tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31598621.post7208479488572583370..comments2024-03-25T22:21:09.417-04:00Comments on A Brooklynite on the Ice: Some technical notes on the Grand Finale of HBO's "The Jinx," from the perspective of a sound recordist.They say it's a cold worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09059089212388940864noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31598621.post-34697741022522619212015-03-29T13:53:29.939-04:002015-03-29T13:53:29.939-04:00Great analysis Richard. I didn't see The Jinx...Great analysis Richard. I didn't see The Jinx, but have worked with Producer Marc Smerling & His Prod. Co. on countless Commercials and Music Videos in the past. I heard about The Jinx from an LA Times article written the day after the show aired which lauded The Jinx Prod. for their journalistic prowess and then went on to taut the commercial viability of documentary filmmaking.<br />As a 25+ year veteran film technician, I know the sequence of events at wrap and on many occasions We've waited for the Sound Recordist to complete their jobs prior to wrapping the equip. Once We get the "go ahead" from Sound & Prod., We restore the "House Lights", turn off the film lights and wrap out the location. This is generally the rule regardless of the scale of the Prod. The sequence of events You've laid out definitely do not pass the smell test from a Gaffer's perspective as well. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Scott B.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31598621.post-49124605289540419162015-03-23T09:27:27.706-04:002015-03-23T09:27:27.706-04:00Hmmmn. No. On that last comment I spiralled into t...Hmmmn. No. On that last comment I spiralled into tech geekdom. The "Go Pro" footage where we see Jarecki and Durst is on-speed, so if the static shot is off-speed, that must have been done in post, for whatever reason. That would be a strange choice, certainly. They say it's a cold worldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09059089212388940864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31598621.post-8339201003346253352015-03-23T09:10:39.495-04:002015-03-23T09:10:39.495-04:00Hi Ernie--I think I have your email, and just sent...Hi Ernie--I think I have your email, and just sent you one. What you say about the Go-Pro is interesting. I also took a look when I was writing the post. The final shoot being essentially an empty lock-off, I wondered if there was any possibility it had been looped, since the filmmakers might not have known they would need a nice long chunk at the time they shot it. (That issue is probably obviated by your earlier comment, that the Go Pro would have been cut and rolled via remote control, iphone or whatever). To me it looks like reflected traffic smearing in the glass. But if it is indeed off-speed footage, and it was shot that way, that's a further reason I would have been unlikely to put any of my sound down on that camera....They say it's a cold worldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09059089212388940864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31598621.post-22926930418631645372015-03-22T18:15:22.349-04:002015-03-22T18:15:22.349-04:00Richard;
Nice to hear from you as well. If I had...Richard;<br /><br />Nice to hear from you as well. If I had your e-mail, I would like to send you the trailer to my newest film.<br /><br />As far as the Audio to GoPro, Yes, I agree that sending audio to the unit would be a real pain in the ass. Still, I always like to have audio -- any audio -- on every source, so at the very minimum, I can check the sync against the master. In this case, I would make sure the microphone on the GoPro was on, and hope that I would get enough level so at least I could make out the dialogue being spoken. Having a guide track of any sort makes syncing so much easier and on some edit systems, can make it automatic. (Plural Eyes on FCP7 or built-in syncing on FCPX)<br /><br />As far as the the shot in question, if you go back and look at the action taking place through the window on the exterior of the building, It looks like it's not at sync sound speed but rather a weird surveillance camera speed. -- Strange!Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15984100289380231056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31598621.post-28621865507423631012015-03-21T15:21:57.346-04:002015-03-21T15:21:57.346-04:00Ernie--Great to hear from you. I think I can safel...Ernie--Great to hear from you. I think I can safely say that in terms of thoughtfulness and time invested, yours is amongst the top comments ever posted to this blog in its roughly 9 years of existence. I'm intrigued, because you are offering another quite plausible explanation of how that audio, unmonitored, could nonetheless have been recorded. I'm not sure I buy it, but I like it. This may be outing MYSELF as a lazy sound recordist, but I think given the bizarre angle, with its implicit high-up-in-the-ceiling corner mount, and given the fact that I would already have been feeding audio to two cameras on the ground I think I would probably have said something like "you are never going to use this shot unless Durst leaps out of his chair and starts knocking over the other cameras, and you are never going to use the audio under any circumstances, and there isn't room to strap an IFB to your rig up there in the corner, so I'm going to let this camera be mute." I will be surprised if we learn that there was audio fed to the Go-Pro.<br />There's another thing, which is that personally, I'm unlikely to pull a wireless off of someone while they are potted up on the mixer or recorder. Generally I am going to pot down the signal from the receiver, and also turn the receiver off, before I ever get to the "talent" to remove their transmitter. It doesn't have to happen that way, but best practice in the sound world is definitely to turn all your input signals down before you start unplugging mics, etc.<br />I'm 100% with you on the concerns about the docutainment! <br />And, let's get together before another fifteen years go by!They say it's a cold worldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09059089212388940864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31598621.post-71291652684877667302015-03-20T14:16:04.615-04:002015-03-20T14:16:04.615-04:00Richard:
I loved your article and do feel your pa...Richard:<br /><br />I loved your article and do feel your pain about the shameful way sound recordists are neglected by the general public at large. Also, I do share your suspicions that the filmmakers may have been more than a little disingenuous in their explanations of what happened, or truthful about the "timeline" in which it happened.<br /><br />Still, as a filmmaker and editor myself, I might suggest another scenario. <br /><br />As you, have noted, the badly–framed, “high and wide” angle was most probably filmed with a GoPro. Let’s assume that was the case. Typically, a GoPro (especially one mounted to the ceiling) would have been switched on to “record” with a remote or with the GoPro IPhone app. Because, the data rate at which the camera records is pretty frugal, typically, one would turn it on and let it roll for hours. Now, it is possible to feed the GoPro with the “scratch mix” and so, it is possible that is the source of the so-called “confessional” audio. The recordist (as you point out yourself) might have been waiting outside the bathroom to retrieve the wireless microphone before Durst left the building and thus would not have been monitoring that recording.<br /><br />Moving forward to the edit, the audio on the GoPro, in all likelihood, would have never been listened to by the editor. I know, I would not have listened to it ever, and I have been editing for over 30 years. (Maybe this also explains why I have never been able to convict anybody in any of my films, but I suppose that discussion of my shortcomings will have to wait for another article.) Typically, an editor would have used either the mixed audio from the scratch mix, or had it been provided, the two split channels from the wireless microphones routed to the camera and left it at that. Perhaps you would have left further audio work to the sound-editing department?<br /><br />So, it is entirely possible that an assistant editor, or some other sound dept. person, “discovered” this missing audio months later while scanning through the footage, and the direction of the film changed dramatically after that. (Technically, the audio might have been made visible in the waveform display on the audio track and been discovered that way.) <br /><br />Still, as a matter of cutting style, I would have referenced this wide shot earlier in the sequence so as to reveal its existence to the audience and thus foreshadowed the big payoff. I might have helped their case had they done the same.<br /><br />Nevertheless, I still feel that something is fishy about Jareki’s explanation of the facts to the press. Indeed, the entire build-up and faux-rehearsal of the “ final interview” that is presented in the final episode of the Jinx rings hollow and, to my view, does not fully stand up to the smell test. It’s too bad because it throws doubt on the entire series and places this work firmly in the camp of docutainment that HBO seems to have embraced with a passion. We were all entertained for a few hours and let’s face it, none of us really liked, or rooted for Durst anyway. Who cares (except for the dead) if any of it was true?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15984100289380231056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31598621.post-11815090278950929232015-03-19T15:01:42.573-04:002015-03-19T15:01:42.573-04:00The Smoking Microphone! This is a brilliant essay,...The Smoking Microphone! This is a brilliant essay, and so deft in its technical explanations that even I can understand it. Possible conclusions go in different directions, but several of them are quite disturbing. I don't think that the documentary makers are going to be the only ones called to testify on one side or the other. Get ready for a new role: Expert Witness.John V. Fleminghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17136533410768061217noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31598621.post-91710007986664653252015-03-19T13:16:39.752-04:002015-03-19T13:16:39.752-04:00Hey Paco, thanks for commenting. My link to this o...Hey Paco, thanks for commenting. My link to this over at facebook seems to have generated quite a number of interesting comments, and I'm thinking of copy and pasting them over here. It is annoying that all facebook discussions rapidly fade into history without really maintaining a connection to the links they refer to. <br />I haven't used the Zaxcom systems much myself, but from my understanding they are time code jammable. I don't know if they would have a user bit field in the metadata where they would stamp the date, but I would imagine they do. Of course both date and time would have to have been jammed into the unit by the sound recordist, but certainly the capability for those files to be carrying the exact date and time of their creation exists, assuming a Zaxcom was indeed in use. Although I certainly appreciate the high praise of your phrase "damning analysis" I do want to be clear that I thought the Jinx was great, both as entertainment and as cinema and as an oblique view into the mechanisms by which the rich move through the justice system in a very different way than others, especially people of colored others. I really wrote this because the discussion around the film seemed to ignore the very existence of sound recordists, at the same time that it was totally clear to me that the audio so key to this episode and in fact the denouement of the entire series only was captured because of a sound recordist!They say it's a cold worldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09059089212388940864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31598621.post-39928277528859238472015-03-19T05:24:11.395-04:002015-03-19T05:24:11.395-04:00This is an amazing and damning analysis Richard. ...This is an amazing and damning analysis Richard. Another thing is that if it was a Zaxcom mic/transmitter and it has a time stamp, as you point out, then that would clarify when the recording was made. There seem to be more and more examples of questionable narrative constructions in documentary, that cross ethical lines. I'm reminded of Catfish, which raised a whole set of questions of its own. I imagine that if the material is subpoenaed a lot will be clarified, either by the material itself or sworn testimonies of the sound recordists and editors.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03845511485867537219noreply@blogger.com