David, I know Alcove's reply might have sounded like a stock flippant answer but really it wasn't.
As much as I really don't want to derail this thread, I do want to explain myself a little more fully, because with all due respect to you both I disagree: it was a stock, and (imo) slightly disrespectful answer.
An answer that was given without any consideration for the amount of time I have been a member here, my growth as a freelancer in that period of time, my numerous posts backing up Alcove when he tells true newbies to invest in gear, or when he tells people with a modest budget to hire someone, my other numerous posts skipping that part and just quoting one of his posts from a similar thread, and the - I feel - amount of information I have provided given what I have learned over the last 5 years working my way up the camera department ladder. Am I some 20 year vet? Certainly not, though I do have a lifetime of photographic experience it is only in the last 10 years or so that I have been in control of myself and my personality even remotely enough to take a stab at this, or frankly any career. Can you tell that I still struggle with that?
At the very least, I would think that my participation here has shown that I have enough experience that we should be able to skip over the obvious, stock answers.
I almost never ask questions on this board anymore, and I certainly almost never start an entirely new thread to ask a question. Please understand that I have a tremendous amount of respect for both of your experience certainly for the craft of the sound department. 20 years ago I spent a little time making absolutely no money doing 24-track analog studio recordings for no-name punk and industrial bands - and while that is nothing on the experience chart, it is at least enough grounding to have an understanding of the direness of the sound recording situation into which I have been thrust.
Please understand that
I know why that was the first response, and that knowledge is precisely why I didn't even bother trying to ask on an audio pro specific site, because chances are it would be the same, except repeated a couple hundred times, and some of those repeats would include 1000% more rudeness.
I skipped quoting the rest of your post for brevity, but it was Gold, every word of it. Interestingly, I may have to do more wild sound than it would seem, and I hadn't thought of that yet. Thank you for offering what generalizations you could. Even just the brief thoughts about dry suits has given me some ideas.
I know you got that clock ticking, nay, pounding away, and on top of likely little to no budget for additional gear (
"Because that dead cat is the cat's pajamas radical!" -sigh-) but maybe during layovers and downtime you can hunt down info about motorcycle helmet microphone systems and maybe some waterproof mic systems designed for snow boarding and jet skiers.
If budget permits have a package delivered to your nest port of call.
You might not start the season with all the tools you need, but that doesn't mean you can't get care packages along the way.
That is a great idea on the radios, and we do have road time to acquire some additional aks as we travel north to the drop. idk specifically how much I will be able to talk him into, but we have already discussed filling in the blanks.
APE beat me to the punch.
The devil is in the details, and there were no details in either of your original posts.
Well, I made, imo, two mistakes here. The first being my most common mistake, not explicitly stating word by word exactly what the situation was.
The second was asking any sort of advanced technique/tricks/tips/gotchas question here at all. Particularly regarding sound. This, strictly speaking, is probably not the right community for the sort of information I am lacking - and from what you've both said so far it appears that trial and error will be my best friend. I should have known it would cause beef because I'm barely the kind of person who suffers being treated as a fool in the first place, and in my current mental state I probably shouldn't be communicating with anyone - especially in a space where tone/body language and the rest are completely absent. Honestly, had I any success in finding information I wouldn't have even posted. As much as I love this board, it is a place of last resort for me when I am seeking advanced technical information.
So, for my part in this I do apologize. Let's return to the fun part, shall we?
Even though I do have a bit of audio knowledge I would not take this gig under the circumstances you have described, even if I was doing production sound and only production sound. It is beyond my experience. (Besides, I can't stand cold weather!)
The most horrific tortures imaginable by Eli Roth and his disciples could not get me to turn down this gig. Saying no was never an option. For me this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to traverse a part of the world I never, ever thought I would be fortunate enough to visit. That I get to be there as a working cameraman, on someone else's dime, charged with tasks like "Every time you see any wildlife, grab it," is very nearly the realization of a childhood dream. It ain't Attenborough or Wild America, but it's not that far removed.
Beyond that, it is almost exactly the gig I need to have (dp, full season, minor market cable tv, #1 series on its network, for what that's worth) exactly when it needed to come along in my career path. The "extreme outdoor travel" side of it was never, strictly speaking, in the plan, but there it is.
Your client has unrealistic expectations. The job they have asked you to do is akin to asking the participants to drive their jet-skis while cooking dinner and playing the piano at the same time.
They always do.
So their solution to the problems with Season 2 is to buy a dead cat? They will make zero effort and zero additions to the budget to improve the audio issues? If they don't give a damn why should you?
Are they wired or wireless? To what is their signal being directed for capture?
Wireless Sony's, brand new. I am concerned about them maintaining a solid signal over distance, and who knows what kind of problems I will run into trying to find a clean channel for them up there. It could be nothing at all, or it could be a garbled mess of global communications frequencies. That is the sort of thing you guys would know.
Prior season I think if they did have a lav going, it was some really uber cheap nonsense one. I should probably nut up and ask him to get a dedicated recorder of some kind, but their plan was to use one of the XF-100/105's for that since they have XLR ins.
The dead cat thing was just meant to humorously illustrate how little they had to work with on s1 and s2. I think the overwhelming majority of what sound they got was from little VMPs and the like. Especially while on the skis. Still, there were also - according to editor - not too much consideration given to technique even when doing a sit-down interview where there would definitely have been time to get it right. He told me some horror stories - stand-ups right next to a busy trucking route with tractor-trailers barreling past them, just to offer up the worst example. That sort of thing I know I can improve upon.
Sorry I could not post a concise list of what gear is in play. The gear is staged 90 minutes away from me and the brief inventories I scribbled stayed with the gear. Okay, that was my third mistake in trying to post this thread. Ha!
You want to acquire the skills, knowledge and experience of a 20 year production sound professional in less than 24 hours, and you still won't have the equipment to do the job correctly.
Actually, no, I don't. If I had my way I would have spent my Sunday afternoon finding a sound person at the last minute. I want to acquire the skills, knowledge, and experience of a 20 year cinematography professional. I have a long way to go.
All I was hoping for here was that perhaps someone had done similar conditions and could offer up a couple of things they wished they had known before hand. I realize now that certain levels of knowledge are just not shared with strangers - or so it seems. I posted a similar question to a cinematography centric community (more about working in the environment in general, not audio related at all) and that thread stands at 0 replies to date.
So, in that respect I will have to rely on what cold conditions experience I have and apply that as best I can in the context of a working production. I've shot in the snow before, so not entirely new. Just never in true Arctic conditions, and never on an expedition this long.
And how much attention will you be able to pay to the sound while holding onto the camera in one hand and holding onto a jet-ski for your life with the other hand? APE had a lot of good suggestions - capturing ambient sounds and specific sounds to build a library - but I will make the prediction that your client probably will not allow you the time to do so, even if you have the gear to do it at all.
That right there, that's why the first words out of my mouth were "Is there a sound person?" Seriously, that was the first thing I asked to my buddy who called me up to ask if I was available and interested.
The wild sound library is hands down the best note so far. I'm definitely going to try to collect what I can to help them out in post.
I'm sorry to be so negative, but I deal with this all the time, and the annoyance factor grows with every single occurrence. I've just had a week of "Why is your bill so high?" The answer he gets is "Because you didn't hire a qualified production sound crew like I told you to in the first place!" "But he wanted $150 a day!" " That's cheaper than what you (haven't yet) paid me to clean it up, isn't it?"
Moron.
Last Friday I had a guy complaining that I couldn't fix the sound of a wide shot - which was captured using the DSLR mic from 40 feet. I referred him to a buddy of mine, who told him that he could make the audio understandable, but it would not be "broadcast quality" - and it would take a minimum of 20 hours at $385 per hour. (The only reason it was at all possible to make the audio understandable is that the two people are indoors and are screaming at each other.)
I feel your pain. Every time someone asks me for a half day on a 6 hour shoot that is a 2-3 hour round trip commute for me, I die a little inside. The sad truth is that as the landscape of the industry changes its just going to get worse. Jobs are consolidating, especially on the production side. I suspect that, outside of a narrative feature or decently budgeted TV series, 1 man -> many hats may be my foreseeable future.
That second example right there, I suspect, is the type of thing they dealt with in the first couple of seasons. It's also something I would never do.
Nobody wants to pay for anything anymore. Whole host of reasons for that.
So, my apologies. Do the best you can with what you have, whatever it is.
Good Luck!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you, and don't sweat it. I am sorry about over-reacting. While I may think that you guys could ease up on folks a bit around here when the topic comes up (Stickies would help ... a lot), I also recognize that I'm pretty stressed out and twitchy at the moment which is clouding my perception.
Fortunately, the editor understands the reality of the situation - we're never going to get ideal sound with our current parameters. The show's creator and other producers perhaps not so much. I am confident I can improve upon what they had before, it's just a matter of improving upon it enough so that the show doesn't suffer and the bosses are appeased.
My Fourth Mistake on this thread: I should have used "acceptable" or "savable" in the title instead of "solid."
