User:Soundcatcher

Soundcatcher refers to a Sound Recordist or Sound Mixer in the film & television industry & is the person responsible for the raw aquisition of audio in the field.

Soundcatchers may assume different modes. They may operate alone, recording sound effects or dialogue "wild" but more often, they are part of a crew who gather material in formats known as Electronic News Gathering (ENG), Electronic Film Production (EFP) or Seperate System (Sepmag). These are all generally field based activities different in technique to TV Studio and TV Outside Broadcast (OB) productions.

OB's is considered a mobile extension of TV Studios. Although ENG, EFP and Sepmag productions often do take place in studio's & can be hugely complex, they are largely based around a self contained, single camera technique rather than the multicamera format of Studio's & OB's. The sound and vision from microphones and cameras for an OB are eventually connected to an OB Van for mixing and switching, like the cameras and microphones from the studio floor are connected to the control room. With Sepmag, cameras & sound recorders are independent and self contained recording units. The resulting unsynchronised material known as "rushes" or "dailies", is then sent for combining, editing & finishing in a process known as post-production.

Filmaking today owes much to the old school seperate system technique, before videotape became portable. The basic concept was that a cameraman with a film camera and a sound recordist or "soundcatcher" with a tape recorder, are directed to gather material in the field. When shooting film, the sound recording equipment & camera are almost never physically connected, although a format known as "COMMAG" was the exception. But otherwise, when the seperate system crew is directed to "turnover" the soundcatcher will set into motion their tape recorder & announce "speed" when the machine indicates that it has stabilised. The cameraperson will then button on their camera and ask "marker" at which point the sound recordist or an assistant will slate the shot with a clapper-board and announce the scene and take number as a minimum.

The visual information written on the clapper-board exposed to film and the matching verbal information recorded on magnetic tape along with the aid of coherent sound/camera sheets, is imperative for the assistant editor back in post-production to "sync-rushes" because the rushes will arrive in basically two piles: one pile will be the "slash print" of the original vision from the film processing laboratory and the other pile will be the transferred audio. All of it completely seperate and unsynchronised.

Up until the 1990's, a soundcatcher's field recording device was a reel to reel tape recorder using 1/4" magnetic oxide stock, typically running at 7 and a half inches per second. For music or where quality was of greater concern, tape speed would be increased to 15 inches per second. Field recording units generally did not have 30 inches per second available, unlike studio recorders where 30ips was normal. The faster the tape speed, the less information magnetic oxide particles had to store. As tape speed is decreased, more information has to be packed into the particles, thus increasing the likelihood of overload and hence distortion. As tape speed decreases further down to 3 and 3/4ips, tape "hiss" compounds the problem of overload. Speeds this slow (and slower) are only used for logging or transcription.

Of equal concern to the actual quality of the sound recording is synchronisation. Film cameras are crystal locked to 24 or 25 frames per second depending upon the adhered standard in a certain country or region. There are two problems with synchronistaion. The first is that because the film camera and tape recorder are not physically connected, it is not possible for the cameraperson and souncatcher to turnover at precisely the same time. Either of these two people may decide to aquire material "wild" during any part of the shoot anyway. The second problem is due to the different drive mechanisms in a camera and a tape recorder, the tape recorder has a greater tendency to drift in speed and therefore, out of synchronistaion.

An effective method of maintaining synchronisation was created whereby a 50Hz or 60Hz tone was recorded onto the magnetic stock while field aquisition took place. The 1/4" tape rushes were then transferred to another magnetic tape stock equal in gauge to the originating film; 35 or 16mm for example. The transfer process consisted of loading the 1/4" stock onto a machine similar to that used in the field to gather the material. During the 1:1 analog transfer of material, the 50Hz or 60Hz signal recorded on the 1/4" tape is compared to the 50Hz or 60Hz mains frequency of an external power supply unit. This allows the synchronisation circuit built into the playback machine to constantly adjust its motors so that it can play back the tape at exactly the same speed as it was recorded. The 16mm or 35mm record machine the audio is being transferred to is 50 or 60Hz mains locked. When the transfer is finished, the 1/4 inch master is archived and the resulting 16 or 35mm transfer is then sent to editing.

And so hopefully, the assistant editor will end up with a pile of audio that will be as close to the same speed as the matching pile of vision. They must then begin the arduous task of syncing rushes. With the aid of coherent sound/camera sheets, the sound & vision are then loaded together onto an editing machine and the assistant editor begins looking for the slates; that is, the clapper board identifying the start of a take. The editor reads the information written on the clapper board and then searches for the corresponding verbal information on the audio tape at which point the editor will match up exactly the vision of the clapper board clapping and the sharp sound it makes on the audio. At this point, the editor locks the plates of the editing deck together & spools forward to the end of the take where the camera person buttons off and the soundcatcher also stops recording and the material becomes unsynchronised again. The editor will splice in or out junk spacing to keep the entire reel synchronised throughout the process of finding and matching slates.

Still being written.