this lossy codec

Back on set after a brutally exhaustive weekend. In case you weren’t following my updates on twitter we are in the midst of relocating. Saturday was spent packing (mostly my office – I have too much stuff). Sunday we picked up a truck and with the assistance of some very blessed souls were able to pack it full and unload at the new place by late afternoon. After shuffling cars and finagling more help and another vehicle a late night run was made for more stuff resulting in a pickup truck piled high like a scene from Sanford & son. I finally hit the sheets in our new crib around 1:30. Had to get up at 5 to make the 7am call in Abq. Ugh. Now I’m a walking zombie. 1000m B12 from the medic, 800m ibuprofren from one of my moving compatriots then David sends me to take a nap bit I get intercepted by Saul from craft service who insists on giving me an afternoon espresso. Now I’m in my car, contemplating both.

After a couple short reshoots in the am (no dialogue) on Thursday the sound crew went on stand by for half the day.

Just before lunch we got our chance. We’d been waiting for the stunt crew to get free of the green screen so they could come down to the culvert location from earlier in the week. This was our second chance to capture the sound from a fight sequence and this time we were prepared with these. The work was a bit rushed as the stunt guys needed to get back to the camera but we pulled off 8 or 9 takes (and some of them sounded good despite the wind that still howled through that tunnel. Pretty cool experience though.

After lunch we waited and waited and waited. Apparently T.W. needed quite a while to get his wardroom & makeup done. Unfortunately, when the time finally arrived for his scene with G.O. and the AD called for ‘a bell’, only then did I realize I had neglected to gather up the ‘bell & light’ gizmo (this is rung / turned on right before we shoot to lock down the building so no one interrupts the shot). Oh well. I shot up and ran around searching for it. Apparently, the stage manager had “helped” by taking it over to stage 4 for the green screen shooting (even though sound didn’t roll there….).

Ah well. Lesson learned. Pic is of our D.W. stunt stand in with mics in his ears.

Today brought a change of atmosphere. Gone (uh, for now) is the smoke filled (what is that stuff anyway?) stages & stresses of wrangling cable over powerful electric cables that pollute our pure, clean audio w/ yucky RF & 60 cycle hum noise. No, now we are in the open air, fresh and comfortable. But wait a second. No, wait. The sun is getting higher. It is getting HOT. OH GOD, the HUMANITY, please make it stop.

Oh well. there was a brief period of comfortableness. Too burnt to write any more. And this is only the beginning of outside. It’s only February and already burning up. Sheesh.

Another day in the sun but the forecast is a little milder (still, a high of 70 all week here in Abq). Shooting pace was a bit slower as we were now dealing with special fx (amputated limbs squirting blood, etc – fun stuff). Still had a little dialogue to shoot though. All was going smoothly until about 3:30 when out of nowhere up comes a dust storm. Wooooeeeee. To try to paint a picture, the crew was stationed underneath a culvert (almost a tunnel) in the middle of a deserty-landscape. In fact, from the looks of it, the set had been dressed with more sand & dirt to make it properly emulate a “post-appocolyptic wasteland.” Anyway, as you can imagine, the tunnel channeled the wind & dust strait through it and, with the same suddeness that a real appocolypse occurs, transformed the set into a man vs. nature scene. Quickly, those prepared donned goggles (& some masks) and commenced to assisting those without. Pretty intense, especially thinking that in all likelyhood we’ll be seeing a lot of this weather.

Still, we pulled off a couple good shots that, thanks to the dust & wind, really captured the landscape the movie is attempting to portray.

Oh yeah, the pix:

- an attempt to show how close aircraft were flying (in this one – a huey)
- the tunnel itself
- my dirt covered mug

Ok. No excuses. Thursday & Friday of last week had strong potential for blog- fodder. Hacked up cadavers all over the floor (see pic) & more time-codey-goodness. The pix speak for themselves but the timecode…ahhh timecode, the bane of a sound utility’s existence.

After some more tests with the Red cam tech crew the problem with drift was isoated to (guess what) the Nagra. Apparently the timecode crystal needs tuning every, say, 30 years or so. Anyway, it just wasn’t keeping good time and since we’ve been using it as our master clock it was giving our edit / post friend headaches.

Anyway, Friday morning, after deciding I start using the Sound Devices 744T recorder as the master clock we suddenly had a problem with the bloody sync box not jamming the camera (oh god this is a dull post). So there I am huffing and puffing up & down the stairs, back & forth from set to the sound cart triying every combination of device jamming fruitlessly. Finally, I try a new cable & discover the problem. With the new cable I scurry back to set, by now dripping with sweat and get the cameras jammed. By now the actors are on set & I am thrown into the action to second boom a scene I am only periferally familiar with (a boom op’s nightmare). Furthermore, this was the firat time D.M. & G.O. had a scene together so there was a bit of pressure there. Miraculously, it went off without a hitch. Still, it sucks to think you are prepared only to find out in the last minute you are not. At least it made the day interesting.

Enjoy the pix. Btw, first phase of moving began this weekend. Next weekend the real deal. Any interested parties contact me directly.

A bit of a change today when a friend of David’s brought in a binaural head named Fritz. Apparently these are very rare (only 22 of them in the world!). What is it? At first it seems simple : a mannequinesque head with microphones planted in the ears to simulate the experience of listening. Understand, there are actual ears because the shape of the ear does indeed effect the way we hear. To be more accurate it helps us orient sounds in the space around us. To highlight this effect David had arranged to have this head put into the center of a fight scene to (hopefully) emulate the experience of the fight happening around the hero. The fight scene is pretty intense (seems like about 10-15 people are involved). All in all, it went well. I was thrust into the position of Mixer as Dave was mixing on the other set. Still, it was over all to quickly as the stunt guys had to get to lunch.

One of the pics is of Dave Weininger, a really cool guy who brought and is pictured here w/ Fritz. That link on his name will give you a glimpse of how much of a mad scientist this guy is. The other pictures of are of some seriously real looking fake guys. It took me walking over to check these guys out several times before I believed they were “really” “not real.” Ah, movie magic.

Week 3 started off with, well, a day off. And wasn’t that nice. Tuesday we are ‘back in’.

Fight scene this morning. Pretty cool, with a motion capture setup to film the scene. This involved a dolly track that wrapped around the action and a dolly w/ a camera and a huge snake of cables flying up above from the camera. The dolly moved on some kind of motor (pretty fast and pretty noisy). The fight scene itself was incredibly well choreographed.

Later on it was insert shots and little this and that. NO DIALOGUE. So, pretty slow day… You’d think I would have had time to get this blog done before landing back in the hotel. Problem was, it was such a slow day I could hardly think of anything to blog about.

Tomorrow should be interesting though. A friend of David’s is bringing in a couple of cool toys. One is a holophone. The other is a binaural microphone. I guess we are going to rig both of them up in the middle of the fight scene to capture the action. Should be cool.

What else? I got some pix today that will be up in a jiffy.

I’d be writing more if things were more interesting. Not that it’s boring but my duties are certainly mundane. Also, the pace of the work is way mellower than previous movies I’ve worked on. One gets the feeling there is lots of money (& subsequently- time). Often enough we (the crew) end up having the shot set and are waiting around for the talent. At this point, at least, it’s nice to not have a producer breathing down your neck to hurry something along. I rarely feel any pressure while wiring someone on set. That gives me the opportunity to focus on wiring well (It certainly can be done poorly). So that is likely the most crucial aspect of my job.

What else?

Let’s see, highlights of week 2.

Working with G.O. Besides being an incredible actor it turns out he is a very cool guy & gracious to work with as well. It’s amazing to see him go from his English accent to a western drawl (while seemingly channeling the spirit of William S. Burroughs) in the blink of an eye. What else can I say? It’s only the 2nd week.

Lowpoints?

Not really a huge deal but this jamming the timecode of the Red camera every 30 minutes or so is kind of a drag. I’ll spare you the technical details…

In other news, the world suffered a tragic loss yesterday in the death of Ed Grothus, owner of the Black Hole and inspirational peace activist and artist. It’s sad he didn’t live long enough to see his Doomsday Stones put into place. Let’s hope his memory lives on.

After an oh so refreshing weekend involving several consecutive naps I returned to work with invigerated spirits. Yesterday was a little odd (full moon – go figure) and it ended up being short too. So far we’ve only been attempting a couple pages a day. Nice pace compared to the usual 4-6. Maybe that’s why this shoot is scheduled for 3 months…we’ll see.

The day might have been shorter still except for some technical issues that needed ironing out. In the end it was a minor fix but I got the credit for it, redeeming me for the moment and ensuring my job security for another week. Next week I guess I will have to engineer another dilema for me to fix.

Best of all, I was able to snag a pic of the set. Totally cool old run down movie theater lobby/balcony. Unbelievably, this whole building is built inside one half of the sound stage.

I found these strange formations growing out of the ice cube tray over the weekend. Kind of freaked us out at first. Still blows my mind a bit. A quick search of the googlewebs for “ice cube odd growth formation” didn’t fail me. In fact, there’s a plethora of info out there on this strange formations. Best place to start is here, a site dedicated to ‘ice spikes’ (as they are called) with a collection of links on the subject. Pretty cool stuff. My favorite is the An account of a walk across a frozen Lake Erie in 1963 with a description of ice spikes as tall as telephone polls!
The last pic is from earlier in the winter back at the Farm in Kansas. Perhaps this ice covered rock can be explained the same way…?

Last day of the first week of principle photography (that’s what they call all the real shooting with actors and whatnot – the next 3 months are all ‘principle photography’). Pretty tough week. Contrary to popular belief, the ‘utility sound’ position is NOT the easiest job on set (though that is what I overheard the otherday). The challenge relates to the diversity of the duties involved (which change depending on the movie, the scene & most significantly, the Sound Mixer). Basically, he tells me what to do and I do it (or try to do it – with a margin of success vs. failure). As anyone who has worked under a boss knows this can get stressful. But I am doing my best to keep a cool head (& keep my hands from shaking while taping a microphone to D. W.’s chest – he’s very cool though, just intense).

Everyone else on the set has been very gracious & cool as well. G.O., for instance insisted on playing a ’soundtrack’ while I mic’d him (some old school blues – definitely a cool guy). The directors, Allen & Albert H. are totally chill as well. They’re young (or, uh, er my age anyway) and hip & seem interested in having some fun while we make this movie.

As for the title of this post, I guess it’s sort of an inside boom op joke. Panatape is this gizmo that sits on the camera and uses sonar to provide a digital readout of the distance between the camera and the action. Just one of the noisy parts of a modern movie camera. The ‘conspiracy’ part just refers to the age old battle between sound (or “good”) and camera (or “evil”). Whether the boom is in the shot or camera is making whirring & grinding noises, it blows my mind that this hasn’t been worked out before.

Although shooting (aka ‘Principle Photography’) actually begin tomorrow (2/2/9), I was working most of last week. There were camera tests Monday & Tuesday that we took part in to be sure the work flow of sound & camera were all worked out. Monday we shot some explosions that were incredibly loud and huge. Perfect time to show off the benefits of recording sound to tape (a Nagra IV-S. Tape saturation sure beats digital clipping. Tuesday was a 5 hour marathon shooting a printing press (zzzzzzz…). Woop-de-do.

Anyhoo, the next couple days were spent wrangling gear together and getting prepped. Total new experience for me, having time before we begin shooting. A great start. I’ll try to keep the blog coming although I’m not completely sure how many pix I will be able to take (can you say nondisclosure agreement?). More soon folks.

Currently writing this at Starbucks, using the ATTWifi that ATT graciously allows iphone owners to use for free. It is unfortunate they don’t allow ATT subscribers to use their computers as well. Yet here I am, typing away. Sure, it took about 30 minutes but now that I have it setup I’ll be good to go next time (fingers crossed). It’s pretty simple although the command line coding will probably scare off most people. Still, for the record, here is the link to where I found it:

Hack for Free Starbucks wi-fi on your laptop (if you have an iPhone

I was a little confused by the digits that look like “ones” (11) but are actually supposed to be “elle’s” (ll). so, it would look like this:

sudo ifconfig en1 down lladdr 00:11:22:33:44:55
where the digits are replaced w/ the MAC address of your iphone.

Pretty sweet that this works. hope it continues to.

In all the hullabaloo of catching you up on my recent activities I totally neglected to wax on about stuff unrelated to me (or maybe not!.  On Wednesday I got an email from a friend alerting me to the sad passing of television superstar Patrick McGoohan.  Unless you grew up in the 60’s and had a fascination for british conspiracy shows you might not know him.  McGoohan was the creator, director, producer, writer and star of one of the strangest and coolest shows of all time, The Prisoner. Now, to be fair, he didn’t write and direct all 17 episodes but he did the original 7 and is credited with conceiving of the concept for the show.

Basically, he plays a retired ex-spy who is kidnaped and taken to a resort community and given the title “Number 6″ (to preserve anonymity everyone is given a number).  The president of the Village (as it is called) is Number 2 and the series shuffles through a new number 2 pretty much every episode (as 6 thwarts their ability to crack him).  Meanwhile 6 is continually asking “Who is Number 1?”.  The whole show is considered a mythic psychodrama and often the action takes place inside 6’s head while doctors use drugs and technology to manipulate his dreams and ego.  The final 2 episodes are arguably the strangest thing I’ve ever seen on tv (although Lost & Fringe are getting pretty close). The show was shot during 67-68 so you can imagine the cultural forces at play that were influencing the storyline. 

So, then later on I got another email from a friend alerting me that Ricardo Montalban diedthe same day.  Now, I didn’t notice anything particular odd at first about 2 television stars dying.  A follow up email pointed out that it was a “bad day for guys whose shows took place on imaginary islands” (Now, unless you are muchyounger than me you will recall Montalban as “Mr. Rourke” from Fantasy Island.  Now, ok ok ok. Thats not that weird  right?  Except that Lost (another show about a disappearing island that has taken  obvious inspiration from The Prisoner) is  premiering its 5th season next week! Now I’m starting to think those guys on Lost are starting to jack with the  space-time televisual cortex.  

I’m even starting to notice other connections…like the similarities of the map of where we’re moving to & this map from the Prisoner….

Finally some down time so I can write for a while. And considering the amount of coffee I have ingested this should be a doozy. Let’s reflect on what’s new:

For one, I have finally published my Top 100 Photos from the Winter Holiday. Narrowing them down was a tough job and I apologize to those who didn’t make the cut. Just remember, there is always next year (and pay attention here, you can learn a lot about cuteness from these kids). I just noticed many of these are already posted via by other folks…oh well.

Let’s see, what else? Oh, yeah, we have decided to move from our little oasis in the desert to a location closer in to town (Santa Fe). You can see some pix of the inside (w/o our furnishings) here. The neighborhood is called Rancho Viejo. Follow the link to read about the area if interested. Needless to say, it will be quite a shift from our current lifestyle. You see, it has what is called a low environmental impact which means the houses are crammed in together. Also, I guess there are some restrictions about decorating the outside of your house or something because all of them looked very similar when we were there. In the past I have always shied away from environments that enforce uniformity suggest a cookie cutter existence. Perhaps it is the herald of a life shift as the imminent return of baby-dom crests on the horizon. Regardless, there are enough amenities to make the place inviting (like radiant floor heating, curbside trash pickup & potable water out of the tap).

And in case I had any doubts about it, the ECCO (Earth Coincidence Control Office) settled it all by arranging that the owners of the house actually met 30 years ago at Daniél I my alma mater (FairhavenCollege). Pretty wild. So, anyway, it’s like I said to Daniél, “at least when you follow the suggestions of Fate then what happens is fated and not just by chance.”

Also, I been hired for another movie gig that starts the first week of February. It’s called B.O.E.(click link to see real name). It is being billed as a “post apocalyptic western” and it has a pretty big budget. I’m expecting some explosions and such. Just found out yesterday we’ll be recording analogue (as in tape) so that sounds exciting. Expect lots of news from the field posted soon.

One last note, if anyone has been putting off coming to visit our ghost town existence you’d better come soon. I’ll be filming all through Feb. and we’ll move at the beginning of March. Come visit soon!

Back in ‘the Q’ after a lovely break visiting the fam back in ‘the K’. I put aside the blog while there to focus on the beingness rather than being the observer. This is an experience I am well familiar with and I suppose I have developed an awareness of when to withdraw behind the veil of my perceptive mechanism and make conscious commentary on events around me and when to surrender myself unto the waters of life and allow them to wash over me. To this point it has pretty much been an either or situation. Perhaps someday I’ll develop the ability to exist in the world while simultaneously scripting a narrative about it. Unfortunately, my time has grown short and now I must dive back in.

As I sit here on the cusp of what (historically anyway) will be viewed as “the late naughts” it is customary to put to rest that which is left behind. Arbitrary, really. Still, for whatever reason humans find habit in mapping development, movement and “progress” with markers in the outside world. Hence, the New Year’s Resolution. Generally, I tend to resist making this kind of momentous gesture in fear that a failure to actualize it might gradually chip away at my ‘wholeness’ (As Master Yoda says, “Do or Do Not, there is no try”). Furthermore, the assertion of an “I” at point “Now” making a decision to be “Not this” but “This” challenges a perspective I have intentionally been developing and experimenting with for some time – that all things merge into other things and attempts to divide “this” from “that” or maintain “beingness” against “unbeingness” (or vice versa”) will only succeed as a momentary blip against the eternal flux and flow of constantly shifting uncertainties. There is no “there” there. The building of the castle continues even as the oscillating waves gradually deteriorate the foundation.

Oh well, maybe next year.

Currently cruising down HW-54 in southeastern Kansas en route to KC for the holidaze. Wordpress (& it’s companion iPhone app) is awesomely handy. Now, I’m not driving, mind you. That was last night for the first leg if the journey. Our start was later than hoped (a noonish departure turned out to be 6:30pm). Around midnight, eyelids heavy, we pulled into the El Rancho Motel in Elkhart, KS. At least we made it out of NM. The El Rancho Allowed pets and was decently cheap ($60). Looked like a popular place for hunters.

Another 6 hours over gradually rolling hills and plowing (ha) through golden colored fields and the sun sets behind us. The landscape of Kansas has a calming (some might say somnombaliatic) quality. So much open land, like a boat on the ocean. Of course, the land is very different from the water. For one, while the land can be built upon the surface of the water is more tenuous. The give and take relationship of a sailor with the sea is an everpresent necessity. Not so with those who walk the plains.

“Plains”. What of this word? A cursery glance at etymonline.com reveals that the history of this word is long and mysterious. Simple, undecorated?

After selling a couple older mac notebooks I just scored 17″ 2.5ghz for 1500! Shawing!

Ok, ok, ok already. Like a telltale heart beating under the floorboards, as is the constant refreshing of the browsers of my audience, haunting me with questions and uncertainty – “did the movie finish?” “did he die before it’s completion?” “what of it you jerk, don’t leave us hanging here” and so on and so on. So here you have it. Though some time has now veiled my memory I’ll try to recollect.

The truth is that we were moving so fast on that final day in a rush to get through and it may have been the coldest day for us yet so that I rarely had a chance to pull off my gloves to get my fingertips close enough to exchange electrons with the screen of my iPhone (that’s how this happens you know). As for specifics, I did feel like I had one of my consistently best booming days. Pulled off some tricky maneuvers and captured some quality sound. Felt good. After lunch the production handed out our wrap gifts; doc west shirt, hat, belt & buckle(!), crew picture and a letter from Julio (the director). We shot until way after dark and it got colder and colder. The final scene was of Terence (doc west) getting hit on the head by a falling beam. It was kind if odd because due to the nature of the beam gag eveyone had to be out of the barn and film and sound had to be operated remotely. Strange end to the shoot.

That night was the wrap party which for me went until about 3 and required such an amour of recovery that I’m still not sure if I’m recovering from the shoot of the party.

So that’s it (oh yeah, ‘check the gate’ is what the director says to signal that the last shot was good and we should move on. It refers to the film gate and making sure it is clean(no hairs or gunk). Idea being that if the gate is not clean then there may be a problem with the last shot and we would have to ‘go again’).

Now I am in the midst of selling a few different older macs in hopes of buying a new MacBook. This had better happen soon. As of today my phone is my computer.

Thanks for following the blog folks. I will probably slack off for a while as I only tend to get fervent about this when I have some interesting project going on. Until then…the photo is from yesterday, driving down hw14. The clouds were really wild and at one point this materialized.