Memoirs of a Sound Mixer: The TV Movie

(As appeared in Audio Media Magazine Oct 1999 Issue)

To make a living as a freelance sound mixer working in the small film and television market of Nashville, Tennessee, I’ve had to work on every type of production there is: Commercials, Sports, Features Films, News, Music Variety Shows, Documentaries, Music Videos, Sitcoms, Soap Operas, Corporate… you name it and in the last 25 years I’ve done a lot of it. I share this fact only to give credibility to my opening statement: The TV Movie, often referred to as "M.O.W." (Movie of the Week) is the toughest and most professionally frustrating challenge a sound mixer can take on. I’ve always loved a challenge.

TV Movies generally have much lower budgets than feature films, but still need to fill about the same two-hour time slot. For the most part, producers and production managers accomplish this miracle by cutting back on things like expensive sets, elaborate stunts, special effects, the number of shooting days, etc., but the main way the budget is cut in the Sound Department is by eliminating the third position, the cable person. So, not only are you given more to do in a day’s time, you also have fewer people to do it. This translates to a very fast production pace for the sound crew: few rehearsals, little or no time for adjustments, a lot of printing the first take then moving immediately to the next setup which is sometimes miles away.

To add to the adversity, money is also saved by using real locations instead of fabricated sets. In a recent TV movie the script called for the interior of a dilapidated abandoned shack overgrown by brush and woods, which is exactly what the Locations Department found, realistic right down to the snakes and Brown Recluse spiders.

In July 1999, I was the sound mixer on such a movie produced for The Lifetime Channel entitled "Blue Valley Songbird", starring Dolly Parton. With a lot of playback, lots of exteriors in the middle of a killer Tennessee summer, and a skeleton crew, I knew it would be a hard one. In fact, I might not have been up for it if I hadn’t worked with Dolly many times before (always a good experience), and this script called for Dolly to be in almost every scene. If you have a chance to work with Dolly Parton, take it. She’s a joy to work with, and her down to earth demeanor that inspires and allows everyone to do their best work adds more to the movie than just her presence on the screen. If that’s not enough, her homemade chicken ‘n dumplins that she served to the crew makes it all worthwhile.

Anyway, knowing what I was up against, here’s how I tried to give it my best shot:

Equipment Package: Built for Speed

My cart is fairly unique in that it is a self contained, fully enclosed case with a fold down desk for keeping sound reports (and a paperback novel). All of the normally used equipment stays mounted and hooked up, ready to go, all ins and outs wired to a patch bay terminating to a rear mounted access panel making signal routing quick and neat. To secure the entire rig, all that’s needed is to latch the front door, making location changes and new setups very fast. Mounted in the cart was two Fostex PD-4 time code DAT recorders, four Lectrosonics UCR-205 diversity wireless receivers housed in a single rack-space unit, a drawer for the transmitters and lav mics, a Cooper CS-106 mixer, and because this movie had 13 scenes requiring sync music playback: a 250W amplifier. The ability was needed to record and playback simultaneously because most of the playback occurred in the middle of dialog scenes, thus, the second Fostex PD-4.

Being relatively lightweight even when loaded (the cart, not me), my boom operator and I could manage the cart up and down flights of stairs by ourselves. Both Fostex PD-4’s worked without a single glitch. The more I use them, the more impressed I become.

For boom mics, I relied on the Sennheiser MKH-60 for most exterior scenes and the Schoeps MK-41 hypercardiod for most interiors, which, as always, was very sweet. One location in particular had very low ceilings so the Schoeps GVC swivel, which transforms the microphone in extreme "low profile mode", was indispensable.

The frequency agile Lectrosonics UCR-205 diversity wireless system’s performance was very impressive. For the first time in my career, I became totally unconcerned about wireless dropouts within 300 feet. In fact, they worked so well and sounded so good we often used them for wireless boom mic rigs even when running a cable was possible but less convenient. The Lectrosonics folding dipole antennas mounted easily to my cart where they stayed for the entire three-week shoot.

Good communication with the boom operator is crucial, especially during a TV movie when a busted take can cause an embarrassing tantrum from the AD department. My boom cable system, by Remote Audio Products (www.remoteaudio.com), incorporates a talkback system that allows private 2-way communication between the boom operator and the mixer. Using this system, I was not only able to talk to the boom operator even while recording, letting him know when he’s dangerously close to the frame, but he can also talk to me through his talkback mic without everyone else on headphones listening in.

Good For Sound! Who Cares?

The tight budget and time constraints challenged everyone on the cast and crew, led by director Ron Colla and his first assistant Jerram Swartz, who did an outstanding job bringing a printed script to life, converting it into a human story that could be seen, heard, and felt. Also, my hat’s off to producer Freyda Rothstein who was always present with us no matter how tough the locations were.

But, the center stage of film production is so dominated by visual considerations that the sound department is kind of a mystery to everyone else on the set. Maybe it’s because only the sound mixer and the boom operator actually hear what is being recorded, while most visual aspects are obvious to everyone on a movie set. Whatever the reason, the problem for the sound department is that, while an incredible amount of time can be patiently spent fine tuning lights, rehearsing focus pulls, working out dolly moves, etc, even the smallest delay for sound adjustments can cause immense irritation and hysteria on any movie set. On a TV Movie, Oh man!

A perfect example during this movie involved a technically challenging but worthwhile audio feat for a music playback scene in an old country church:

It was 98 degrees F with a heat index of 115 F. Choosing the snakes and poison ivy over the Brown Recluse spiders, I was set up outside, and by now, knee deep in grenade pins. The scene called for a gospel quintet featuring a soloist who sang with a free style that was very difficult to lip-sync accurately. In discussing this with the director and the music supervisor, I recommended shooting the soloist’s close-up first, recording her live on channel 1 with the rest of the quintet miming and re-record the playback track for reference onto channel 2. We would then make a copy of the keeper take for playback during the wide shot when lip-sync would not be so critical, mixing in channel 2 for the rest of the quintet. This was very tricky during the close-up because the soloist had to hear the track to maintain tempo and pitch, but her voice on the original playback track could not be allowed to bleed onto the new recording. I love this game.

The take began normally, with "ROLL SOUND!" (speed), "CAMERA!" (speed), "SLATE" (whack), then "PLAYBACK!". The count-off on the playback track had to be at full volume, but just after enough playback had been heard to establish pitch, I pulled the volume way back and switched in the EQ preset with all of the highs and mids rolled off. This created a makeshift "thumper" (low frequency only) that would not interfere with the voice range of the soloist’s new track. She sang beautifully, and using the Schoeps wide cardioid element in the roomy wooden church was so sweet that if the heat index had dropped down to a mere 112 degrees I would have gotten chills.

The plan worked. After performing the sound mixer’s equivalent of "Flight of the Bumblebee" on a trombone, we now had a very nice new lead vocal track, in perfect sync with the close-up shot and in perfect sync with the original studio multitrack for remixing. Do you think anyone noticed? Nope.

All there was to do next was make a copy of the keeper take to playback during the wide shot. It was hot and late, and the director wanted to shoot. Now. The first AD asked just how long it would take to make the playback copy. The song was just under three minutes long, so, duh, it would take about three minutes to make. After explaining this to the Director and the AD, one would think from their reactions that I had announced a ten-minute ice cream break for the sound department. The idea of waiting all of three minutes for the sound department to make the movie better was just about more than they could endure.

The event that immediately followed proves the point of this story. With the nice, new playback track now ready and loaded into the second PD-4, here we go: "ROLL SOUND!" (speed), "CAMERA!" (?)…"CAMERA!!!!" (?). This command was immediately followed by something in the camera that sounded like an old bicycle with baseball cards flapping in the spokes. "CUT!". The 1st AD then cheerfully announces: "OK everybody, that’ll be about a ten minute break while we fix the camera! Let’s all go outside and get some ice cream!" I love this business.

Every sound mixer I know is an artist at heart and is as genuinely concerned about the quality of their work as everyone else on the crew. Because what we do is sort of mysterious to the rest of the production, the obvious bares reminding: Getting good sound tracks, just like getting precise focus pulls, dolly moves, etc., takes rehearsals, adjustments, and (tick…tick…tick…tick…) time. — Glen Trew