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MillimeterSound Devices 744T and 788T Beta Sight
Dec 7, 2009 12:00 PM, By Kyle Hartigan, NFL Films
Sound Devices takes to the field for NFL Films.
NFL Films started using the Sound Devices 744T recorder during the 2005 season.
NFL Films has been documenting the sights and sounds of football games since the 1960s. In 2005, the company's location sound department made the transition from digital tape to hard-drive recording.
I was brought on at NFL Films as a full-time production sound mixer the same year it made the switch from Fostex PD-4 DAT machine to the Sound Devices 744T. NFL Films bought the recorders a few months prior to my arrival but hadn't really begun the learning process of the machines.
I was 22 years old, ambitious, and eager to help facilitate the changeover. I felt like I was the face of change and modern technology and I was, therefore, determined to be the one to know the Sound Devices products inside and out.
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The 2005 football season was a year of quick learning for me, the other three staff sound mixers, and all the freelance NFL Films employees around the country. We had to set a standard operating procedure for using the 744T so all of the files that came back from all of the games each weekend were in the same format. Before the season started, I helped write this standard and record all the test files to ensure our postproduction was ready for the change, too.
At the time, our sound cameras were Aaton XTR prods using AatonCode or Sony HDW-F900s with matching timecode. (Now we are shooting almost all of our sound games on the Sony HDW-F900R and recording double system on 744Ts with Lectrosonics SR camera hops as guide tracks).
As the 2005 season went on, I stayed on top of the many firmware updates that Sound Devices released and kept all of our sound mixers up to date, as well. In spring 2007, we did a large shoot in the Cayman Islands that required us to mike around 20 football players as well as set up four mics throughout the crowd. Once again, I looked to Sound Devices to be my main recorders for this entire show. I needed 24 tracks, so I linked six 744Ts together through word clock and the link cables. Upon testing this in the weeks leading up to the show, I found that code and machine control were getting lost after the third recorder in the chain. I called Sound Devices, and they told me I was the first to link this many machines together! Since working together to solve the issue, Sound Devices has made a firmware update to rectify this.
By summer 2007, I began working with the Holophone H2 surround sound microphone. Although it's a 7.1 mic, I was only using front left, center, front right, rear left, rear right, and the sub channels, excluding the top and rear center. I needed to record six channels and, again, I went with my Sound Devices products. The 744T is a 4-track recorder with only two channels of mic level in with phantom power, so I had to adapt somehow. I used two 744Ts to get the six record channels I needed and also passed through my Sound Devices 442 mixer for the two mic level in phantom power channels the 744T couldn't accommodate. The rig was cumbersome and not easy to move from location to location. It was built on a cart, and a bag setup was not even a thought. The recordings worked out and sounded great, but I knew it was not an ideal setup for any future shoots that would require mobility or subtlety.
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