The Sound Blog - Audio Insights

Hi friends, Here is a video interview with Manik Batra, a reputed production sound mixer who has been working in Mumbai since 2008. He has worked on numerous feature films, ad films, Netflix projects, etc... In conversation with will be a series of video interviews of prominent people from our industry. This is the first one in that series. Manik talks about: How his journey began (00:10) Talks about his early days (01:05) The audio recorders he has worked on (06:10) His wish list for a film shoot (08:14) About ADR films (11:26) About sync sound shoots (13:27) About the shoot of '83 (15:26) About working on a Netflix project (19:56) About what needs to change in the Industry (23:12) About life during the lockdown (25:23) About shoots starting post the Covid-19 lockdown (27:23) Hope you like this. Until next time, CC Blog: www.thesoundblog.in Website: www.cheeragcama.com E-mail: cheerag.cama@gmail.com Twitter: @cheragc PS: The music used in...

Hi Friends, Before I continue with my post today, I just thought I should clarify once again, that in this blog, I am posting my personal views and comments. I just want to share my experiences of the past 33 years with my readers. Today, I want to write about the evolution of sound in the television industry in Mumbai … purely from my point of view. I started working in Mumbai in the field of audio from 1986 onwards, but serious work for television began in 1994. My friends Dileep Subramaniam and Inderjit Neogi asked me if I would be interested in working along with them on a daily soap. I said yes and started working as a freelancer on UTV’s daily soap SHANTI, sometime in 1994. This was India’s first daily soap and telecast on Doordarshan. It made Mandira Bedi a household name! We used to shoot 6 days a week. Since Dileep and Neogi were established freelance recordists and also had many other projects going on simultaneously, they would ask me to go on the shoot of SHANTI whenever t...

Hi Friends, This is my second blog! Got a few comments for my first one! Many thanks to all those who commented. Before I continue, I just thought I should clarify that in my blog, I am posting my personal views and comments. I could be completely wrong about some technical aspect I may write about... please do correct me if you think so. My blog is aimed more towards students who have just passed out from an Institute and are trying to make a career in the Film or Television Industry in the field of Sound Recording and Sound Engineering. I just want to share my experiences of the past 33 years with my readers. Based on the feedback that I received for my first blog, I have decided to write a little bit more about wireless lapel mics. It is not uncommon to have 10 to 15 Sennheiser G3 wireless lapel mics on a television multicam show. So how do I go about setting them up for the actual shoot? No two television shows are the same. Each show is different, but whether it a tel...

Hi friends, In most television shoots in Mumbai, India, we use Sennheiser G3 or G2 transmitters. I have come across many engineers, who set the input gain settings incorrectly on a transmitter.The tendency is to set it pretty high, with the result that when the talent shouts or screams, the transmitter input stage gets overloaded with a very hot signal, which it cannot avoid but DISTORT. It is this DISTORTED signal which is transmitted and received by the receiver. Once heavily distorted, it cannot be repaired and made UNDISTORTED. On so many television shows, specially the daily soap type of shows in India, we hear badly distorted sound on telecast. This reflects poorly about our quality standards. If enough headroom is kept at the transmitter input stage, we can very easily avoid distortion. The best way to set levels on a transmitter is by speaking loudly (or even shouting loudly) at the mic and then watching if the input is clipping or peaking on the transmitter. If clipping...