Mark Ronson and location sound recordist Diego Sanchez relied on the Sound Devices 788T to record the sounds of five different athletes from five different countries and five different disciplines selected for “Beat 2012,” a documentary chronicling Ronson’s creation of Coca-Cola’s anthem for the 2012 London Games.
For the documentary, directed by Kim Gehrig and produced by Somesuch & Co, Sanchez traveled with Ronson and a five-person crew to Singapore to meet an archer, Moscow to meet a 400m runner, Mexico to meet a Tae Kwon Do fighter, Denver to meet a 110m hurdler and London to meet a table-tennis player.
As the crew observed each athlete’s routine in the arena and at home, Ronson listened to the principal sounds of each sport to get a feel for the right mix. With the technical support of Sound Designer Henning Köphnel and location recording advice from Sanchez, Ronson recorded the sounds while each athlete performed his sport.
“We decided to record the sport sounds to two linked Sound Devices 788T digital recorders, as we anticipated a multitude of different microphones in each situation,” says Sanchez.
According to Sanchez, the reliability of the 788T was a major consideration in selecting the Sound Devices recorder for the project.
“From shooting outdoors in Singapore in the middle of summer to dealing with a 20-degree temperature change in the weather from day to night in Denver, not once did the 788T experience a crash, a file corruption or a failed recording,” said Sanchez.
Sound Devices’ 788T has eight full-featured inputs and records up to 12 tracks. It accepts either microphone or line-level signals, provides 48-V phantom power for condenser microphones, offers peak limiters for microphone inputs and features fully adjustable high-pass filters in a compact package. Routing flexibility allows each input to be routed to left/right mixed tracks, isolated tracks or aux tracks.
The 788T has several options for recording media, including an internal 160GB SATA hard drive (256GB SSD in the 788T-SSD), CompactFlash media with UDMA support, an external FireWire hard drive or DVD-RAM (with bus powering). Any or all of these features can be used simultaneously.
See Sound Devices at IBC2012 Stand 8.D74.
