70
AUDIO GRAND TOUR 2
there are four cameras with camera operatives, Minicams , Russian Arms, three sound recordists, the sound kits that are in the cars: and they all need timecode. To jam them in the morning used to be a chore but all we do now if that we all gather at 7:30am outside the hotel, everyone powers up, we power up the master which is always in tracking vehicle A. There’s an aerial on the roof and out it goes, everyone synchs up within five seconds. We do a quick call out on the walkie talkie to make sure everyone’s happy and we then get on with our day. “The tentacles are quite handy because if all of a sudden they break out a camera we always carry one or two of them so we can jam them and put them on the new camera – they’re the weight of an empty matchbox. Also when there are some new Minicams, like GH4s or GH5s, we would use the tentacles for those. There’s no reason you couldn’t have Timecode Buddies in your pocket but they’re a bit bigger. Timecode Buddies do about 80% of the work although they do have their flaws. If that master clock powered down for some reason any Buddies in the area can re-ping to a new timecode which can be a pain. But everyone is starting to get used to these new systems.”
just to add to that sound design. I use the Sound Devices MixPres for that. What I’ve done is use a Peli case which I have drilled a few holes in. I have some stands, and two Sennheiser mics to create a stereo that I can put in different scenarios. Say for instance I’m standing somewhere with the camera and it’s a really nice shot but I think we’ll leave it here as it really sounds nice. I can leave it there as the road’s ours for the day, I can leave it for the duration as it’s got timecode and then go off and do some pieces to camera and other shots. You can just leave it and see what you get. “The new MixPre-3, 6 and 10 are three, six and 10 input recorders. We’ve got the 3 and some 6s. The 3 is very cute, it’s about the size of an iPhone so you get 48V power, we use two inputs for the Sennheiser 416s. There’s your left and right stereo, it takes timecode and records on to one SD card – technically in the last
couple of years it’s very rare that an SD or CF card gets corrupted. We have added the Timecode Buddies which are great but I don’t want to dismiss the Tentacles which are very useful as well. The Timecode Buddy system is a Lockit box that can accept RF and Wi-Fi transmission so you can jam them probably within 100m. So if you’ve got an aerial controlled by your master time clock you can jam other Timecode Buddies within 100m. Tentacles are the size of a small box of matches and you have to jam them manually but they last 14 hours and take one hour to charge and are unbelievably light. With those two systems we approach the day. “In the morning we’re quite military so if you can imagine
ABOVE The Grand Tour Season 2 upped their audio element and will do so again for Season 3.
WE DO A QUICK CALL OUT ON THE WALKIE TALKIE TO MAKE SURE EVERYONE’S HAPPY
DEFINITION FEBRUARY 2018
DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM
Powered by FlippingBook