Marlowe Taylor, CAS, AMPAS, a production/recording specialist who focuses on both music and film/television genres — including ongoing work with AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead — employs numerous Lectrosonics systems and components in his toolkit, headed by D Squared DCR822 and DSQD wireless receivers joined by a transmitter complement of multiple SMQV, watertight WM, compact SSM, plug-on HMa and UCR411a units for vehicle work.
“One of the biggest challenges so far this season was our James Bond-style boat chase scene,” Taylor says. “We had six actors on one boat, and they let the actor drive the speedboat. They’re speeding down a river and the bad guys are chasing them and shooting at them. There’s all this yelling in the dialogue. For this, we had six 411s in a bag in our follow boat, and we’re trying to keep up. Video kept losing their image even though it was compressed to 1080 for transmission. But the Lectro just held on, and that was just using SMQV packs on the actors set to 100 milliwatts output.”
He adds that he’s looking forward to using his digital receivers in similar shoots: “In terms of that kind of extreme range situation, I now think the DCR822 even surpasses the performance of the 411, which is legendary in itself. Lectro has really nailed it with those. At any rate, we got great performances and post-production didn’t have to replace any of the lines. We also hide a lot of plant mics to catch ambient noise in scenes like this, for which we use the HMa.
“We did another show called The Walking Dead: World Beyond, which had a helicopter scene with some dialogue. It’s way up in the air, the blades are throbbing, and I’m getting clear dialog all the way through with just an SMQV on 100 mW. I thought I had it on 250. When we got the pack back and I checked, I was like, holy smokes!”
“The other night, we did a rain scene,” he continues. “The performance of the WM transmitters was astounding. It was a heavy downpour and high winds. Again, post didn’t have to loop in anything. The actor Colman Domingo, who’s been in The Color Purple and a lot of shows, said, ‘Marlowe, I just realized I didn’t have to loop any of the dialogue we did in all that heavy rain and wind!’ Lectro held on tight with the combination of the WM packs and my D Squared system.”
Taylor adds that he utilizes Wireless Designer software to coordinate as many as the 24 channels sometimes used on Fear, and he also cites the sonic quality of the wireless systems. “Just last year, I got inducted into the Academy after working on Judas and the Black Messiah,” he notes. There’s one scene with [lead actor] Daniel Kaluuya in a kitchen visiting a mom — it was likely the scene that got him the Oscar. Skip Lievsay, the re-recording mixer, was blown away by the sound quality. That was all Lectro. There was just the boom with an HMa, and one plant mic by the coffee cup. Skip said it sounded so warm and clean that he didn’t want any other score or sound design in the scene. We had a little light traffic noise for outside, but none of the sound design you’d normally do for a kitchen. That gave me chills.”
He concludes with some advice to others working in production sound: “You’re going to make mistakes. Even the greatest, Oscar-winning mixers forgot to press the record button once or twice. Half the battle is learning how to listen, how to tune your ears to what’s good and bad in your environment. You’ll start to develop a sense of tonal balance between actors’ voices. Oh, and use good gear. Going to an event and having a producer tell me, in front of the actors, that the sound is amazing, they don’t have to do ADR, and that I’m saving them so much time? That’s an honor I owe to Lectrosonics.”
