eKaqchikel 2009 - Annual Audio Rant

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Thursday, July 23 – Thought today would be relatively straightforward. Not so much. In the end, production went well and everything we set out to shoot happened, but not without more than a little pain. The teachers arrived late, but as they were spending the time rehearsing, it probably didn't matter for the overall timeline. The biggest problem, as in past years: the sounds of Panajachel!

We set up the morning shoot in an outdoor location overlooking the lake and volcanoes. Local color and all that. Unfortunately, we always take a chance setting up outdoors. The weather can be uncooperative, and we're not just talking about the chance of rain. Too much direct sunlight creates harsh shadows, and intermittent cloud cover changes the look of the scene between shoots. In this case, we were battling a partially cloudy sky. We hung a scrim to diffuse some of the light and added a reflector to bounce light onto shadowed faces, but the constantly changing conditions were still a trial.

Worse was the noise! During the three hours we were shooting I catalogued the following sounds, all of which show up somewhere in the recording: dogs, hammers, pickaxes (on concrete) trucks, tuk-tuks (three wheeled taxis), babies crying, children shouting, adults yaking, an ice cream cart bell, a church bell, a PA system, birds, airplanes, helicopters, launches (boats), recorded music, mirimbas, swimmers, a water slide, motorcycles, and even the (loud) swish of a broom. Some of the noises fit right in to the scenario so no big deal, but others are far too distracting. Our basic strategy is to wait for the sounds to go away.

This year we used the microphone a little smarter, too. We have an extremely directional shotgun mic but we really didn't have the right mount to use it to the fullest. Before we left, Lee found a $5 part we ordered from B&H that let us properly clip the mic to one of our boom stands. The control this gave us let us suspend the mic in precisely the right position to hear the talent and minimize the location noise. Point the mic straight down over the heads of the talent gave the best results. Nothing new to the sound engineers out there, but this was the first time it really came together for us in the field.

In the evening, we attended a farewell dinner with the Keqchikel teachers. This is our last planned trip to Guatemala for the project and all were keenly aware. Lot' of emotion in the room – these people have become good friends of our s over the years and they evidently look forward to our visits as much as we enjoy visiting them. The seriousness of the evening was broken up by Marie's bag of Mardi Gras beads. We had an impromptu "throw me something, mister" moment in the restaurant with the teachers shouting and scrambling for beads as though they'd been going to Carnival all their lives. Evidently vying for beads is part of the human DNA!

Tomorrow (Friday) is our last day in Panajachel. We pull out around 3pm and head to Antigua. We'll stay overnight and leave Antigua Saturday morning for the Guatemala City airport, and then home via connection through Houston. Almost done!