and said “Excuse me”. She (jokingly) replied with a loud “No!” Not to be outdone, I answered with “Well, f… you, bitch!” (Those of you who know me, know that profanity is not in my normal vocabulary.) For a moment, a deathly silence prevailed on the set, then the whispering started. Ten minutes later, Barbara came over to my sound cart and quietly asked: “You were kidding, weren’t you?” We became good friends after that, and I when I was working with her on “Take This Job and Shove It” several years later, she would keep me updated daily on the imminent release of “The Stunt Man”. Our show was beset with many unusual problems, not the least of which was criminal activity. While we were filming at the Del Coronado, the hotel’s jewelry store was robbed. None of the bystanders who witnessed the crime in progress called the police, because they thought it was part of filming the movie (even though there were no crew, cam-eras, or lights visible). Later, when we were shooting at a hotel in Santa Monica, we wrapped for the day, and told the private security guard not to let anyone in the equip-ment room until 8 a.m. the next morning. And when we came in the next morning, all the walkie-talkies were gone (in the days when they cost over $2,000 apiece, and in the days when that was a lot of money). The morning guard in-sisted no one had been in the room on his watch; when we finally got ahold of the night watchman, he readily admit-

ted letting in “some electrician” to take the walkies because “they needed them to get the lights off the roof.” Then there was a young man who had been hanging around the set, and talking to various crew members about moviemaking. Since he was polite and neatly-dressed, no one shooed him way, and he became a regular fixture, even helping to carry equipment cases. One day, a security guard (not the one in Santa Monica) became suspicious when the guy showed up with a large briefcase. Later, as our visitor was leaving for the night, the guard made him open up his case, and lo and behold, there was my script which I thought I had dropped somewhere earlier, and various other “souvenirs”, including some more walkie-talkies. For most of the shoot, I was kept busy running just to stay in the same place, and didn’t have time to try any-

thing fancy; just get the best objective sound I could. But when we filming the scene in the WWI bordello, where Cameron falls through the glass skylight, with multiple slow-motion cameras running at various speeds up to 96 FPS, I did manage to find the time to create slow-motion sync sound for the dailies. I ran my Nagra at 15 IPS dur-ing the shot, then later made transfers to my second deck, recording at 7½ IPS with 60Hz Neopilot, while I played back my original tape at 7½ or 3¾ IPS, using a QSV speed varier (and some multiple passes) where necessary to match the odd camera frame rates. I added a note to the editor to sync to the beginning of the glass breaking. I was pleased to hear some gasps of surprise and chuckles while watching next day’s rushes. Then there was the horseplay scene between Steve and Barbara in the paint locker, where they end up drenched in gallons of the various colors. Obviously, there was to be only one take, with multiple wide and tight cameras. During the first rehearsal, it became clear that fishpoling the shot was impossible. I hadn’t wanted to use radio mikes, because the technology of the day couldn’t handle the scene’s whisper-to-shout dialog levels. Cal was aware of my radios’ shortcomings, and told me how to do the shot “the right way”. Start by holding up production until two (count ‘em, two) Fisher booms could be brought down from L.A., along with another boom operator. Then one boom would be set up in each aisle, and the scene recorded “properly”. I was not about to ask Richard for that. Instead, I told Cal that we would put two radios on each actor. He didn’t see how two radios would work any better than one, until I explained that the gain would be set high on one,

“Our show was beset with many unusual problems, not the least of which was criminal activity.”

The Coffey Audio Files | Issue 01 2009 34

and low on the other. The four receivers would be con-nected to the Sela’s four inputs, and I would use the ap-propriate pots for the soft and loud dialog. “I am a Mixer, you know,” I told him. Murphy helped me here as well: I could leave the loud-dialog pots somewhat open, because the low gain of that transmitter kept the channel quiet; and I could keep the soft-dialog pots open until the very last soft syllable, because any shouting that occurred before I could close them completely would trigger the (rather aggressive) limiter in the high-gain transmitter and reduce the level about -30dB, which was inaudible when mixed with the loud-dialog channel. Cal was suitably impressed, but that didn’t keep him from mistrusting my off-the-wall solution to the next problem. This occurred on wide shot of Steve and Barbra coming out of the ocean, when he rescues her after she falls in. The actors were out of fishpole range, although Cal almost managed to get them with an 815 on a fully-extended pole, by balancing on a wet, slippery, uneven rock jetty. His answer to the problem was to have the grips build a platform anchored to the seabed some ten feet below the surface. I was not about to ask Richard for that, either. In-stead, I told Cal that we would put radios on the two actors. He didn’t see how radios would survive being immersed in sea water, until I explained how I would waterproof the transmitters with gaffer tape (it was only one shot, so I didn’t worry about the time it would take to unwrap them to change batteries), and how I would protect the mikes, since I couldn’t tape over the openings in the end of the capsule. Fortunately, I had developed a cordial working relation-ship with the two actors, and they were approachable and amenable to my suggestions (also the fact that they were pleased with the quality of my sound up to this point). I covered the open end of the ECM-50 with a disk of felt, and wrapped a layer of gaffer tape around the outer diameter so that it protruded about half and inch past the end of the mike. I then mounted the mikes on the talent with the open-ing downward, and had them promise me that they would remain (relatively) upright while underwater. This trapped a bubble of air in the tube made by the gaffer tape, and when the actors broke the surface, the water that had gotten part way up it simply ran out. Cal was suitably impressed, but that didn’t keep him from continually doubting my unusual techniques. While I am seldom ill, during the six months it took to film “TSM”, I did come down with a really bad flu, dur-ing a cold, rainy week. And of course, that was the week we had exteriors to do out at Indian Dunes. Since most of the work was just action scenes, requiring mainly effects scratch tracks, I decided to stay home and asked Lee to fill in for me. (He did get to record the dialog scene with the pornographic toy bear.) Thus he got to observe what was almost a tragedy to rival the “Twilight Zone” many years

later. They were filming some shots of the period bi-planes making strafing runs. There was a camera operator using a tripod setup, and the planes dove toward him and then swooped past, right over his head. A large number of the crew and cast had gathered to watch these excit-ing stunts, and were standing directly behind camera, but Lee wisely decided to record from a position well to the side of the flight path. Then it happened – either through pilot error or an unexpected downdraft: the plane came in too low and one of its wheels clipped the top of camera’s magazine, causing the plane to nose down. Fortunately, the pilot managed to pull up at the last moment, leaving tire tracks on the backs of all the people who had thrown themselves face down in the mud. The camera operator escaped with only a bruised shoulder. Only a couple of inches lower, and that would have been the end of them, and “The Stunt Man” as well. When we finally finished filming, the first cut was over four hours long. Richard edited it down (some-what), and staged a screening of this interim version for the cast and crew. There were several surprises for me in the sound track. There was a scene at the beginning about the filming of German soldiers being massacred, and as the cameras rolled I heard my voice announcing: “This is

35 The Coffey Audio Files | Issue 01 2009

track to loop to.) The scene on the beach with the explod-ing finger gag was shot during a full-out gale. While I got a good track of the dialog, with no wind pops, the background of visquene flapping and light stands blowing over was too distracting (and inappropriate because the wind had been blocked from the on-camera action). Many years later, I worked for Richard Rush on a Pepsi commercial, and Steve Railsback dropped by the set to visit. He had become very popular in Eastern Europe, and spent a great deal of time working there. Recently, I worked with him again when he guest-starred on an episode of “The Handler”. Since “The Stunt Man”, I have worked on larger, more spectacular projects (“Volcano”), ones more interest-ing to me because of my background in astrophysics (“From the Earth to the Moon”), and currently, the most techno-logically groundbreaking (James Cameron’s “Avatar”), but nothing has ever equaled “The Stunt Man” for sheer fun, and the satisfaction of doing stuff on a daily basis that I didn’t think I could do at all.

a five camera shot: Cameras A, B, C, D, and E. Scene 36 Take 1.” The editor had taken my audio notes from the voice slate of one of my production tapes, and cut it in. I thought it was just for this screening, but I made it to the release version. I am seen at my cart in the wide shots, but they used an actor for my closeup (although he is wearing my Koss KO-727Bs). The film was presented in its native 1:1.85 aspect ratio, with a mono audio track. But for the last reel, beginning with the tin can bouncing on the pave-ment as the production trucks speed by on the morning of the movie’s big stunt, the side teaser curtains were opened, and the picture expanded to widescreen (1:2.35, although we hadn’t shot it that way – they blew it up optically). The audio jumped to stereo; the editor had cut or pan-potted the dialog and effects. Through all the trails and tribulations, I managed to get away with so many failures of Murphy’s Law that all but two sequences made it to the release track unlooped. All the dialog had to be replaced for the scenes in the biplane, which were shot directly in front of a gas-engine Ritter. (The actors didn’t even have an intelligible cue

Tech Zone Cheat Sheets | Sennheiser EM 3700 Series COM Rack-Mount Receivers

Lectrosonics UM400/450• Power provided via one 9volt battery or ISO9VOLT battery eliminator for external powering (BDS, NP1 Cup, etc.)• Block specific, agile frequency adjustment accessible via slid-ing door on unit’s side.• Compatible with previous Lectrosonics receivers.• As unit powers on, three LEDS will cycle twice leading into the audio level LEDs blinking in reference to the unit’s mode. Once for 100 series, twice for 200 series, three times for mode 3, four times for 400 series, five times to become an IFB transmitter, and six times for mode 6.• Cycling through transmitter modes-1. Rotate frequency switches to C,C and power the unit on and off quickly2. Rotate frequency switches to numbers corresponding to mode; example 1, 1 for 100 series, 2, 2 for 200 series, etc. Power the unit on and off quickly.3.Rotate frequency switches to 0, 0 and power the unit on allow-ing it to cycle and blink in accordance to it’s newly programmed mode.• TA5 input receives mic and line level inputs, allowing unit to be used for lavalieres, wireless boom applications, as well as camera hop transmitters.• Audio input level can be easily adjusted by a rotary knob on units top.

Lectrosonics SM• Similar to the UM400 in that it is compatible with previous Lectrosonics receivers.• All functions are controlled via a four button membrane on the unit’s surface.• To power the unit on press and hold the AUDIO and FREQ buttons for three seconds. It will then cycle through its power up, telling what compatibility the unit is currently set to. Note: if the buttons are not held for the full three seconds the unit will power on but will not transmit rf.• Block specific, agile frequency adjustment via the FREQ button.1. Press and hold the FREQ button, the LCD will display the frequency either by the Lectro alphanumeric code, or by pressing the button again it will display the actual frequency.2. Press and hold the FREQ button and either the UP or DOWN ARROW at the same time to adjust the frequency. • Cycling through transmitter modes-1. While the unit is off press the AUDIO, FREQ and UP AR-ROW buttons.2. The LCD will display the current mode.3. Press the UP ARROW to the desired compatibility and turn the unit off. As you power the unit back on the LCD will display the new mode.•Audio input level is controlled by pressing and holding the AUDIO and either the UP or DOWN ARROWS until the LCD displays the desired level.

Lectrosonics UM400/450 and SM Cheat Sheet

The Coffey Audio Files | Issue 01 2009 38

Tech ZoneCheat Sheets | Lectrosonics UM400/450 & SM

The UM400a implements the latest Digital Hybrid Wireless® technology in a classic Lectrosonics belt-pack transmitter. A 5-pin input jack provides taps for low impedance dynamic mics, electret lavalier mics with positive or negative bias and line level inputs. Input gain is adjustable over a 43 dB range to perfectly match the audio input level for optimum modulation, minimum distortion and maximum signal to noise ratio. Input levels are accurately indicated by two LEDs on the control panel. The innovative servo bias input on the standard 5-pin connector provides a programmable, regulated voltage to accommodate a wide variety of electret microphones.

The SM Series family brings Digital Hybrid Wireless™ technology to miniature transmit-ters in several different configurations for essentially any wireless microphone application with a lavaliere microphone. The tiny size of the single battery SMa model makes concealment easy, yet with a full 100 mW output, it does not sacrifice performance. The dual battery SMDa model doubles the battery life of the SMa with the same feature set. The SMQa offers 250 mW RF output power to extend operating range and the unique RM provides hands-free remote control for all three models.

Lectrosonics UM400A

Switching power supplies throughout the design allow long battery life with NiMH batteries. Setup and control is simplified with membrane switches and an LCD interface. Multiple functions are clearly marked on the panel, with on-screen prompts on the LCD as reminders when another switch must be held or the selection is locked out. The innova-tive servo bias input on the standard 5-pin connector provides a programmable, regulated voltage to accommodate a wide variety of electret microphones. Two bicolor LEDs make adjusting input levels for proper modulation easy and accurate. The splash-proof housing is machined out of a single block of aluminum, which is then plated with a superhard, non-cor-rosive coating. The SM Series transmitters are equally at home in theatre, television and film where temperature and environmental extremes require superior performance under the most demanding conditions.

Lectrosonics SM Series

By Jon Hicks

Tech Zone Cheat Sheets | Sound Devices 788T

39 The Coffey Audio Files | Issue 01 2009

Replacing the TRX990, the TRX992 has been totally redesigned from the ground up. The case is machined from a solid block of aluminum and the look, feel, fit and finish are excellent. It’s also about 25% smaller than the TRX990, making it extremely compact. A rechargeable Black and Decker VPX battery eliminates the need for non rechargeable bat-teries entirely, making the TRX992 truly “green.” Additionally, the mic preamp shares the same low noise and ultra low distortion design as that of the Deva. The RF transmission to the sound cart is 100% digital with no transmission artifacts. The audio quality is directly comparable to a hard wire and the extra beefy headphone driver can drive any professional headphone with very low distortion. The 48V Phantom power output is rock steady and can supply the most demanding microphones. A headphone monitor mixer with a physical pan pot is included, so the boom operator can mix between the transmitted audio and the IFB return. Battery warnings and Inter-com control tones are also mixed into the headphone feed. The IFB return comes in two flavors, high quality and lower quality with time code trans-mission and remote control. The high quality IFB is identical in audio quality to our UHF transmis-sion to the sound cart so that the boom operator can hear a mix from the sound cart with the same audio quality that is received at the cart. In the high quality mode the boom op would listen only from the IFB return. If the IFB is to be used as just a communication channel then the lower quality IFB can be selected. In this mode time code and remote control signals are transmitted with the IFB audio.

K-Tek introduces the Klassic Traveler Kit. Created to meet the needs of the busy boom pole operator on the go, this convenient new kit offers the K-Tek Klassic 6-Section graph-ite boom pole (K-87CC), K-Mount microphone suspension (K-MT), and a slip-on Fuzzy windscreen (Z-FSO) in a single, cost-effective package. K-Tek’s new Klassic graphite pole is engineered for quick storage and easy transportation. The six-section design al-lows the pole to collapse to a shorter minimum length, with no sacrifice to maximum reach. The K-87CC extends to 7’3” (221cm) and can be compressed to 1’10” (56cm). Crafted of high-density graphite fiber, the pole offers the same great benefits as the top-of-the-line Klassic 5-Section Boom Pole series. Locking collars feature K-Tek’s trademark dimples and

PRODUCT HIGHLIGHTZaxcom TRX-992 | K-TEK Klassic Traveler Kit

Zaxcom TRX992

K-TEK Klassic Traveler Kit

a “Soft-Touch” rubberized sleeve for an easier grip and more comfortable feel. The K-87CC comes outfitted with an internal coiled cable and a bottom XLR connector. The K-Mount microphone suspension (K-MT) offers users both the ruggedness of a shock mount and the isolation character-istics of more expensive suspension systems. The system features K-Tek’s unique 4-point polymer microphone suspenders (K-SUS) fitted precisely into a handsome cylindrical aluminum frame. The K-Tek Slip-On Fuzzy combines a high-quality faux fur exterior with a tightly woven fabric backing -- making it the only slip-on windscreen with an extra layer of wind protection. Users have a choice of a small, medium or large windscreen to fit a multi-tude of microphones.

Imagine tweaking the TRX992 mic gain during the shot from the sound cart. In the lower quality mode it is intended that the boom op would listen to the microphone through the TRX992 monitor mix.The TRX992 features an intercom function. Pressing the “INC” key while in the home screen will switch the receivers output from the left output to the right output (Stereo receiver required). The Right output can be routed just to the sound mixers headphone so it becomes a private line. A 500Hz low level tone is mixed into the Boom ops headphone to indicate the private line is activated. The TRX992 features a 24 hour duration internal backup recorder (4 gig memory card) with time code reference. RF interfer-ence or range issue will never crate a gap in the audio deliverd to post. (Pat Pend) The TRX992 also includes an adjustable high pass filter, peak limiter and downward expander.

The Coffey Audio Files | Issue 01 2009 40

Cheat Sheets | Fostex LR-16 Live Recording Mixer

Another first from FOSTEX! 16/4/2 Live mixer with inte-grated 16-track multitrack recorder for schools, houses of worship, clubs, coffee houses, project studios, mobile re-cording, rental sound / recording, etc. The LR16 can serve as a F.O.H. or onstage mixer for the main sound system, and record the signals with the quality superior to Audio CD onto its built-in HD at the press of a button! Records individual WAV tracks files as well as a simultaneous stereo mixdown.

Main FeaturesIntuitive analog-like mixer operation in digital domain with 16 • input faders + 4 bus faders + Master faderBuilt-in 80GB HD for approx. 16 hours of 16-track uncompressed • digital recording (16bit/44.1kHz)One hit of “REC” button starts 16-track recording immediately• Multitracks and Stereo Mix can be recorded simultaneously• Connector Box (recorder + I/O) and Controller (mixer section) can • be separated via off-the-shelf CAT5 cable up to 50m (164ft). Just one cable from I/O box on the stage to the F.O.H. mixer controller instead of heavy snake cableChoice of MTR-like stand-alone integration or separated rack • mountingFAT32 formatted HD can be mounted on PC or Mac via USB• Digitally controlled TRIM with LIMITER on all the 16 channels• 3-band EQ on all the 16 channels• Built-in Master Effects (Reverb/Delay)• USB Host connector to dump recorded data to USB flash memory • for easy data transfer to PC or Mac.10 keys on the Recorder panel for instant playback•

Fostex LR-16 Live Recording MixerPRODUCT HIGHLIGHT

Input and Output (I/O Box)• 0dBu = 0.775Vrms, 0dBV = 1.0Vrms• Microphone Input (1~16)• Connectors: XLR3-31, balanced (combo)• Nominal input level: -60dBu ~ 12dBu• Input impedance: more than 1.5kW• Phantom Power: P48V (1-8CH & 9-16CH • switchable, on/off)Line Input (1~16)• Connector: f6.3mm TRS Phone, balanced • (combo)Nominal input level: -40dBu ~ +8dBu• Input impedance: more than 10kW• Insert (1~8)• Connector: f6.3mm TRS Phone (Tip: Output, • Ring: Input)Load Impedance: more than 10kW• Nominal Output Level: -10dBV• Input Impedance: -more than 10kW• Nominal Input Level: -10dBV• Stereo Bus Out (L,R)• Connector: XLR3-31, balanced• Reference Output Level: +4dBu• Load Impedance: more than 10kW• Group Bus Out (1~4)• Connector: f6.3mm TRS Phone, balanced• Reference Output Level: +4dBu• Load Impedance: more than 10kW• Aux Send (1~3)• Connector: f6.3mm Phone, unbalanced• Reference Output Level: -2dBu• Load Impedance: more than 10kWhm• Effect Send• Connector: f6.3mm Phone, unbalanced• Reference Output Level: -2dBu• Load Impedance: more than 10kWhm• Rec Out (L,R)• Connector: RCA, unbalanced• Reference Output Level: -10dBV• Load Impedance: more than 10kWhm• Foot Switch• Connector: f6.3mm Phone• USB (Device) USB2.0 Hi-Speed for PC • connectionConnector: B type• USB (Host) USB2.0 Hi-Speed for storage • connectionConnector: A type•

MIDI Out• Connector: DIN 5-pin• To Control Box• Connector: RJ45(CAT5, straight)• Input and Output (Controller Box)• Phone• Connector: f6.3mm Stereo Phone• Load Impedance: more than 32W• Monitor Out (L,R)• Connector: f6.3mm Phone, unbalanced• Reference Output Level: -12dBV• Load Impedance: more than 10kW• Sub In (L,R)• Connector: RCA, unbalanced• Reference Input Level: -10dBV• Input Impedance: more than 10kW• To I/O Box• Connector: RJ45(CAT5, straight)• Recording / Playback• Recording media: Internal 3.5”HD (80GB)• Sampling Frequency: 44.1 / 48kHz• Quantization: 16bit / 24bit• Number of recording tracks: 1 ~ 16• Recording Time: approx. 16 hours (80GB HD, • 16bit / 44.1kHz, 16 tracks)File System: FAT32(WAV)• Frequency response: 20Hz~20kHz +1dB, -2dB • (44.1/48kHz)S/N: Line (Trim Min) 95dB or more (typical)• Mic (Trim Max) 90dB or more (typical)• Dynamic range: 100dB or more (Trim Min)• (typical)T.H.D.: Mic (Trim Max) -> ST Out: 0.01% or • less (1kHz, -2dBFS)Line (Trim Min) -> ST Out: 0.01% or less • (1kHz, -2dBFS)Line (Trim Min) -> Phones 0.1% or less • (1kHz, 70mW, 32W)General• Dimensions: 482 (W) x 136(H) x 570 (D) mm• Weight: Approx. 13kg (29lbs.)• Power Requirement: JPN 100VAC, USA • 120VAC, UK/EUR 230VACPower Consumption: 60W• LR16• LIVE RECORDING MIXER• PP RR EE LL II MM•

The new EM 3700 Series combines the highest op-erational reliability with a wide switching bandwidth and many connection options. The user can tune the receiver to any frequency in 5 kHz steps within the 90 MHz switching bandwidth, providing 18,000 frequency choices. All three receivers feature a number of innovative functions, such as a digital audio output, high-contrast OLED display and extraordinarily intuitive operation via an icon-based menu. The EM 3700 Series is comprised of the EM 3731 receiver, EM 3732 twin receiver and EM 3732 COM twin receiver with command function. Easy integration into any network

Via their Ethernet connector, all receivers can easily • be remote-controlled and monitored via the Sennheiser Wireless Systems Manager (WSM) softwareAntenna loop-through allows daisy-chaining for up to • (8) receivers

Quick system set-up

Sync function enables Sennheiser’s SK 5212, SKM • 5200 and SKP 3000 transmitters to be synchronized with the receivers via an infrared interface

Incredible audio qualityDSP-based HiDyn plus expander• AES 3 digital audio output•

Comfortable set-up and flexible RF properties90 MHz switching bandwidth• (6) fixed channel banks with integrated scan function, •

along with one user-adjustable bank with up to 60 channels

Simple and intuitive operationJog dial and hot keys for save, sync, headphones and • escapeExtraordinarily easy and quick overview of all settings • with high contrast displaySimultaneous headphone monitoring of both channels • of the twin receiver

Delivery includes:▪ EM 3731 or EM 3732 or EM 3732 COM ▪ 3 mains cables (EU, US, UK)▪ 2 BNC antenna cables ▪ 1 BNC word clock cable, 75 ohms▪ 1 Ethernet cable ▪ Rubber feet ▪ CD-ROM with the Sennheiser Wireless ▪ User manual ▪ Systems Manager (WSM)

Accessories:The EM 3700 Series is complemented by an antenna sys-tem, consisting of the AB 3700 broadband antenna booster, the active AD 3700 directional broadband antenna and the active A 3700 omni-directional broadband antenna. The receivers are compatible with all 3000 and 5000 Series transmitters.

Sennheiser EM 3700 Series COM Rack-Mount Receivers

PRODUCT HIGHLIGHTSennheiser EM 3700 Series COM Rack-Mount Receivers

41 The Coffey Audio Files | Issue 01 2009

OOctaveThe interval of eight diatonic degrees between two tones of the same name, the higher of which has twice as many vibrations per second as the lower.

Ohmthe SI unit of electrical resistance, defined to be the electrical resistance between two points of a conductor when a constant potential difference applied between these points produces in this conductor a current of one ampere. The resistance in ohms is numerically equal to the magnitude of the potential difference. Symbol: Ω

Omnidirectional From all directions. An omnidirectional microphone can detect sound with equal sensitivity from all direc-tions.

On AxisThe listener has the ear precisely lined up with the central pressure axis of the emitter. Headphones are a common example of this, as is sitting directly in front of a speaker.

OscillatorA device which produces an alternating current or pul-sating current or voltage at varying frequencies, elec-tronically.

Output (Audio)The high level (speaker) or line level signals sent from one system component to another, or the high level sig-nal from an amplifier to the system speakers.

Overmodulationexcessive amplitude modulation, resulting in distortion of a signal.

PPadAn electrical circuit used to attenuate or reduce the am-

plitude of an audio signal by a fixed amount.

Pan PotShort for panoramic potentiometer, this is a knob controlling a voltage divider that can send a signal to a combination of two busses, such as left and right. Always found on mixing consoles to set up (pan) a signal within the stereo field, it is also called a ‘balance’ control on domestic stereo amplifiers.

Passive ComponentIn a crossover system, a non-powered component used to separate an audio signal into a specified frequency band before it goes to a particular amplifier or driver. A passive device usually incurs some loss (expressed in decibels) to a system. Typical such components include capacitors, coils, and resistors.

Peak Power Handling (MAX)Peak power handling refers to the amount of power a speaker is estimated to handle during a brief high-intensity musical burst. Since this can vary with both frequency and amplitude, it is a much less accurate way to judge speaker durability and performance than RMS (see RMS).

PhaseThe relative timing of a sound wave that is measured in degrees from 0 to 360.

Phase CancellationUndesirable dips and peaks in frequency response caused by mixing the outputs of two microphones which are picking up the same sound but with different arrival times. For example, this can occur when two micro-phones are placed near each other, but still with space between them; or when wireless microphone users stand next to each other. Also referred to as acoustic phase interference.

Pink NoiseA random signal of every frequency in the audio spec-trum, in which each higher octave drops off 3 dB. The lower octaves have more power, and the higher octaves have less power. Pink noise is generated to test loud-speakers in a room as well as to “tune” a room for best audio reproduction.

Tech Zone Audio Glossary O-P

The Coffey Audio Files | Issue 01 2009 42

time (in seconds) that the device is operating. See: appar-ent power and rms power.

Power Handling (continuous or RMS)A rating of a Driver’s ability in optimum conditions to handle a specified amount of audio power (electrical current power) on a constant basis, without damage. This is generally considered to be a conservative and reliable figure to use in judging what types of amplifier power will be most successful with a particular speaker design.

Pre-AmpA circuit unit which takes a small signal and amplifies it sufficiently to be fed into the power amplifier for further amplification. A pre-amp includes all of the controls for regulating tone, volume, and channel balance.

Precedence EffectAlso known as the Haas effect, this phenomenon identi-fies the tendency for the ear to attribute all perceived sound to the nearest emitter, even if a more distant speaker is actually louder. Thus, drums that yield 90

PitchThe subjective sensation produced by various frequen-cies. The higher the frequency, the higher the perceived pitch; however, frequency is not linearly related to pitch. See also ‘Concert Pitch’.

Polar responseA plot of the Amplitude measurement of a speaker’s output at a given frequency relative to an off-axis angle. In other words, the difference that exists between how a speaker sounds when being heard directly in front, compared to how it sounds while standing off to one side. (See Dispersion)

Powera. The product of applied voltage (potential difference) and current in a direct-current circuit (or the voltage squared divided by the resistance, or the current squared times the resistance). b. The product of the effective values of the voltage and current with the cosine of the phase angle (between current and voltage) in an alter-nating-current circuit. c.Power The amount of energy (in joules) that a device delivers or consumes divided by the

Tech Zone Audio Glossary O-P

43 The Coffey Audio Files | Issue 01 2009

percent or more of their energy in the non-directional lower frequencies are perceived as located in the space created by the tiny amount of higher frequency overtones. It is also for this reason that sounds from the rear speakers of a surround system are delayed by 10 to 30 milliseconds, so that they can be experienced as coming from the rear direction.

PresetA collection of system settings stored in a memory that is virtually instantly recallable, typically at the touch of a but-ton.

Program BankA Custom File feature that allows the user to flag the tracks on a disc, indicating whether they should be played or skipped.

Proximity EffectAn increase in the bass response of some microphones as the distance between the mike and its sound source is decreased.

PsychoacousticsThe scientific study of the relationship between human hear-ing and its stimulus; in other words, how we hear.

PunchThe snap or deep impact of the low end response of an audio system.

The Coffey Audio Files | Issue 01 2009 44

Paramount Studios, HollywoodExhibition & Premiere Seminars: June 5-6, 2009

The Film Series at Cine Gear Expo: June 4-6, 2009Master Class Seminars: June 7, 2009

Contact us @ 310/472-0809 or [email protected]

JOIN HOLLYWOOD’SPROFESSIONALS IN 2009

For the Pre-Production •Production •Post Production Community

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Tech Zone Audio Glossary O-P

Dennis Maitland, CASPaul MazurskyResul PookuttyIan TappRichard PrykeEd NovickLora HirschbergGary A. RizzoMark Ulano, CASChristopher BoyesLora HirschbergChris Munro, CASMike Prestwood SmithMark TaylorBen BurttTom MyersMichael Semanick, CASJay Meagher, CASMike Minkler, CAS

Bob Beemer, CASDanny HambrookStuart HillikerAlexandros SidiropoulousMarc FishmanTony LambertiGary AlperGary C. Bourgeois, CASGreg Orloff, CASWilliam F. Gocke, CASMichael Olman, CASKenneth Kobett, CASRoger Pietschman, CASElmo PonsdomenechKevin RoacheVon VargaGerry Lentz, CASRich Weingart, CASRobert Anderson, Jr., CAS

Frank Morrone, CASScott WeberPeter BentleyKen Teaney, CASGeoffrey RubayBob Bronow, CASEdward Greene, CASRandy FaustinoAndrew FletcherMichael K. ParkerGary LongBrian Riordan, CASConnor MooreChristian ShraderBill KingJay SaksKen Hahn, CASJohn BowenJorge Silva

THE WINNERS FOR THE CINEMA AUDIO SOCIETY AWARDS FOR OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN SOUND MIXING FOR 2008

Ken Hahn, CASAndy JohnsBrian SlackJon LemonKerry BrownKevin DippoldCarlos SotolongoMark Fleming, CASTom Dahl, CASNigel SquibbsEdwin O. CollinsTim Borquez, CASEric FreemanDoug AndorkaPierre BlainTerry O’Bright, CASKeith Rogers, CAS

Brett Grant Grierson & Wife Norman Jewison & John Coffey

Mark McNabb & John Coffey

Joe & Joan Foglia with John & Nina Coffey John & Nina Coffey

John Coffey, Von Varga, Steven Grothe & Steve Morantz