Production sound mixer Chris Bell on why sound is half the picture

The website of production sound mixer Chris Bell begins with the caption, “Sound is half the picture”. Indeed, those that find that when the signal drops on a TV, one can struggle on if the picture is bad, but it becomes impossible if the sound is interrupted. In the same way, viewers forgive a moment of blurry focus or misexposure and move on, but muffled dialogue or audio glitches can disrupt the narrative and lose the audience irretrievably. That’s why Bell, who mixes TV films, commercials, documentaries, corporate videos, and sports events in and around Pittsburgh, is a lifelong Lectrosonics wireless user, as Headliner discovers…

He recently added a DSR digital receiver to his well-loved SRc and SRb slot-mount receivers; and his stable of transmitters includes the DBSMD, SMV, SMQV, and SMWB. “Like a lot of people in production sound, I started off wanting to make records,” recalls Bell.

“Pittsburgh is a wonderful, tight-knit community for film and video production. We may not have the big tax credits of, say, Los Angeles or Atlanta, but there is a lot of work here in documentaries, advertising, and sports. I work a lot with [football team] the Steelers, interviewing guys like Cam Hayward and T. J. Watt. It’s a great town in which to make a living doing this.”

Like in larger production-hub locales, making that living begins with finding solid wireless frequencies in a high-density RF environment. “If you’re in the city, it’s challenging with all the buildings and other RF,” explains Bell.

“I’ve found that with the wideband capability of the DSR and a transmitter like the DBSMD, it’s always doable — quick, even — to carve out something. I can’t think of an instance since I acquired those pieces that I haven’t been able to find all the clean channels I need. I have had as many as 10 channels going at a time, with my newest digital sets and my Hybrid Wireless combined, and never had a problem.”

Bell finds the audio quality of the DSR matches its RF tenacity. “The DSR has been working flawlessly, and sounds wonderful,” he enthuses. “The biggest thing I noticed right away about Lectro’s all-digital wireless was the super low noise floor, even side-by-side with my Digital Hybrid Wireless stuff — which was already good. It’s noticeable. If you have somebody projecting and speaking up, it’s just perfect, but even if they’re quiet or a timid speaker and you have to turn up their gain at the transmitter, any noise you may be adding is just so negligible.”

Between the rigors of sports, and many types of productions where the talent may not necessarily be professional actors, Bell believes Lectrosonics’ reputation for durability is well earned.

“I’ve had lots of drops from cast members who feel the need to take their mics off and don’t quite know how to do it,” he points out. “There was this one college athlete, a quarterback, who was doing sprints. Production made a last-minute decision to shoot this and there was no time to put water protection on the transmitter. When he was done, it was just drenched. But it was fine! Nothing got inside it.

“The only time I ever sent a transmitter back to Lectrosonics on L&D [loss and damage] was when a cast member on a show dropped it in a toilet. That was once in 12 years — a pretty good track record, I think.”

Bell’s advice to new and aspiring location mixers is to get great gear at the outset, even if that means going pre-owned. “So many people start out using prosumer-level gear, which is fine for student films and all the other things I did,” he explains. 

“But eventually, you start having problems. You do productions with more and more people involved, which means more frequency coordination. You start shooting in different kinds of environments. You need real, robust gear.

“The thing is, for a little more the price of a new set of the prosumer stuff, you can get a used Lectrosonics pair with years of service to come — something like the 200- or 400-series. I was prompted by advice from people who had already been using Lectrosonics for decades. They weren’t wrong,” he smiles.