From a post on FilmmakerIQ.com

So I set up the audio for a small community big band that I work with. I used to play with them but I’m so tired of playing the same rinky dinky music with the same rinky dinky attitude that I resigned my self more to full on audio tech and “conductor”.

Rinky dinky music is fine, if you approach it with a serious attitude.

I set up the mics for this group. 3 mics for 4 saxes… the Baritone sax gets his own mic. I set it up last night and go do something else.

When the show started and I got into my conductor position, the baritone sax’s mic was pointed away from the sax and over at nothing…

WTF???

This guy always does this. He doesn’t want to play into a mic.

In fact, nobody in the group wants to play into a mic… they’re all so afraid of their “sound”

Hello! I’m trying to record this assholes! (which was an unmitigated disaster). Even if I wasn’t recording this, you NEED TO PLAY INTO A MICROPHONE for sound reinforcement and balance.

Why do I even bother setting up this sound system if you guys won’t use it.

Okay, first let me set up the cold hard reality of playing in a big band. Every part is important for different reasons (some are more important than others). Each person is playing a DIFFERENT part so they all need to be heard together. Secondly, the sound from where you sit in a big band is sounds completely different from what the audience hears (especially if you don’t have monitors). You think you’re playing loud enough because you match what you hear, you’re way too soft. If you think you can cuddle up and hide inside the group, you’re wrong.

Or this attitude, I’m going to play my part so only I can hear it.

WHAT’S THE FUCKING POINT OF THAT!?!?

Get on the mic - then I can adjust you (live because this band “doesn’t need” a sound check). We heavily mic the saxes because we have this antiquated notion that the saxes are some how not as loud as the brass…

That’s another thing I can’t stand. I play trumpet. I am capable of pumping more wattage through that horn than most people I play with. For that, I am “well known”… but I’m not some cro-magnon that can’t tone it down. Guess what, I can play softer than most everyone I play with as well. I can play “purdy” too. And purdy stuff deserves to be heard of annoyingly loud sax work.

Back on point.

Seriously, why do you even bother showing up if you don’t want to be heard?

It stopped being funny years ago.

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I wrote this piece for FilmmakerIQ.com

Whether you’re going to do the editing or you’re handing off to someone else - there’s a lot of little things that we sometimes forget to do on location that would have really made editing a whole lot easier. Here are 13 little things you can do on location to alleviate some of the nasty hang-ups during editing.

Read the entire article

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And MicroX2 filp accessory.

For those of you that don’t know, the Redrock Micro is one of many 35mm adapters that allows you to utilize 35mm still camera lenses to work with your video camera. The advantage is you have a lot of room to play with depth of field.

I decided to try shooting test charts to judge the sharpness of this set up. This is the first time I’ve shot test charts and I didn’t have a lot of space to work with but here are my results. If there’s something I should be doing with the tests - let me know.

The control:
Ex1 stock lens (no adapter)

Now a couple lenses I tried out:

Overall, I’m pretty happy with the setup. The Encore version of the adapter is much more sensitive to light - making shooting indoors a much more feasible option now. Edge to edge sharpness is better though not perfect and that may be caused by a huge number of things (misalignment, poor lenses) and it’s a huge improvement to what I had before this upgrade.

Most importantly, the image is now right side up… that makes life a lot easier.

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