Washington, D.C. (November 20, 2015)—On a recent trip to The White House, sound mixer Tom Craca recorded President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama and Second Lady Dr. Jill Biden using a Sound Devices 688 12-input field production mixer with 16-track recorder and MixAssist.
For the production, Craca, a longtime Sound Devices user, needed to record audio in three rooms, with only five minutes between each scene. He credits his gear for overcoming the time constraints he faced while switching between rooms and speakers.
“For the first interview with President Obama in the West Wing, I flew two Schoeps boom microphones and fed two Canon C300s analog audio via the HRS 10-pins and a Sony PMW-F5 AES audio feed via the XLR main outs, all from the 688,” says Craca. “The program feed was sent to the client from the 688 via the aux outputs on TA3 connectors. Then, at the last minute, the White House transcriptionist asked for a mic feed for her handheld recorder, which the 688 allowed for effortlessly.”
Craca then faced a fast turnaround group interview in another room, where he was tasked with booming the First Lady and Dr. Biden, while miking four additional guests with lavs. “The transcriptionist once again dropped her recorder in my bag, so I hit record with five iso tracks enabled, and off we went. This time, the client had to be in another room, so I also sent the L/R mix tracks to a speaker placed in an adjacent room. I set the four wireless tracks to the left channel with MixAssist enabled, and fed the boom clean to the right channel.”
The next setup involved a brief sit down with the First Lady and Dr. Biden. Craca turned to a pre-saved setup in the 688 user menu for his standard two-boom record setup.
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