Braidwood Entertainment Group

Braidwood Entertainment Group


Every time I open my browser there's a painting of a naked woman. How does that work for me?


8:30am call. But didn't get our first shot with sound off until 12:19. Director wants wild sound of someone walking on gravel in front of house. We'll probably grab that first thing in the morning next time out.

We have Tsubo shoes for Bloodmask. But Ted Raimi can't shoot in December. We'll see what happens.

Psyche

The digital [wireless] seemed to give us trouble today in Madison. But I suspect it's because the woman we had it on was a bit of an RF energy soak. Gotta make sure I get enough water or I'll wake up with a charlie horse. My Verizon Treo is dead, won't get a new one for a few days. That bites my butt. If I stretched like my cat everyday I'd be more flexible. New iPod is working fine, I think. I haven't looked at any videos or anything with it yet, though. I don't even have any music. Just backups of dialog takes on The Attic.

This is a painting of Psyche by... oh, I forget her name. Late 1800's. English. Somebody.

Past from the blast

Just about a year ago, I was a DP. What happened? We're near Rochester, shooting a thriller. From left to right (including inanimate objects) that's Andrew's car, my old van, (co-DP) Blair Johnson, (co-director with Andrew Frank) Mitchell, me, and Mitchell's DVX100. I don't think a frame of this movie has been edited since then!
We're shooting at a general store. They had really good cookies. Andrew's wife Hope got pregnant on that shoot. Mitchell's wife Catie was pregnant for the shoot (we're probably shooting both of them in this picture). Blair and I wouldn't let our girlfriends come visit because we were afraid of the consequences.
Blair kept snuggling me. That was a consequence of his girlfriend not being there.
This was the shoot where we decided that we weren't just eating raw cookie dough, but rather "cookie sushi". With that feeling of cultured self-inportance, we ate a lot of cookie sushi.
I wonder who took the picture? It must have been Andrew. Boy, the food was good. Home cooking every night, both vegetarian and omnivorian. And the air lent itself to getting some really good sleep. . .

Weren't we supposed to do one of these a year?

Hiding in the jade plant again.

It's all about the robot toes. Mitchell thinks we should make sci-fi erotic thrillers for video iPods. Although I'm getting one of the new iPods (I need it as a portable drive to make backups of sound recordings, so I tell myself) I'm a bit more excited about the Sony PS2.
My cat seems very photogenic when he hides. All these pictures were taken by my sister Jean.

No sleep 'till Madison

Well, no boom operator on a show with less than 12 hours before call time. What was going to be a nice relaxing shoot has now turned into. . . well, it is a horror movie after all.

www.atticmovie.com

Pushkin. He's not usually so serious.

More blog designing

This is a sign which Laura found in Palo Alto, CA.

I found out from Jason Fitzgerald of One Dream Sound that the Yamaha DM1000 mixer has a card for Aviom headphone mixing systems.

So, we could use a Yamaha DM1000 with one of the Aviom cards and one of the 8-channel analog input cards, and end up with the ability to have 5 foot mics on stage and create the submixes for the "orchestra" at the same time. That would be very helpful.

The Yamaha DM1000 takes care of most of our outboard processing needs too. Now let's start breaking down the entire systems to see what we'll need to rent (or hope that the venue will end up buying).

Input transducers
Band: Something nice for the cello. 1 (one) Neumann U87 or similar. Typically AKG 414's annoy me, but it might be best in this situation.
Maybe only a pair for percussion (the player "plays" to the mics) 2 (two) um, big-diaphragmed thingies. I dunno.
Actors: DPA or Sanken lavaliers. 11 of 'em.
Floor mics: 5 microphones Crown PZM or similar, possibly swapped out with Sanken CS1 or CS3 microphones for grabbing things upstage.

Now what I would really dig is 8 channels of John Hardy mic preamps. That would be for the cello, percussion, and 5 floor microphones. That would make things big, smooth and musical coming from the stage. Happiness would ensue. (The piano would go into a stereo JDV direct box).


Wireless system
Lectrosonics Venue system with SM transmitters (11 channels). This is something I'm working on.

Mixing system
The Yamaha DM1000. The venue still might get one. We'll see.

Monitoring system
For the three musicians, the Aviom system mentioned above.

Output transducers
Hopefully we can use the venue's Apogee system(s). We may need something for sending the "orchestra" to the stage for the actors to hear.

IR listening for patrons
This should be provided for by the venue.

Communications systems
I forget if the venue has Comteks or RTS. But that should be provided by them.

Video monitoring
We don't know if we have any unique needs there.

Here's a new input list:
1. wx mic
2. wx mic
3. wx mic
4. wx mic
5. wx mic
6. wx mic
7. wx mic
8. wx mic
9. wx mic
10. wx mic b/u
11. wx mic b/u
12. computer sfx 1
13. computer sfx 2
14. cello
15. keyboard left
16. keyboard right
17. percussion left
18. percussion right
19. floor mic 1
20. floor mic 2
21. floor mic 3
22. floor mic 4
23. floor mic 5
24.

And for outputs we need:
aux 1. zone 1
aux 2. zone 2
aux 3. zone 3
aux 4. zone 4
aux 5. zone 5
aux 6. zone 6
aux 7.
aux 8. full monitor mix for SM, IR feed, wherever else (lobby?)
buss 1.
buss 2.
buss 3. percussion left
buss 4. percussion right
buss 5. piano left
buss 6. piano right
buss 7. vocal-only mix for "band"
buss 8. cello

Laura

This is Laura. She is, more often than you'd think, green. This is indicative of the fact that she is, after all, Laura, Queen of Mars.

Designing on a blog

Let's try to go through what we have. This is a picture of a pair of my sister's cats, Pippin and Nikki. I believe.


The Yamaha DM1000 has:
8 group busses, 8 aux busses, stereo bus, solo bus
12 omni outs (on XLR)
16 normal analog inputs (on XLR)
4 "omni" analog inputs (on XLR)

We have 9 actors and three musicians (electric keyboard, cello, percussion.)

We will assume that we actually have all the speakers for the house which we need.
So what we're looking at is an input list like this (this isn't, of course, the order they'll be in):
1. wx mic
2. wx mic
3. wx mic
4. wx mic
5. wx mic
6. wx mic
7. wx mic
8. wx mic
9. wx mic
10. wx mic b/u
11. wx mic b/u
12. computer sfx 1
13. computer sfx 2
14. cello
15. keyboard 1
16. keyboard 2
17. percussion mix 1
18. percussion mix 2
19. floor mic mix 1
20. floor mic mix 2

And for outputs we need:
1. zone 1
2. zone 2
3. zone 3
4. zone 4
5. zone 5
6. zone 6
7. vocal-only mix for "band"

The Weeks Ahead

I do as I'm told.

War on God

Both Pandora and Eve are blamed for Man's sentience.