Based in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, NY, sound mixer Robert O’Haire, whose production credits includes feature films such as That’s Beautiful Frank, Millie and the Lords and Santorini Blue as well as documentaries, videos, commercials and indie projects, regularly deploys Lectrosonics gear on location shoots, including two UCR201 receivers and two UM400 transmitters, an SRc receiver, two SMDWB wideband and two LT beltpack transmitters, and a ZS-LRLT kit based around two LR L-Series receivers, with IFBlue receivers for additional camera hops.
“I’ve been interested in sound and recording live music since I was 18,” O’Haire says. “My father was a reporter for The New York Times and I used to take his tape recorder to concerts to record the music, which I probably shouldn’t have done, but I was obsessed with recording. Then I started going to clubs with recording gear and mics and doing recordings on my own – and then people started asking me to come back.”
Starting his production sound business in 2004, he first rented other wireless systems from local houses, but he was disappointed at times by their lack of reliability in the field. He recounted scanning frequencies for a shoot at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and the RF spectrum was jam-packed, which proved troublesome.
O’Haire discovered Gotham Sound in Queens and they introduced him to Lectrosonics wireless systems. Gotham’s advice, support and recommendations in the early days of his career has made him long-term customer, as he returns regularly to the pro audio dealer to purchase his gear and, when needed, rent additional systems for larger productions. O’Haire says the big difference is, “With Lectrosonics you’re thinking about your craft. You’re not thinking about ‘why doesn’t this work?’”
A recent shoot on City Island in New York for Camp Joy Film involved 10 actors, all wearing wireless, even though some only had a single line. O’Haire says normally he’d want to use a boom mic for such a shoot as opposed to mixing 10 voices simultaneously. But the scene was an outdoor wedding, so a boom was less practical. He used his Lectro UCR201 and SMDWB transmitters, each paired with a Sanken COS-11D lav mic, on four of the talent, while the second sound mixer on the shoot used systems of a different brand on the others. His two UM400 receivers and his SRc dual receiver fed into a Sound Devices 788T multitrack audio recorder. O’Haire noted that his systems performed without a problem througout.
Another example is an interesting three-day shoot for a commercial last November where O’Haire placed a Lectrosonics SMWB wideband transmitter on the talent, who was cycling about 1,000 feet on a paved path in Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan. To keep up, the camera also was on a bike, and O’Haire recorded the wireless channel from the SRc receiver while also providing a wireless hop to the camera. Again, he said, the performance of his Lectrosonics gear was without fail.
O’Haire’s upcoming projects include pre-production on the Amazon series Gravesend starring William DeMeo. Connect with him on Facebook and Instagram at #straw2gold.
