HOT OFF THE SERVERS...

This is just a quick swing through the blog to announce that Filmmakermagazine.com has just posted an article about Planet X, the webseries Jacob Hensberry and I made (with Super Su, of course).  Well, the article is actually about repurposing other formats as webseries, but, let's be honest.  It's about Planet X.

Here's the link: http://filmmakermagazine.com/66936-the-many-different-roads-to-a-web-series/

Enjoy.  I'll be back here soon to post pictures of me with helicopters, the Muppets, and a guy on fire.  Seriously.  That's really the life I lead...

Ta.

Have you ever been to Miami?  A lot of people have.  Ponce De Leon was one of them.  Kim Kardashian and We Are Scientist's Keith Murray are two others.  And now I, Kenneth Wilfred Cook*, can be added to that prestigious list.  Okay, in truth, I've been to Miami a bunch of times, but on those trips I mostly spent my time wondering when I would be allowed to leave Miami and I can honestly say that until this trip I had never slept within the confines of Miami-Dade County.  The simple fact is that I've just never found Miami that interesting of a destination.  However, after recently spending a little over two weeks there, I have learned to...well, let's not say "like" Miami, as that would be a little less than accurate, but I can confidently say that I don't dislike Miami.  It has it's perks in the form of great weather and aesthetic pleasantries, but I still have this suspicion that Miami Beach and South Beach are pretty much what Los Angeles would be like if Los Angeles was only West Hollywood.  But with alligator-sized mosquitoes.  Oh, and alligators, as well.  Those sea cow things are pretty cool, though, and I've heard that they taste exquisite.  Anyway, let's get to the meat of this South Beach diet...

THE LEGALITIES OF PRODUCTION...

Without any joking around, I'll say that the show I was working on in Miami was actually pretty dope and I look forward to it airing in, oh, I don't know...within the next year or so.  Here, let me tell you all about it.  It's called...

Ruh-roh!!!  No, that's not the name of the show.  I can't tell you the name of the show**.  You see, when you work on a TV show, especially a competition show, you have to sign this little document called a Non-Disclosure Agreement.  It basically says that if you talk to anyone not directly related to the production of the show about any content aspect of the show, you'll get the living shit sued out of you.  The fact that this show had an impressively large purse of prize money makes it even trickier, legally, to talk about it at all.  There's a list of rules that production companies legally have to follow in competition shows with prize money to a) protect themselves from any lawsuits alleging impropriety, and b) avoid angering the feds.  So, sorry, dudes.  When the show airs I'll write about it episode by episode.  I will be able to do that due to the fact that while the show itself is cool, some of the work days involved in making it have significantly and permanently scarred my brain.  So, when was the last time you worked a 105 hour work week?

Here's a few things I can tell you about this trip:

-Miami exists in a strange, alternate timeline in which rock and roll never happened.  Honestly, I'm totally cool with that, as guitar music has been absolute garbage for the past decade or so and finally needs to be stomped out by a giant boot.

-Kid Capri is super cool and his birthday party was a shit-ton of fun.

-If you go to Miami, I highly recommend visiting the beach.  I've heard it's nice, although I have zero first hand proof of that, as I never got a chance to go.

-Just because a sushi place has a five star review rating on Yelp doesn't mean that it's actually good.

-Miami defies one of the oldest constants in the physical universe.  Allow me to explain...

THE LAW OF HOTEL ROOM CONSISTENCY...

Here, let me show you a few pictures.

What we have here are three different pictures of three different hotel rooms in two different hotel chains.  Notice anything?  If you have your acute observation cap snuggly secure upon your mellon you've probably noticed that they LOOK EXACTLY THE FUCKING SAME.  Brown carpet, comforters with fake throw blankets sown into them, wheeled office chair in a space to small to wheel around, etc.  Sure, sometimes there are two beds and sometimes there's one big bed, but that's pretty much all the variation you're going to find in hotel rooms.  And that's the way hotel chains want it to be.  It's done for consumer reasons.  Something about guests feeling more at home if there is minimal variation in hotel rooms, or some such horse shit.  Regardless, this is how it is all across America.  But wait!  Check this out...

What?!!!  Hardwood floors?  Beds that look like they were made in the past few years?  Real curtains and no wheely chair?  Dear, Aqua Hotel of Miami Beach, you are a renegade among sheep.  Okay, the lack of a pool was a bummer, but thank you for a few nights of variety.

So, I know how much you all love it when I go on long tangents about sound equipment, but I'd like to point out that this is supposed to at least kind of be an audio blog, so I'm going to take this moment to talk gear.  If you want to get a snack this would be a good time to do it, but don't take too long, as this is going to be short.

In brief, I'm not a fan of Audio Technica wireless systems.  They work fine when you have a sharkfin up (it's basically just a funny looking antenna that boosts the signal of a wireless system), but without one they have a range of roughly...oh, let's say...four feet.  If you're lucky.  Complete garbage.  Also, while you're all aware of my intense love of the Sound Devices 788T, let me introduce you to a machine that makes me literally (figuratively) want to kill whoever designed it.  Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Tascam HS-P82...

The "P" in the name of the recorder stands for "Portable," but if you look closely you may notice that this absolute piece of shit, heavy as fuck, brick of a machine has table feet.  If your product has table feet you probably shouldn't refer to it as being portable (which in the production world means "it goes in a bag and you strap it to yourself as you run around chasing stuff).  To top it off, it constantly drifts timecode, only has one set of balanced LR outs, no dedicated outs, and is fucking touch screen.  TOUCH SCREEN.  Do have any idea how easy that makes it to accidentally arm/disarm/mute a track or, oh I don't know, accidentally turn the machine off mid-recording?!!!!!!  Total garbage.  Tascam should be embarrassed to have this monstrosity in its line.  After being stuck with one of these for over two weeks I seriously hope Tascam goes out of business.

Oh yeah, I lied about the gear part of this being short, btw...

Here it is...

The Sound Devices 664 field mixer/recorder.  It's the balls...but sadly, there are some drawbacks.  There's not a whole lot that I can say about it that hasn't been said in other reviews (that's my nice way of saving all of you that don't care about my gear reviews some time and me the effort), but I can confirm that this type of system is definitely the way forward for ENG/reality/documentary.  I've used it about four times this week and have only run into a couple of trouble spots with its menu interface.  The most annoying one is that I can't seem to assign names to the individual tracks, which the manual says is an easy thing to do.  Also, the scene/shot names don't seem to be taking, which is actually a huge deal.  I was working a pretty hectic shoot, so it could be something as simple as an additional "OK" prompt, or the fact that I changed my mind and switched my recording media at the last second.  I'm sure there's a simple fix for those, even if it's a firmware update.  SUPER HUGE BUMMER is that there is no option in file management for recording to mono.wav files.  This actually sucks super hard in my opinion and I find it oddly sneaky that the generally awesome Sound Devices company just kind of skipped over that little tidbit in all of the product literature.  The simple fact is that most editors are idiots and every time I can record my tracks mono.wav it saves me getting this phone call: "Uh...hey.  It's [Name] from [Show].  So, um...I'm looking at the audio tracks and there's only, like, one of them.  I thought there were, like, 8 or something..."  They're interleaved, bro!!!!  Anyway...

I found a really neat new app for Lectrosonic wireless systems that works as a remote control.  It's super practical, but also hilarious due to the fact that a) it works by sending a tone through the lav mic that the transmitter is attached to, b) that tone sounds like an old dial-up modem, and c) you have to hold your phone, while it's making the dial-up noise, right up to the chest of whomever the wireless system is on...and it fucking freaks people out, man.  Love it!

So...I showed up to a shoot the other day to find this...

Yep.  It earned the nickname Rape Ape over the course of the day simply due to how damn creepy the thing was.

So, that's about it for now.  I'll try, and probably fail, to update this thing more often.  Or whatever.

Peace in the AL East, y'all.

*Wait...that's not my middle name
**Let's just say that it's a DJ battle show

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT:

You know, guys?  Fine.  I'll take some precious time out of my day to upload a couple of clips.  Some of these are kind of old, but whatever.  Now you can stop asking...


The first one is from one of the 10,000 shoots I've done for Comedy Central this year.  No joke, this particular shoot was one of the longest days of my life.  Jesus.  Just watching this 40 second clip makes me retroactively tired...

Next up we have one of several promos I did with John Oliver over the summer.  If you're wondering why I'm just getting around to posting this clip now it's because I'm seriously fucking lazy and tend to forget about things roughly ten minutes after they happen (Not you, Clooney.  I could never forget you).  Also, when you ask a producer about getting clips from them for your reel you may as well be asking them to explain time travel in Russian.  The answer is always the same: ten seconds of a blank stare followed by them turning and walking away.

Side note: after I corrected John about some very deep James Bond trivia he called me "the world's biggest super-nerd," which, coming from him, I think may have been a compliment.  Anyway, here...

And although I can't embed it here for some reason (once again, that lazy thing...), here's the link to Planet X: The Series

As mentioned in previous posts, Planet X is a project that Super Su, Jake Hensberry and I worked on awhile back.  Check it out.  There may be some big news about Planet X coming soon, but until then please enjoy the first five episodes.

Listen, I know you're all going to be super bummed, but I can't seem to find the Jersey Shore stuff I did anywhere.  If you're really that interested, just go to youtube, type in Jersey Shore and watch any of the six thousand clips that pop up.  It's all the same shit anyway.

Moving on, here are two clips from awhile back that I just noticed are available online:

Lance and Reggie:

SNL cast (no, that's not the Amazing Rick Dacey) and Rashida Jones:

Okay, that should do it for now.  As recent shows air I'll keep throwing clips up.  I'd find more now, but I have to run off and shoot a pilot about drunk people.  Seriously.  No joke.  Yeah.

2013 IS OFF TO THE RACES...IF THE RACES ARE IN MIAMI:

Happy New Year, or whatever.  2012 was pretty rad on the work front and I look forward to several months of vacation to recuperate and spend my hard (easy) earned cash.  Or, I could go in the opposite direction and book 40+ days of the next two months right out of the gate.  Yeah, that sounds better.

So, after a year of being practically enslaved to Viacom, hassling Clooney, spending a shockingly large amount of time in some state called "Oklahoma," and not getting to surf First Point Malibu nearly as much as I would have liked (whatever, it's all about Rincon in the winter months...) I will be pulling up anchor and shipping off to...Miami of all damn places.  For, like, a lot of time.  The great people at BOR are shooting a new show down there and have requested that my ears go along with them.  My ears and I are pretty much inseparable (long story), so I guess I'll be going there, too.  I know almost nothing about Miami, but I have heard that it is warmer than both LA and NYC this time of year, so werd.  I would love to say that I will totally catch up with the friends I have living down there, but this is production, son!  There is no free time.  However, before that happens, I have a few more BET shoots and some weird thing for the Broadway show Annie.  No complaints.

BTW, after futzing with it at both Coffey Sound in LA and Gotham Sound in NYC, I can officially say this: the Sound Devices 664 is seriously dope and I'm totally buying one.  Granted, there's no internal drive or option to record to an external drive, but for ENG, reality and documentary shoots it's totally going to destroy the 788T.  It's half the price, has more recordable tracks (with the CL-6 add-on), powers up much quicker (about 6 seconds vs the 788T's 40 seconds) and, in a pinch, can run off of AA batteries.  The idea is that no matter where in the world you are you can usually find AA batteries, a CF card or an SD card, which makes it a more practical field recorder than the 7 series.  The only drag is that there's a massive wait time on ordering one, but c'est la vie.  The 788T will always dominate narrative and commercial applications, but its days as the go-to field recorder are over.  Regardless, I still stand by my statement in earlier posts that it's quite possibly the greatest machine ever created.  It's just pricey, son!  Anyway, enough tech-nerd talk...

So, Clooney.  Come on, dude.  You totally let me down.  I never got my gift basket.  WTF?  I'm going to remember this, you prick.  On the other hand, you know who's really nice?  Lorenzo Lamas.  I like to refer to him as "Nice Clooney" these days.  Although, at this stage of his career, he should know that lapel mics and leather jackets don't jive with each other.  Anyway, he's on the new season of The Joe Schmo Show, which D-Ray and I did a bit of, so watch it.  Then email Spike TV and tell them, "Gee, that Kenneth Cook sure is a great sound guy.  You should always hire him.  And D-Ray, too, I guess."

Grumpy side-note:  While interviewing Christoph Waltz for the Django Unchained premier I had to chuckle due to how hilariously German he was being.  His whole thing was, "You know, you should not be asking me questions about my character.  It will ruin the narrative experience of the movie."  Pretty typical German answer to, "So, tell us about your character in the film."  However, after seeing it the other day (in a theater that had plush, reclinable seats with butt warmers...really), I totally agree with him.  Now, as many people will tell you, I have no great love for "The Chin" as a director, but he nailed it this time.  Don't read too much about the movie, just go see it.  See, I can be positive when I want to be.  Although, I still maintain that Inglorious Basterds was one of the worst films ever made.  Seriously.  How did you like that?  It played like it was written by a seven year old.

Anyway, time to go see what it is BET wants me for tomorrow.  Or to take a nap.  One or the other.

Enjoy your year.  Who knows when you'll get another one.