Inside Production: Walter Schoenknecht
In Praise of the Nonengineer
Are you a video or audio engineer? Bet you aren't.
You see, the reason I'm willing to go out on a limb
is because I've met a lot of video people – male and female
– and very, very few of them are engineers. No, really.
If I'm on a shoot and I ask, "Where's the engineer?"
– someone will point off behind the set, toward the donuts,
under a console, or wherever one particular person is standing,
sitting or reclining. That person is the one responsible for the
technical quality of the sound or picture – or sometimes both
– upon whose hunched shoulders rests the success of the taping,
broadcast or live event. And that's whom I had in mind when I set
out to find "the engineer."
But the simple fact is that it's quite unlikely that
the person in question has graduated from an accredited institution
with a degree in electrical engineering — in the trade, a "double-E."
In strictest terms, that's what an engineer is; if you haven't got
the letters B.S.E.E. or M.S.E.E. on the sheepskin, then you ought
not call yourself by that exalted title. At least not according
to the "real engineers."
What are you, then? Well, if you make the picture
darker or brighter on a camera, fiddling with iris and pedestal,
then you might be called a "shader." (What a lame job
title!) If you're pushing audio faders up and down, and chasing
runaway IFB levels, then we could take a page from our feature-film
brethren and call you a "mixer" (like on a cooking show,
with a big spoon).
And if you're running from place to place, building
and cabling gear, making things go and solving problems – well,
we don't exactly know what to call you, but it certainly isn't an
engineer. Not a real engineer. Maybe you're a "nonengineer."
GOOD WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT
Given a choice, a diploma-holding real engineer will
wisely seek out a job where he or she is protected from the elements,
fed healthy, mayonnaise-free foods on a regular schedule and seldom,
if ever, berated loudly and in colorful language over the headset
channel. The double-E makes a living with a laptop and a copy of
Autocad, taking pride in circuits laid out with picofarad accuracy
and in system designs complete to the last elegant detail.
In contrast to the real engineer, the nonengineer's
best friends are little strips of gaffer's tape, lots of bad coffee,
his or her leatherman and a greenie.
The greenie, for those of you outside the nonengineering
world, is a small Excelite screwdriver with a miniature flat blade
and an emerald-green handle – hence, the name. During the old
days when cameras had little pots to be adjusted, a nonengineer
could count on a painful claw-handed greenie-grip muscle spasm at
the end of a 10-hour shift. Despite the disappearance of little
adjustment pots, the greenie's still around – perhaps more
as a badge of office than as a practical tool.
Make no mistake – we need real engineers. I
shudder to picture what might result if control rooms, trucks and
edit suites were routinely slapped together by my greenie-toting
colleagues. But in the real world of production, where time is money
and where the show must go on – in the middle of a technical
snafu, I'd much rather have someone pull out their greenie than
pull out their laptop, advanced degree or not.
Is it all semantics? You bet it is. I offer it to
you in the inaugural installment of this column in lieu of an extended
apology for not being better pedigreed, for being M.O.E.E. (Mit
Out Double-E). I guess it's my point of view that a nonengineer
will have something to offer on technical topics, especially when
immersed in picture, sound and computer technology for years and
years.
For the most part, though, I hope to share some stories
– a few things I've seen and heard – that relate to production
and postproduction and that deal with the technical side of things.
Just so you get the big picture, I can tell you I co-own a small
production company just outside New York City and we do some shooting,
editing, sound and graphics – probably on some of the same
equipment you've got.
GOOD COMPANY
As for you – well, I already know a bit about
you too. The most telling fact is that you're reading TV Technology.
That tells me that you're a techie – no matter how much you
protest – and it also warns me to watch what I say. Odds are
that you've been reading Jay Ankeney's column, Frank Beacham's and
Andy Morris' and good ol' Mario too, so you already know most of
what there is to know about television.
I'll be careful when talking about sound, ‘cause
I know Dave Moulton and Mike Sokol have been filling your head with
audio wisdom. And for all I know, you've been reading about telco
stuff and RF and who knows what else.
But the nonengineer has special needs and that's
what I'm here for. We need to stick together and commiserate, to
ask overly obvious questions and to proclaim, "I'm proud of
what I am — I'm a nonengineer!"
Walter Schoenknecht is a partner at Midnight Media
Group Inc., a New York-area digital production facility. He can
be reached at walter@m2gi.com.
|
