Jones-ing for Great Sound

A Sound Investment

Over the years, I've invested thousands of dollars in newer, better cameras and lenses, each time in an effort to create the best visual product possible and it's fair to say that much of my effort has paid off.  Still, with all that effort, the best of my images will receive a poor rating if accompanied by crappy audio.

I have seen (and heard) some amazing video recordings of performing artists go right down the flusher as soon as the volume is raised to a level louder than an opening announcements.  The artist says "Ok, Now we're going to play our hit song" and as soon as the drummer's stick hits the skin... Wham!  A very cool video instantly becomes junk.

Sometimes,  it appears as of some camera manufactures intentionally designed their cameras to make as much bad audio as possible.  Cameras with built in microphones will not only pick up all the ambience and echo a room has to offer, often, it will also catch the subtle noises created by your camera's electronics or the motor focusing the lens.  The farther you are from your subject, the more noise you'll catch and if your camera has automatic gain, which means it adjusts the volume automatically, you might get large swells of white noise if nothing else is heard.  White noise is that swushing sound your TV makes when nothing but static is on the screen.

Some of these problems can be easily eliminated.  Moving closer to your subject will not only help you achieve better audio, it will probably give you less shaky video if you are hand holding your camera.  Some cameras allow the use of external microphone that can be closer to your subject and/or allow louder sound to be recorded without distortion.  If you know in advance that you are going to record in a rock club on the lower east side, call and ask the sound man what you need to bring in the way of a wire to get a feed from the audio board.  (A $20 tip will usually enhance his response).  Also, check the internal menu in your camcorder to see if there are any audio adjustments for very loud sound.

If you often shoot your footage outdoors, there are foam and furry microphone covers that will eliminate the harsh noise of wind hitting the mic.

But what about the audio situations that you don't have control over?

Has this ever happened to you?

Your client has asked you to record the CEO of a very large corporation.  A receptionist ushers you into a beautiful conference room and after you carefully set up your camera and lights, you realize that there is no way to turn off the air conditioning that is swushing through the vents on the ceiling.  No one is around so you ask your assistant to carefully step on the cherrywood meeting table and close the vent which then begins to whistle violently.  Oh dear!

This and a host of other common noise problems such as, steam radiators, aircraft, sirens, traffic, the folks in the next office and the ever so famous,"backing up UPS truck"  can absolutely kill the best take your talent has to offer.

This is where a decent audio sound designer can save your butt.  Sometimes your audio issue can be corrected with a simple adjustment to your EQ settings, available in most non linear editing systems,  but for anything more serious a good technician with the right assortment of hardware and software can take the pressure off your shoulders, by removing the noise from those air conditioning ducts.  Armed with the knowledge that you can "fix it in post" for real, will give you the confidence you need to get through some awkward situations.

Last week, Sarah and I were in just such a situation.  As part of a promotion, Sony asked us interview Francis Kenny, a DP with over 40 features to his credit.  When we visited the potential site as the setting for an interview, it seemed like the perfect location.  The room was absolutely beautiful with glass panels and copper-clad walls.  When we emptied the room for the production, the glass and metal walls created a strong ambience.  Regardless of type of microphone I tried, every sentence had a slight bit of echo, as if we were in a cavern.  But, it was too late.  Everything was in place and we had to proceed.  The sound we recorded was Ok.  We could get by with it, but that isn't be the way we work

I remained calm, but I knew that I would be calling the fixer.

"Extraordinary art takes extraordinary effort...."

Jeff Jones is an extraordinary recording engineer, sound designer, musician and producer, who, more than once, has bailed me out of an arresting audio problem.   Jeff Jones is well known in the music industry as "Jedi" and his tweaking is taken very seriously by many of today's most popular performers and recording artists.  Jones recently received a grammy for his live recording of Dr. John, "The City That Care Forgot".  He also engineered an album with Wynton Marsalis and Willie Nelson.  His engineering skills are intuitive and I am honored that on more than one occasion, he has help me out.

Although he likes explaining these things to me, the Jedi's techniques are not of this world and usually way over my head and I sort of like it that way.  He has successfully removed most of the common audio problems I previously listed, as well as noises that I didn't yet realize were present.  His ears are critically sensitive and his technique superb.  The coolest thing is that Jedi really loves what he does and Sarah and I love him even more for that.

I believe he will eventually recognized as an engineer on par with the likes of Rudy Van Gelder, who ears and technical sensibility is responsible some of the most important jazz recordings of our time.

Well, bottom line I sent Jedi a sample of the audio I felt needed some attention and he sent back the same audio clip free of any unwanted noise or ambience.  Once again he began to explain the ways of the force, but I knew it was way over my head.

I truly appreciate Jedi's magic and skill.  But most of all I appreciate his friendship.

The Crazy Duck Website 

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to try out a new "high-end" pro camera from Sony called the PMW-500.  There would be only one of these cameras in the United States and after listening to a brief description of the camera's capabilities, I jumped at the opportunity.

The camera is the top end of Sony's Cine Alta line of XDCAM, memory card based cameras and a big brother to my EX1 and EX3 cameras.

I'll spare you a ton of technical detail about the camera except to say that it it is a full size shoulder mount with interchangeable lenses.  It uses a 2/3 CCD imaging chip and outputs 4:2:2 50 megabit files that can be recorded on an SxS data card.  Although I consider myself a fairly decent image maker, I'm not much of an electrical engineer, but like gravity, I can't explain it, but I know it works and how to use it. 

To learn more about the technical specs of this camera you can look right here.  Sony_PMW-500  

If like me, you've used a camera like the EX3, you know that 50 megabit recording and 4:2:2 color space is important and a big leap forward in quality.   I had recently purchased a NanoFlash recording device for just that reason.  To tap the superior quality that the HD-SDI output of the camera supplies, before it is "dumb-down" within the camera's recording process.

So here was the deal:
1) I would only have a weekend with the camera.
2) I could not tell anyone any details about the camera.
3) It was a pre-production model, so there might still be a bug or two in it that needs to be worked out.
4) I would report my impressions honestly, positive or negative.
5) I could film anything that I wanted.

Of course,  I pointed it towards New York.

The camera was supplied with a beautiful zoom lens from Canon with a 2x lever that allowed me to double the focal length of the lens at any time.  The lens was sharp with excellent contrast and it gave me a brilliant range of focal length options, from very wide to extreme telephoto.

It's funny how Canon and Sony might be fierce competitors in one arena and the perfect match in another.

The first day, I filmed from pre-dawn until midnight targeting the types of issues that plague my current camera which is mainly lack of deep blacks and digital noise in low light. I

From the first moment I looked through the monitor is like  "Damn!  My EX3 is dog compared to this!"

It's like, being really happy with your well tuned, little VW or Nissan and then you sit down in a Mercedes or a BMW and pffftttt... it's all over.

That's the feeling I got with the PMW-500.  So, I immediately took the camera out to the streets and tested it under the conditions that give me the most problems with my current equipment.

Shooting directly into the sun is a problem for most any camera, but an extreme issue for a video camera, so I started there.  In my previous blog I refer to three intensive days of shooting and I was slyly using the PMW-500 to get all of my images.  So, starting in Hoboken at first light,  I filmed the sun rising just to the left of the Chrysler Building.  The detail in the image was phenomenal.  The camera's imager held the subtle tones of the morning mist hanging over the city.  Breathtaking.

As a side note to this experiment: The zoom range of the Canon lens allowed me to pick off details while the subject remained far off in the distance.  Using a telephoto lens in such a way compresses the subject and its background, often pushing them together in a unique way.  The ship cruise ship below was still a mile or two away when I first shot it in front of the financial end district of lower Manhattan.  Even with the haze and contrasty early morning light, the camera delivered excellent tonal quality and blacks.

The camera is supplied without a lens and if you don't already own one, you might be in for some sticker shock when you first open the lens catalogs from a few different manufacturers out there, but like anything else in this business, you have to spend it to make it and a good lens will last for years to come.

The next morning I hopped into the city to get a few early morning shots of streets and buildings.  Normally, much of the filming that I am doing around New York City is for Getty Images and I may not see an immediate financial return on my images for a while, so I am careful to be prudent with my expenses.   Filming in the city before and after parking restriction hours has saved me hundreds of dollars and when I do have to pay for parking, a little advance research will find the cheapest parking lots in the areas that I intend to film in.  

Even with all its sophisticated electronics, the camera was very simple to operate.  All of the controls were found in their traditional locations.  White balance, gain, time code setting, all the same as a traditional Betacam setup.  That's one thing I really like about the Sony professional products that I've owned and used over the years.  When things are working right, they leave it alone and only make improvements of the things that really need it. 

My tests included extreme contrasts in lighting, deep shadows and camera response time.  All passed with flying colors.  Their was no noise in any of the images shot at -3db and 0db gain.  The blacks were deep and rich while still holding detail.  This was the same in bright light and very low light.  Very nice.   

Unlike the EX3, the camera was ready to use in seconds.  The black and white viewfinder was bright, contrasty and sharp making fine focusing a breeze, even at long lens settings.

This prototype PMW-500 was supplied with 3 nickel-metal hydride batteries and although I carried all three with me, I only used one in over 5 hours of having the camera on and shooting, so power consumption was very low.    

Back at home, I was able to download my clips as native .mxf files right off the card to use them in my Avid Media Composer and by using the XDCAM transfer software, it was easy to open them as .mov files for use in Final Cut Pro.    The 4:2:2 quality was immediately apparent in the deep blacks and color saturation of my images.  Furthermore, the images held up better to color correction, yielding much less noise than usual in both Avid and FCP.

Again, for more detailed information on the technical specifications of this camera, you'd only need to do a quick web search and you'll be flooded with information.

As for me, some people can fix guitars and some can play em'.  I can't do either, but with this camera in my hands, I was able to create some spectacular images.  I want one!

The Crazy Duck Website
Chuck's Photography Website
Chuck's interview with Sony
Chuck as a featured DP on Sony's VideOn Network

The Lower East Side

This past weekend I dedicated several hours each day to filming around Manhattan.   If you've read my post or seen some of my films it's obvious that I am in and around New York City all the time, but it's almost always broken up, in between other projects.  

For me, there is a definite benefit in being able to immediately apply yesterday's experience to today and then, use it again tomorrow while it's still fresh in my mind.  One of the great perks of working on a long term project.

I started my first day around 5:00 am, by setting up my camera near a fishing pier in Hoboken, just south of the Empire State Building.  The view also afforded a clear shot of the Chrysler Building, which I knew this time of year would remain lighted until around 6:00 am.  My goal was to film the light on the Chrysler Building turning off and then film the sun rising behind it, while keeping the city deep in silhouette.   

To do this, I planned to expose for the sky and let the buildings go deep into shadow.  Usually, I would use a graduated filter to knock down the brightness in the sky and gain detail in the foreground, but today, I wanted the foreground to go very dark.

For these tests, I was using a camera that I was unfamiliar with and it was fortunate that I brought along a small LED flashlight to find some of the controls.  The light would increase very soon and there was already a soft blue glow growing rapidly in intensity around the buildings, but on my side of the Hudson it was still pretty dark.  

Finally, camera ready, focus set,  I'm in the right place at the right time to get the shot.  

I remain here for the next two hours.  The skyline is constantly changing with the movement of the sun.  Ferries and runner have appeared as if out of nowhere.  Dozens of interesting angles to be found without moving more than a few feet and I want to exhaust the shots in this area before moving on.   Fortunately, just before I am about to leave a very large cruise ship glides up the Hudson.  Excellent!

That night, I spent a few hours filming traffic movement on the west side of Manhattan.  The recently installed bike lanes provide safe platforms to shoot from, two lanes into the street.  Eighth Avenue between 23rd and the Village is brightly lit and well populated, making for good filming.  I experimented with time lapse and slow shutter speeds to enhance the constant flow headlights moving uptown. 

Saturday morning, I revisited the same area in hopes of getting some of the same angles that I filmed the night before, only now, in early morning light.  Having the same, or at least a similar image available in a variety of lighting conditions is very important when shooting for stock.  A television show or feature film might require an exterior shot to establish a location and/or  time of day.  

Keeping a journal of the previous day's location is key to the success of this technique.

That evening, I returned to Hoboken because I now knew that two more cruise ships would be departing

and I wanted to film them both with a variety of lenses.  It still amazes me to see an object the size of a shopping mall floating down the Hudson.   "The Macarena"must be the official music for a party cruise as it can be heard on nearly every cruise ship leaving the harbor. 

Scheduling is perfect and I have plenty of time to create some unique images. 

Sunday morning was not going to happen until Sarah kicked me, whispering, "Get out there."

The bed was comfortable, but I grabbed the gear and stumbled to the car.   

It was time to move from the west side, so with little or no pre-planning I drove through the Lincoln Tunnel heading for the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge.  At 5:45 am I expected the underside of the FDR Drive to be life-less, but to my surprise and delight, (relief) the area was filled dozens of people walking, exercising or fishing along the East River.  It was Sunday and fortunately, parking was available nearby.  I grabbed my rig and got out there.

The Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges are a spectacular sight in any light, but with one in silhouette and the other catching a red glow as the sun rose over the river, I felt blessed to have a camera in my hands.  Even more impressive than the bridges was the action happening below the highway.  With Chinatown nearby, the diverse population of the east side of lower Manhattan provided a wealth of images in the golden light of morning.  I filmed for two hours and still got home in time for breakfast.

To keep the gear in your hands for more than a few hours a week is essential.  With constant use the camera becomes transparent and you begin to concern yourself less with the technical aspects and become more involved in the images you desire to create.  

the Crazy Duck Website

Chuck as a featured DP on Sony's VideOn Network

Chuck's Photography