AUSTIN, TX, NOVEMBER 19, 2008 — When Sakana Film Productions, an Austin, TX-based production company, organized a trip to Tokyo as part of its documentary on sushi, entitled, “FISH: Sushi as a Global Cuisine”,” the crew knew they would be taking along Holophone’s® H4 SuperMINI camera-mountable surround microphone to capture the full splendor of the Tsukiji, the world’s largest fish market.
Produced by Sakana Film productions along with Arts and Labor, “FISH” chronicles the sushi industry from the harvesting of tuna off the coast of South Australia, to Tsukiji Market in Tokyo, to the growing sushi craze in Warsaw Poland, in order to illustrate the growing trend of sushi as a global cuisine and present it as a metaphor for globalization. For several sequences in the documentary, the Sakana crew was on location at the Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo, to record the natural sounds of the environment, to be used as the musical soundtrack as well as for supplemental ambient sounds. As Co-Producer Mark Hall explains, the H4 SuperMINI was able to get in with the crowd to provide a fully immersive experience.
“The sounds of the market were very rhythmic, it almost had a chanting sound, so we wanted to make sure we captured every nuance of the auctioneers and the people making their bids,” Hall explains. “The form factor and design of the H4 worked perfectly for the kind of run-and-gun shooting we did everyday. We couldn’t have gotten into the places that we were working in with a larger microphone.”
The 2.5 inch (6cm) x 1.5 inch (3.5 cm) mic head of the H4 SuperMINI is compact enough to be used even in crowded environments while still housing six separate mic elements which allow the mic to capture a balanced surround mix from a single point. It also features an encoder equipped with Dolby Laboratories’ Dolby® Pro Logic II® encoding technology, which converts the mic’s six channels to two so it can be recorded to any standard broadcast camera or stereo recording device. These recordings can then be decoded to six channels in post. For “FISH,” the H4 SuperMINI was placed on the crew’s B-camera, a Panasonic HPX-2000, and used to capture ambient sounds. It was also connected to a Zaxcom Fusion digital audio recorder and used independently of the camera. With a crew of eight, Hall also found the H4 SuperMINI’s ability to easily be adapted to an interview setup a resource as well as a timesaver.
“I like the fact that you have the option to connect a boom mic into the center channel,” Hall continues. “We were able to simply plug a boom mic in when we felt like we needed to interview someone, without the need for an additional camera or crew member. I also liked that you can zoom the center channel to reinforce the frontal lobe of the microphone, and remove the accent off the back channels of the 5.1 so that you pick up things in front of the microphone as well as a few things in the background.”
“FISH” is set to release in late 2009. For more information on Holophone’s products, visit www.holophone.com. For information on Arts+Labor, please visit http://www.arts-and-labor.com .
About Holophone
Holophone is committed to developing and commercializing products that use patented 3-D audio technology to bring the physical experience of “really being there” to a new level for all audio and visual productions by professionals and hobbyists. Holophone provides customers and business partners with industry-leading product and service quality. Holophone is firmly dedicated to providing outstanding value, excellence in service, and product performance.
Holophone® surround-sound microphones are patented audio recording devices designed specifically to address the challenges audio professionals face in capturing, recording and broadcasting multichannel surround sound. Developed by Rising Sun Productions in Toronto, Canada, Holophone systems effortlessly capture discrete signals that are ultra-realistic and provide the most accurate spatiality, audio imaging, and directionality of any recording device. Entirely compatible with all audio mixing, encoding, and playback systems, Holophone also enhances mono and stereo mixes. Holophone systems provide the perfect front end for all professional and consumer audio applications including HDTV broadcasting, standard broadcasting of live sporting and music events, feature film location recording, and studio recording for music, films, and worship applications. Holophone surround sound technology has been used for numerous national and international broadcasts, including the Grammy Awards and NFL Super Bowl. As a scalable system, Holophone technology is also available for license to the consumer electronics industry.
