How often do you use wireless on dramatic pieces?
 

I'm starting to get out of my obsession with trying to boom everything, sadly. Nobody is impressed with whatever strenuous heroics you go through to try and boom that wide master shot. All they remember is the fleeting boom shadow on the lead actress' face. So I'm using wireless more and more (much as I hate it), and I'm curious to know what percentage other people are finding themselves having to do it. For me, I see this going to as much as 40 percent of the time with at least one actor laved up. In fact, I'm thinking about buying a handful of extra lavs (thank God for the inexpensive AT899cw!) and prewiring everybody so I can throw a transmitter on them quickly as needed. It never fails. The shot they tell me they're setting up never turns out to be what they actually shoot. Then they're ready to roll and there's no time to put the lav on. How are other people handling this?

And prewiring everyone looks great on the resume, make sure you rake them in before each one leaves for the day, that's a lot harder than it sounds.
Cheers.

What about an equipment liability contract with the producer for things like that? Is that ever done?

Not to start with, until you maybe lose a few. But your rates may go up slightly to cover insurance premiums.

I still don't like using wireless or lavs. It's doubtless the technology has improved but I don't like the close-mic sound much and wireless still has challenges with controlling the gain structure. This could be different with Zaxcoms and B6's but I don't own those and the productions I work on won't hire and are happy to use my wired boom kit. I'm not in the game enough to make it a worthwhile investment of my own. The art of the ninja boom-op is definitely being eroded over time. No doubt it will be "rediscovered" as the next great thing once the ziggers are zagging and the zaggers zigging.

I'm with you. I don't like wireless either, but I feel forced to use it more often than I'd like to.

:)

Ty Ford

I tend to use a bunch of wireless as well, just for the simplicity of it. I balance out the "Presence" by adding a touch of verb with Space Designer and dropping the volume back a bit to try to blend it in to the environment a bit more.