A few weeks off and we will be back at it. Next week is the Monday Night Football opener shoot with Hank Williams, Jr....lot's of playback and cheerleaders.

Then, beginning July 12, we will begin shooting season 1 of Threshold for CBS. It's a Sci-Fi/thrill show that will air on Friday nights this coming fall season. I'm really excited about this show...great cast and a great story.

My crew will be the same as the last few projects, Jeff Norton on boom and Jeff Zimmerman as utility. I'm sure there will be many opportunities for others to join in, so I'll be calling my regulars. We are at Paramount for quite a bit on this, which is awesome. I get to finally get back to the gym!

We start in just a couple of weeks, so more later.

We've finished filming Entourage, season 2. It was quite a wild 5 months of shooting, but we made it through. I can actually say that there are things that I did on this show that I thought I would never do. The scene at the Laker game was by far the wildest recording experience in quite some time.

This picture was taken by Jeff Graham, one of our camera assistants on the beach in Malibu. It was one of our last days of shooting. We had a big walk and talk down the beach. At the end I was able to put the rig down...it was getting heavy.

The second season premieres tomorrow on HBO.


Malibu

Three weeks left on the schedule and we are getting close. It's been a long run since January and everyone is looking forward to a break.

There are a few things that this show has done for my mixing abilities. Since we rarely, if at all, get rehearsals, the art of mixing on the fly has really become important. It's very interesting how, after a few months, you can get a feel for how actors will make their way through a scene...even if they have never done it together before. Jeff Norton had a great way of describing it: it's like getting out of the van every morning and jumping into a blender. A good analogy I think...

I've really put my crew and all of my equipment through a great amount of test and stress through the last 4+ months. We've changed how we do a lot of things...including the entire cart. I had to ditch the big magliner and go with my older, smaller and more agile PSC cart. Way to many moves and small locations to use a battleship like the Magliner as a sound cart. Now that I've gone to the PSC, though quite modified, I'll probably not go back to the Magliner again. Check out this link for pictures: http://www.palmeraudio.net/equip.htm

This coming week I will be giving the new FAT32 OS of the DEVA a good run through. Hopefully things will go well...I've been testing it all weekend.

Cheers...

We've got about 5 weeks to go on Entourage. We've been shooting a Comic Book convention the last few days...funny stuff.


?!?

We've been shooting all over Los Angeles. Nearly a different location every day, sometimes two. Recently we shot at the Vista Theater in Los Feliz. It has recently been remodeled and has a great interior design. You should really stop by and see it...Sunset and Hollywood Blvd.


Jeff Norton at the Vista Theater...

Long days, late nights, not enought coffee... :)


Thanks Claudette

We are very deep into filming of the second season of Entourage. Not quite mid way through, and we are very busy. This weekend was highlighted by the transfer of all my equipment back on to my smaller, more mobile vertical cart. It is a modified PSC cart, with some additions by Chindha Kommarath. I'll ad some pictures in the next few days. After a couple of years with a big Magliner to manuever around our locations, I got fed up and went back to the original cart design.

This week was highlighted by two days of shooting at the Playboy Mansion. Lot's of people with very little clothing.

The week ended with lots of rain...not my favorite way to work.

I'm really thinking of moving back to a smaller, more mobile cart. It is just too hard to move around a magliner in so many of our locations. Back to the drawing board...again.



at the mansion 

Really sorry it's taken so long to get back to the blog. I've been very busy with the new show, Entourage. It is a very difficult show from a sound view because of the amount of dialog and poor locations. The locations are all Hollywood, Beverly Hills and LA practical locations, with very little stage work. Some of the locations have no sound control what so ever. The show is wall to wall dialog with the 4 principals in almost every scene. My work has been cut out for me!

This past week we spent in Park City, Utah at the Sundance film festival. We shot exteriors on Main St. in Park City for 2 days, then went on top of The Canyons ski resort for a scene with the guys snowboarding. It was quite a trek up the mountain. The gear had to go up in a snow cat, while we took a gondola and a chair lift.

We returned late Friday night and have a 5 am call tomorrow. That's all for now.

Happy New Year to everyone...still not sure if anyone ever reads this. It's New Years Day here in Southern California, and it's not sunny...at all. In fact it looked like rain all day. We're in for another cycle of rain storms over the next week.

Starting to prep for Entourage tomorrow. They have moved the start date to Friday of next week, so I've got to get things going.

This Mac powerbook is really great. I find that I am on it much more than the PC, much more. When I do get on the PC, it just looks bad...I mean ugly. The Mac interface is so much more pleasant, easier on the eyes.

I've gotten into the chat thing so here are my screen names.
For iChat: pwpmixer@mac.com
For Messenger: phil@palmeraudio.net

Let me know when you're online...

Christmas eve here in Southern CA...sunny and 70 degrees today.

Been doing some brainstorming as to how I can get as mobile as possible for the coming show. There are a lot of "doc" type situations, parties, bars, clubs, Sundance, etc. I'll be wearing the soundcart for these situations. Of course they want everything, so I cant go simple.

We finished up Bewitched this past Monday with Nellie the elephant. Thanks to David Macmillan for bringing me on.

Merry Christmas.

Well, I did it. I've got a new 12" powerbook. Not sure what took me so long, this thing is great.

Merry Christmas to me...

Just when I thought I was off for the holidays... Back on to Bewitched for some 2nd unit. They are trying to complete photography by the Christmas break, with a lots to do.

K's out of town, just me and Ollie here. Christmas shopping to do.

Fighting off the urge to buy a 12" powerbook. :)

Done with Medium. It was a great show to work on and I'll miss the crew very much. We wrapped for the holidays last Friday, or should I say...very early Saturday morning.

I've already started preparing for Entourage. It is going to be quite a hustle, as I understand it. I'll be in documentary mode for quite a bit...I hope not too much. The problem these days, is that they want all the extras while in doc mode...ears, wires, etc. That means a lot of stuff in the bag.

Looking forward to the holidays. Kathy will be heading to Dallas next week for a farewell/Christmas party for TXCN, her former employer. I'll be hanging around the house...resting. Hopefully catching up on some reading. Oliver will be close by...as usual.

We took a bit of Thanksgiving break from Medium. Though I spent a few days of it working on Bewitched for David Macmillan. David was out ill...best wishes to him.

We are finishing up one more episode before the Christmas holiday break. The original schedule was to have us finish the season at the end of December, but we've gone over by a few weeks. I'll be moving on to do another project in January.

January will be the beginning of Season 2 of Entourage for HBO. Both Jeff Norton and Jeff Zimmerman will be helping me out on this one. We have a 14 show order, so we should be shooting till the end of March or so.

The new DEVA Vis working nicely, but with a few bugs. I would really like for it to at least do everything the DEVA 2 did...but that's not so yet. Whatever...

Been looking through a lot of blogs lately. I'm quite fond of a few...you should sifting through them. Mush more interesting than plain old websites...

I took delivery this past week of my new DEVA V hard disk recorder. There was a bit of frustration in the beginning having to do with the post facility not able to read the disks. This issue has now been cleared up and I'm hot to go. I've been using both the DEVA II and V all week, stacked together on the cart. Friday was the first day of DEVA V only. At this point I am very pleased with the improvements over the II and even now it would be hard to go back. As long as what I deliver to post production works, I've got a machine that I like. I'll still be running a DAT backup for some time to come however.

I'll add pictures to the website later in the week...

I've been on Medium now for the past 2 weeks and all is going very well. Not too bad on the hours, though we had a couple of long days this past week. We begin episode 10 this week with 13 total to shoot.

A big thanks to Kim Ornitz for passing the job over to me. He has gone on to do a show in India for the next couple of months.

I loaded my gear on the Camera Truck this past Friday. The show is Medium, and Jeff Norton and Damon Cleary will be helping me out as boom operators. Damon has been doing the show all season, so his help with the changeover is essential. I'm very lucky to have a great crew.

No new additions to the equipment package for this project, but the new DEVA is on the way.

Just an update... I'll be finishing up the season of "Medium" beginning October 25. Kim Ornitz has mixed the first 8 episodes and will be leaving for another project. They have been picked up for 13 episodes, so it will take me to Christmas. I'll get more information this coming week...

Still quite busy with day calls. Some interviews lined up, nothing definate yet...except for The Entourage in January. I think I was on a different project every day this past week. The Tonight Show has got to be TV heaven. The entire crew was great. I would love to work that show again. The Bush impersonator/interviews were hilarious, I couldn't even look at the guy...

Considering changing the cart around again, no shock there. It's always a work in progress for me.