Location Sound for Beguilement

I had the honor to be part of this crew for longer than a year. The director approached me to help with the sound of the first Beguilement short film to which I accepted. For every call I used the Rode NTG2 Shotgun microphone connected to the Zoom H4n Portable Recorder. The input signal would peak at about -6 dB. I would always considered the microphone placement to be one of the most important things in my recording process. I placed the microphone as close to the talent as possible always checking the camera angle to see where would be the best place for me to place the mic without being seen, I also took into consideration placing my own body at an angle where my clothing or my presence would not affect the lighting of the scene. 

There were many times where I could not get the best sound no matter the mic placement, then I would politely talk to the director and give him notes about how quiet or loud the sound was at that particular moment. Air conditioning was always off and the fridge as well for the scenes filmed inside the kitchen. Overall everyone was really friendly and accessible looking out for each other during the whole filming experience. 

We mainly filmed inside the house of the director which made everything a lot easier because we already knew the acoustics of the place. Not much reverb but a very bright sound especially in the kitchen. One of my favorite scenes was during Part 4 where I did location sound was at a garage where 2 characters were being held hostage. I tried to stay as close to the actors as possible for the intense private conversations but when the loud fighting and begging escalated I tried to get the sound from the perspective of the killer, to fill the recording with more room and to prevent peaking from the screams. 

This was a great experience where I not only learned about audio but about video and lighting as well. Great crew who supported each other and we were all excited to be a part of this great project. 

Guts Live

Live sound used to be my last option in the field when I first started in the audio industry, however now it's one of the fields I work on the most. Being a live sound engineer is fun, it only happens one time and it becomes legendary. Guts is a small punk band from Las Vegas, I've enjoyed their music since their last release as a former band. I was honored to be part of the mixing process for their new album Matches Malone and then I was happy to be able to record them at one of their show. They're are full of energy and it was an amazing experience.

For the microphones I used a Samson 7Kit with the One Q for the kick, two Q Tom mics for the toms, an SM57 for the snare and the SM 81 pair for the overheads. For the guitars an SM57 was placed on the amps, all mics were placed with the close micing technique. Finally, the bass and vocals were connected directly to the console. For the console we're using a PreSonus StudioLive 16.0.2 digital mixer. Every track was recorded into ProTools through the firewire connection. The two main outputs on the console went to the PA which only got the signal from the vocals. There was not many effects going into the recording. Only a small amount of compression was used for the drums and the vocals.

The set up took about 30 minutes and the set was about one hour. The band had some covers and some original songs. The only faders that I was careful to look after was the vocals because some times the crowd would get a hold of the microphone. One of the overhead mics was knocked over at one point but quickly set back in position during the performance.

Groomlake

Groomlake is a local rock band from Las Vegas, NV. They were real excited about coming into the studio to do their upcoming EP. We had planned two full band songs and two acoustic songs in 2 days with 8 hour sessions. We started with drums which included a kick drum, a snare, one tom and one floor tom and a ride, a crash and a hi-hat. The microphones I used were RE20 for the kick drum, SM57 and MD421 for the snare, another MD421 for the tom and a samson Q for the floor tom. I also had the SM81 matched pair for the overheads and the AKG 414 for the room mics. The drummer came prepared so we recorded only to click track with barely any mistakes. He knew his songs top to bottom and performed them to the best of his ability. Everything was tracked to separate channels on the SSL Duality Console into Pro Tools. 

Once drums were done and edited we moved on to bass. We connected the signal directly to the Avalon U5 DI to the SSL Duality to Pro Tools. The final instrument was the guitar. It was a Gibson guitar connected to the EVH head amplifier into the Orange cab. The microphones we used on the cab were an AKG 414, the Neumann u87 for experimentation and the SM57. It turned out that the best choice in the mix was the SM57 with a bit of the AKG 414. The guitarist had a complete pedal board so he controlled all of his effect, we captured them directly form the mic. The guitar was also went directly to the SSL but it didn't make it to the final mix.

The mix went by smoothly, the snare just got a bit of EQ for more of a transient sound and very slight reverb on the high end. The bass was fine and groovy and perfect for their sound, no treatment there. On the guitar, everything was doubled tracked. Panning was interesting to make the mix sound fuller and not just with one lonely guitar on the side. Mastering gave very slight change in dynamics to the song to give it more punch.