The Sound Blog - Audio Insights

Recently, I  went abroad to shoot a feature film in the desert and spent close to 60 days out there. As the shoot progressed, I kept making notes about the shoot - especially of things that were not going as expected, and what I would do, if given a similar chance again.  Below are some tips / suggestions / observations that I thought of sharing on my blog.  For any shoot that you go to, preparation is the key to having a good and satisfying  outcome. Especially when going away from your city, or going to a foreign country.  Plan … Anticipate … Prepare … A good sound team is one that is well prepared for any eventuality. No matter how much you plan, things will change … that is the nature of filmmaking. And the better prepared you are for any change that happens, the better your work will be. If you accept this one fact, you will not feel distraught when things change midway in a shoot. Call sheet may say something, but on set, things may change at any time, and...

In my career, I've worked a fair amount as a production sound mixer (PSM) on feature films. In the process, I have used quite a few portable audio recorders, like the Deva 5.8, sound devices 788, 664, MixPre 10T and recently, the Scorpio.  Here are some thoughts that I have.  I hardly did any location work on the Nagra. And very little work on DAT recorders when they started replacing the Nagra.  The earliest DAT recorder that I worked on was the Fostex PD4. It was a professional, 3 channel, timecode capable DAT recorder.  Fostex PD4 It was soon superseded by the DVD-RAM based machine, the Fostex PD6 shown below.  The Fostex PD6 All these Fostex machines were very rugged, built for professional work and had many features, hence they were full of knobs and buttons. Each knob or button generally controlled one function.  I then moved on to the Deva 4, and the Deva 5.8 and did quite a few projects on them. Then came along the Sound Devices recorders. The DVD-R...