'TRIBULATION'

Recording sound on 'Tribulation' (previously known as 'Dark Bark') presented me with a number of technical & practical problems. To begin with the entire film was improvised (in Spanish) and once filming commenced we would turn over for an hour, change tapes and then continue to film for two or three more hours. I was also told from the start that the production could not afford to fly the actors back to the UK for any ADR.

Each scene was covered by two roaming cameras shooting simultaneously on zoom lenses using extreme wides and tights (so I never had a chance to get in with a boom). In addition personal radio mics could only be used on a couple of occasions due the number of scenes involving nudity and liberal amounts of water throwing. This film would have been perfect for a hard-disk recorder like the 744T but I was only provided with a DAT, which meant often having to live mix radios or planted boom microphones together.

Although the sound was almost always being compromised by the nature of the shoot I'm very pleased with our end results. The sound was able to match the ambience of the locations and help contribute to the raw nature of this film.

For the job the National Film School provided me with 4 sets of 20x20s, 1x mkh816, 1x mkh416, 1xmkh418 (which was of no use) 2x TRAM microphones, 4 NP1 batteries and 1 powering shoe, an HHB PortaDAT machine, an SQN 4S and 3 Sennheiser ew300 receivers and one sennheiser transmitter.

This was clearly not enough for the job, especially in regards to battery power over long periods. I asked production to grant me some extra money for professional kit hire, thankfully Andrew Boulton agreed and we hired out the following kit from Richmond Film Services:
1x 17amp hour battery, a 48v powering bomb, dipole aerials, 2x radio body pouches, 1x mkh60 , 3x cos11 radio mics (which I used instead of TRAMS in order to reduce clothing rustle), 30 extra 9v batteries, 12 CR123As and a second NP1 powering shoe.

From my own kit I brought along a panamic pole, numerous starquad XLR cables, a magic arm, my sound trolley, 4 Garwood radio receivers + headphones (for the camera operators, director and producer) and a number of other useful radio mic accessories (including the great Rycote stickies and undercovers that work so well with COS11s).

In addition I sent a mono guide track to both cameras via sennheiser ew300 radio link. Originally it was planned for sound to be mastered to each camera via this radio link and for the DAT to only be used as a backup. For some reason the production were convinced that syncing hours of sound would take too long. However I made clear to the production that whatever the HDV cameras received (if anything due to range issues) it would NOT be production quality. They agreed and my DATs have been used to replace the HDV audio as the master source.

Christian Barbe consults the actors before our first scene. Due to the level of background noise from a nearby waterfall we used radio mics on each actor and split the tracks. Can you spot the mkh60 in the tree? We planted 3 boom microphones and 1 radio mic to cover the action for this 4 hour scene. Stephan (from the NFTS) & I setting up the plant mics for the woods location. When placing radio mics on the artists I used COS11s with Rycote stickies and undercovers. These worked really well and I would often live mix the radios with a little level from our planted boom microphones in order to give the sound some lively ambience. My sound trolley, originally designed by Peter Glossop. Previously owned by sound mixers David Hildyard & Tim Blackham. Stefan operating an 816 while holding up two Audio Ltd receivers taped to a boom pole to get reception for this scene.

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