any kinds of other equipment those
things become very useful and we can
take those isolated sounds and
isolate them and put them on separate
tracks and build up you know what would
sound realistic
um in the end to the audience
and
as i said crew comments and this sort of
thing you can also use the tape as kind
of a diary because the tapes are
inexpensive it's not like shooting the
imax film where you know so many dollars
per second of film
and you have to
you know use it very wisely
i believe you're taking a dozen
cassettes with you which is something
like 12 hours of sound which is a lot of
material so i wouldn't be
concerned with all the things you have
on your mind
to try to set up a shot and get the k
you know the sound just ready and then
have somebody start this and run that
that's going to be just too much to to
worry about
with these cassettes um you can set this
up and
maybe even record a rehearsal for a shot
when the camera's not running because
you can get them some of the sound
uh without the camera horror going and
we could maybe cheat that sound later
quality standpoint
how good a quality is that tape after
being before it's used
well this is kind of a well we uh this
machine this is a commercially available
cassette recorder right and it's its
operation is is very simple it's similar
if you have a cassette at home or in the
wi-fi system
it's very similar to it it is a it is a
very high quality cassette recorder it's
about as good as you're going to get
and certainly within this size package
and simplicity of operation uh you're
not going to do better and we've
recorded lots of material on a machine
like this in the studio to use in
regular films
so it can be very good and
that is the frequency response that this
machine will pick up with these
microphones is
full range
okay
and uh it
it's not just a documentation device in
the sense of getting a record like a log
tape would be
uh this actually can make recordings
which can be aesthetically
usable
we'll talk about um putting voice
information on the tapes a little later
because once again it can be used as a
diary you put a tape in you can say the
time and you can identify the situation
you can talk all you want you'll find
that most sound men end up talking to
themselves a lot of time partly because
they're driven insane in their work
and partly because it's a it's a good
way to you know keep a diary
often you go out and record and you'll
say well i'll remember later what i just
did or where i was but you won't and and
weeks later you'll pour it through your
tapes and even you just hope that along
there there's there's ids and times and
any you know any information you want
any home unit that you might
encounter
you can see once you run the tape and
i'll just put it in play you can see
that the wheels are turning
they fortunately they've prevented the
ability to pause on this machine
do you want this recording to be dolby
or non-dolby which is an electronic way
of encoding the information on the track
the answer is yes and so we can always
keep it in the dolby position
if you accidentally had it in the
non-dolby position it wouldn't destroy
your recording
it wouldn't be quite as higher quality
than the recorder
this this switch here is depends on the
type of
cassette you buy just like film stocks
you can have sets with a different
sensitivity
option down here is a
a pad really if you were going to record
something amazingly loud a rock concert
up close or
a
diesel engine by something enormously
loud
this is essentially switches
a um a set of resistors into the
microphones that desensitizes them a
great deal
um you wouldn't have to worry about this
you won't be recording anything
that will require that type of
um precaution
if i was able to give full attention to
the sound unit i would turn them off
after a session yes okay
i i you know
don't don't worry about it if you can't
remember
my instruction would be to turn it off
what i'm saying is if you forget
i'm too busy there's probably not going
to be a serious problem
uh
ordinarily when i pack the unit up at
the end of the session i turned
everything off and put it in case and a
week later i pulled out i know it's all
fresh
but
yes you should turn it on
once again there's two microphones
because there's two separate input
channels
and more or less the way we've used this
recorder on the flight is not to make a
stereo recording in the sense of
you know two microphones up close one
left here and one right here but rather
separating the two such that they both
can get
a perspective on different items you
know if
and and using this rather as a two
channel
recorder rather than trying to just get
a single
stereo image
you could have one mic
down on the mid deck ceiling and one up
above in the flight deck depending on
what you were doing so
the we'll talk a little bit more about
uh placing microphones later but
think of it as two tape recorders um
you'll always record on both channels
simultaneously you can't stop that every
time you go into record both
both channels were poor
but
uh it
think in terms of how how broad you can
make your coverage of things and getting
you know interesting items
recording it's strictly a monitoring
gain control
so if you have headphones plugged in
here if you happen to take an adapter
and you use your other headphones
you can listen to the volume here if
there are no headphones plugged in
this monitor control
controls the loudness of the speaker in
playback so the signal on here you can
just adjust the
output gain control
did i have such meters on yes i usually
uh as i hear noises i adjust it
so that uh it's kind of bouncing into
the red but it's not banging and living
over it is that is that exactly the
right procedure yeah what
what you're the only judgment you're
going to make it's said on this
instruction here what full
counter-clockwise well that would mean
that these are up
i'm sorry this way
fully
which would mean they're assuming that
what you're going to record is a lot of
quiet little noises most of the things
you're recording are
dialogue
in the shot oh yeah you're right let me
ask a question about this you have
what's called a limiter down here which
i assume
suppresses the signal when it gets to
you so it puts a ceiling on things if
it's cheaper so
the green dot is on with
another limiter yeah they are is that
what you want well
usually in recording
i don't recommend people use the limiter
but that's in cases in which the
recordist is at the gain control and he
can make a judgment
as things occur as you know you can see
something really loud is about to happen
and maybe he's rehearsed it he knows he
can crack it now crank it down
well with the limiter on what will
happen is
he will not
make those judgments for you what the
limiter will do is we will put a ceiling
on things such that if you're recording
a normal dialogue
scene and then suddenly there was a big
noise somebody dropped something a
clipboard or of course nothing could be
dropping each other
somebody bangs a piece of equipment
slams the door
it would tend to suppress that noise a
little bit everything would kind of dip
down for a second and snap back
just guessing
that's something you'll have to
decide upon once you get up
yeah if for
instance is
we use that as the basis for our
judgment
excuse me
then
on a given set up and probably once you
kind of set it up in the
flight deck wherever you are if you
probably have found about the right spot
things are going to change a lot
i'm guessing you're going to be kind of
in the mid range here such that once in
a while a loud noise will peak it
but most of the time you're safe and
things are staying
there is a lot of meter action but it's
not hanging in the red you're allowed to
go into the red
just don't
loiter
that's fine
yeah
i think the kind of sounds you're gonna
you're gonna hit
are
abrupt
you may get a better recording without
it so
um
i can't tell you two different things
you know
now that you say that
we could set this thing up when it's
running yeah
and get busy for about 10 minutes and
we're not even watching the meters and
all of a sudden noises are louder than
we thought when we were setting it up
yeah and we could be banging the heck
out of that regime and so by having the
limiter on yeah
that's your choice
well
let's go with the green dot then okay
i'm not i'm not trying to be the
hypocrite
yeah
the funny thing you're talking to most
sound men won't use a limiter okay
you're emotionally again but you mostly
watch your job well but we are
monitoring the machine that's another
thing and often you have a chance to
rehearse something so let's let's be
safe and go with the green dot now but
if we're doing something we're able to
monitor it we'll we can do it without
them yeah
sure
foreign
if you put it in the middle the
the sound in the preceding minute and
the succeeding minute which is the most
valuable sound we can get
is well recorded
the sound during the actual running of
the camera is rotten
he uses the sound as what we call a
guide track it tells them enough for him
to try to recreate it well i'll tell you
now you see that that's interesting
maybe
because that means that during this the
real deploy sequence
when we're really running that camera
you won't actually use this one any
comments
that the crew members make spontaneously
about what you see and it doesn't matter
whether the camera is running yes even
if we
do we know what you
what you found if you look at that and
say wow look at that isn't that
incredible
that's a really useful piece of song
again you know some people will be
sometimes picking those things up
so again a mic in front
a mic
either in the middle and the after on
this side i i don't know i'm not sure
well
once again it's it's a simple case of
having the microphone near us the most
activity
we don't have so we don't have
microphones everywhere
front back is obviously as we we've just
looked at as the most likely to get
something of everything
if there's no activity no one operating
anything up front
then i would move the mics back into
this area and it may be an odd case
where you want to mic downstairs and one
upstairs i'm not sure i guess
activities that will require yeah
put the whole set up now
well once again down here in this part
of the studio
this is
made for sound right it is respected
yeah it is spaceflight right
um
i sort of wanted to finish up by just
making sort of going over a list we've
always touched on many of them with
things that
you might want to record or or things to
consider anyways
um just to repeat myself
of course we're interested
in trying to record any time the camera
is used a camera event
and trying to record uh
time before and after that event you
know and so i would sort of have the
sound just roll minutes in advance of it
and uh let it go for a while afterwards
um
as a corollary to that if something
happened during the camera event
that
you could could reproduce later
that'd be great too but that's something
that's
really occupy your mind and it's a key
line of dialogue or something somebody
said something but
then secondly the thing to be aware of
is to gather
interesting sound which will be useful
for this type of picture especially the
comments are very interested in your in
the crew's reactions to being here and
things they see
since this film is focusing on a lot of
things that are out the window you know
things that we're seeing on earth
that
if there were times where there was
conversation about that maybe sitting in
a meal while you were discussing what
you saw in the previous few hours you
know