Mics Coming Out of My Ears

I am currently sitting in the BYUB truck working at the women's volleyball game... getting paid to watch it. :) I love working sports. Although, I would rather trade sitting on my rump during the game (and working my butt off setting up before the game) to operate a camera (which is pretty much vice versa of what I just said). But instead, I have been catching up on blog reading of friends' blogs that I have failed to look at in several months. :)

Audio in the truck - that's my boss!

It's kind of hard to concentrate in here, though. I am currently looking at 13 screens. I believe 8 of those are the different cameras, 4 are tape (basically, the people who are in charge of getting the amazing replays in a game), and 1 is the on-air camera that everyone else gets to see.

I am also listening to 6-7 people talking... mostly at the same time. We have our two commentators more in the background, the director, the producer, the occasional random additional voice from the truck, and a few other varying people. It's kind of loud and chaotic in here during games.

I may have forgotten to mention but I have to give a talk on Sunday. This past week I went to ward choir for the first time in nearly 6 years and a member of our bishopric is in the ward choir. After we ended, he cornered me and asked me to give a talk on Sunday. The weird thing though is that while I normally don't mind at all giving talks in church (weird, I know), I just really don't feel like giving one this week. haha. Partially just because I'm wondering when I'm going to get it done!

I work until 11 tonight, have to be in SLC by 8am tomorrow, won't wrap til 9 or so tomorrow night and home around 10ish. Then I work another 10 hours on Saturday (2-11pm) and I made plans to go to the temple Saturday morning and then IHOP for breakfast.

My initial thought was "Hmm... well... I do have 1-2 hours while the game is in play where I could do some research and at least get started..." Yeah, not happening! Too much stuff going on and the director keeps saying random - and funny - stuff that makes it hard to concentrate on anything when he's cracking the whole truck up half the time (usually unintentionally... which is half the humor in it).

My absolute favorite game was several years ago and involved the A1 (audio mixer for the game) and the director. One of the girls on the soccer team had a really unusual last name and the A1 thought it was awesome so he turned it into the joke of the night and he and the director went back and forth the whole night trying to one-up each other with ways the name could be used. (ie: "Oh man... my back has been killing me! I think I strained my Kakedelis." or "That was so Kakedelis I can't believe it!") Okay, maybe it's not so funny to people who weren't there. I also don't know if this post will sound coherent at all since I feel like I am listening to (and watching) 27 things at the same time.

Oh PS, in case you were wondering why I just get to chill for the duration of the game it's because I am the "A2" which means that after I set every single mic, cable, etc for the game (which is WAY more than you think), I am just the A1's backup. So if a mic suddenly dies or something happens on the court, I run out and take care of it. Sometimes a game is flawless and I sit in the truck the whole time, and sometimes I actually have something to do. Tonight I have had to go out twice and fix something... so that's good... sort of.

Let me give you an idea of how many mics we have set up for a typical volleyball game...

Pistol grip for shotgun mics

-L & R shotgun mics (ie a very directional mic) - one one each side of the net. These mics have an operator and their sole job is to follow the ball wherever it goes. It catches the audio of a lot of bumps, pancakes, etc.
-L & R camera mics - there are usually 2 handheld cameras on the floor and each of those has a spot on the camera specifically designed for mounting a mic. These are used when the cameraman gets up close and personal with stuff that happens on the floor.
-Near net and far net mics - there are actually two extremely tiny mics that are placed on each end of the volleyball net to capture any movement involving the net. They're used quite frequently to catch the audio of a really intense spike, block, etc.
-L & R team mics - we have a small mic pointed toward each team to catch any good audio the team may be saying... these mics sometimes pick up rather colorful comments
-High L & R mics - there are two cameras high up pointing toward the volleyball court and next to either camera is a mic pointed toward the crowd
-High game cam mic - this one is new but the A1 wanted to test out a stereo mic next to game cam to see how well it picked up the crowd.

ECM 77

-"Snoop Mic" - this one is also new as of tonight and the name was created by the A1. Last game we worked there was a huge (and LONG) argument between one of the coaches and a ref... most of their discussion was in the perfectly wrong spot for audio and we couldn't hear a thing. So for experimental purposes, we put a "snoop mic" (one of the tiny mics) on the side of a table... just in case we had another heated discussion.

The total? 12 mics. Not to mention, the entire booth that I have to set up (where the commentators sit and communicate with the people in the truck). So yes, I work my tail off before the game and thus don't really feel bad for some down time during the game. :P Okay this entry is already far too long because I felt the random need to explain all the mics I placed tonight. The end.