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.

Mini rig in action

For those sound mixers out there who daily do the bag rig deal, this probably seems like a strange post. However, those of us who primarily spend our days sitting behind our sound carts...this is a pretty big deal. I put together this bag rig as a totally separate recording system for when I have to jump in a car, on an insert vehicle, top of a building, down on the beach...you get the idea. Anywhere the cart is a difficult operation.

These past 2 episodes of Jericho have been really rough and tumble. Lots of difficult locations and situations. I've been able to do these things by having this rig ready to go at any time. I just burn a different sound DVD for these situations. It's working great! Redundant receivers for the mini rig, allow for the seemless transition to my cart when we jump back to normal operations, as we did here. As soon as the dialog was complete in the vehicle...we continued the scene outside.



~PWP