Pre-Production of Swingtown

We have several phases of production in the film and TV world. Pre-production, everything before the camera starts rolling. Production, everything while the camera is rolling. And Post-production, which is everything after the camera stops rolling. There is actually more, but that's the gist of it all. There is more...but not something I will go into any detail.

Right now, we are less than a week away from beginning production and principal photography of Swingtown. This is a freshman series that will be a mid-season replacement on CBS for the 2007-2008 season. We're looking at a January(ish) start for Swingtown. We don't know the dates or time because we are waiting to see what new shows don't fulfill the networks dream of success.

Pre-production for a me as a sound mixer is a lot of things. Equipment cleaning, updating my gear if possible, meetings, and getting in as much rest as possible since our days will be long. The gear is in pretty dusty and dirty shape after Jericho, so I spent the better part of yesterday cleaning the main recording cart. Today will be the follow and accessory cart. Lots of new wireless to program and label, as I've updated all my transmitters.

Swingtown looks as though I will get a bit of a reprieve from the dusty farms of Jericho. Our new show takes place in Chicago, so it looks like urban locations for the next 5 or more months. I welcome that aspect. The farm was incredibly dusty and difficult on the crew and myself.

I look forward to giving some updates as we start production next week.

Lectro transmitter upgrades

I've wanted to do this for some time now, and with the new SMa mods now available for the smaller SM transmitters it seems now is the time. I'm upgrading all my UM transmitters to the SMa model. It's an expensive transition, but the size, weight and performance benefit makes it a worthwhile expense. The boom rigs will stay as UM's but I am upgrading to the UM450, 1/4 watt version.

I'll report later on the transition.

We start Swingtown at the end of the month, so it's clean up and upgrade time.

~PWP

Wrap on Jericho season 2

That's it! We're done with principal photography on Jericho season 2, all 7 episodes. It was a crazy, long, and emotional last week of filming.

Thank you to everyone at Jericho and CBS for helping us out. And to all the fans for their support and dedication, which is why we came back for more.

It's rest time for me and my crew. We have about a month off before we embark on another project....more on that in another post.

Time to clean all the Jericho dust off of everything....

Tomorrow is the release of the Season 1 box set of Jericho. There is a lot there, behind the scenes, all the episodes, interviews, etc. Go pick it up... Thanks for listening.

~PWP