Following the Bravo TV channel’s pilot series The Real Housewives of Orange County in 2006, The Real Housewives reality show format documents the activities of a group of women and their day-to-day lives – with the drama and plot twists that follow – around the world.
With a total of 16 international franchises, the show finds itself in locations ranging from lavish homes to ‘unscouted, noisy and often not ideal’ locations, the productions follow where the women lead, often leaving little time for preparation. Accordingly sound recordist Stuart Windle needed a ‘solid solution to ensure recordings were never lost’ – leading him to JoeCo’s BlackBox BBR1MP.
Windle is sound supervisor and location sound recordist for the UK’s The Real Housewives of Cheshire, decided to implement the BBR1MP during a break before filming the most recent series. Windle uses the BBR1MP as the ‘heart of a very compact, powerful, high-track count custom system’ incorporating the recorder with power and RF distribution for up to 24 channels of radio mics in one 5U-high rack designed for fixed rig reality shooting.
‘Reliability is incredibly important,’ he says. ‘With a high number of radio mics and only one multitrack recorder on location, we needed to know that the set-up would run solidly for six hours of shooting, and the BBR1MP does that. The most incidental line or reaction could be the next big storyline and obviously a scene can often only happen once. There is a lot hanging on it being rock-solid – including our livelihoods.’
Windle adds that this style of reality TV, and the drama that comes along with it, can cause further challenges: ‘The women can go from a whisper to a scream in seconds and the BBR1MP’s limiters deal really well with that.’
Based on the BlackBox, the BBR1MP is a stand-alone multichannel audio acquisition system offering 24 high-quality microphone preamps, operating at up to 96kHz at 24 bits, which are integrated into the recorder’s tiny 1U housing. Primarily designed with the broadcast engineer and location sound recordist in mind, including JoeCo’s Safe ’n’ Sound recovery feature which ensures that no audio recording is lost even if the power fails, the BBR1MP records directly to an external USB2 drive in Broadcast WAV format. In addition, the BBR1MP can be used alongside JoeCo Control for iPad, as used by Windle on Real Housewives locations.
‘I think they have done a great job with the app, it is ideal for what we do and combined with the BBR1MP, overall it is much more convenient than our previous attempts for recording solutions.’
More: www.joeco.co.uk
