Shahrukh Khan in Dubai

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to work with the Indian megastar Shahrukh Khan, when he was in Dubai for a Dubai Tourism commercial.

It was a great project to work on and the end result is pretty good. There was no time to get him back for ADR so we recorded the lines live and also wild tracks when we had the opportunity. The parts with the 'public' were recorded live with either plant mics or hidden on the participants. They knew they were being filmed, they just didn't know what to expect so the reactions are very real.

Recorded on Sound Devices 633 with WisyCom radios, Sanken & DPA lavs and Sennheiser MKH8060

Virgin Holidays Live Commercial

Over the last two days I have been involved with and interesting project, the first live commercial from 18 locations around the world.

There were 3 units in Dubai, one in the desert, one at Atlantis The Palm and I was in the unit out on a boat overlooking Dubai Marina.

I had a very simple setup, just my Pearl MSH10 M/S mic into Sound Devices 552 and out to the camera. The camera signal was sent to a LiveU satellite link unit which broadcast the HD signal to the gallery in London.

We spent a few hours out on the water each night which was fun, although a little hot and sticky, it's still mid 30c and high humidity at this time of year.

A simple sound job for me, but a nice project to be involved with.

Tentacle Sync Timecode System

While working on a recent project, a DIT I regularly work with showed me the Tentacle Sync devices he bought. I had heard about them and thought they were very interesting, so it was great to be able to test them out. Although it wasn't the best project to use them on I still managed to test out the functionality.

The units are incredibly small, about the size of a match box, and don't weigh much more! They have a built-in Velcro back so they are easily mountable, and as they are so light and small don't get in the way at all.

The TC output from the unit is via a 3.5mm jack connector and the cables that were supplied (none are included and each have to be ordered separately) were well made and worked perfectly. I was using the cable for RED which is a very small LEMO connector so it was good to have the cable already made up.

There is only one button on the unit, and this just turns it on and off. All the other functionality is programmed using either a PC or MAC via the USB cable or using IOS or Android (app coming soon) via a TRRS cable. The interface on PC, MAC and iOS is very simple and easy to use. Just set the frame rate and and you're ready to go. User Bits can be set as well as the MIC / LINE level settings, although I found it's best to leave the level setting on auto. The is also a timeout setting, I set it to 12 hours as this should last a whole day. The battery life is said to be 2 days, I have yet to test this.

Jamming is as simple as turning the unit on and plugging in the jack, and plugging the other end into the mixer. I use the LEMO as I have Sound Devices, but you can also sync via BNC with the correct cable. The light on the unit flashes red and then  fast flashing green when jamming and slow flashing green when jammed.

After using them for a few days I was thoroughly impressed and decided to make the DIT and offer for them. He agreed and i'm now a very happy owner of the system.

For more information check out www.tentaclesync.com