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RitM: Day Seven, Passing the Boom

Rain in the Mountains, Day Seven
What is Rain in the Mountains?

Yesterday was our first day at the Erickson farm and our second day without regular sound man Jameson Peters. Luckily, another member of the sound crew who has had difficulty getting rides in the morning, William "Wild Bill" Pickernell, was able to make it. Matt Hayden moved to the DAT machine and Bill took over boom op.

Perhaps predictably for such a switcheroo, all was not well in the land of sound.

Read more (and see more photos)...Too late in the day, a confusion arose over how to get the DAT to output the sound from both lav and boom mic into the headphones. Jameson had taught Matt to track the mics to left and right channels, but they can only be monitored together if they are both on center channel.

Matt said Jameson had warned him you could only hear the left channel through the headphones. This gave rise to the question, has Jameson been monitoring both mics? Sound is something that everyone forgets about until the last minute when they really shouldn't. It is easily half of a film, and bad sound makes even the most gorgeous-looking movie look amateurish.

If the sound gets too loud (or 'peaks'), the waveform gets clipped and can't be fixed by any method I know. The temporary solution until Jameson returns: two rehearsals. One to set the recording levels for each mic.

I post about the movie at least once every two days. Keep checking back to follow the progress of the film. I've tried to gloss most of the terminology -- try moving your mouse over the words like "DAT" and "boom". If you see anything else that needs explaining, or you have questions or commentary, leave a note in the Comment section below.

About J. Ott

John Ott is a writer, filmmaker and futurist. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.