High-Tech Iron Man Relies on Aviom Technology

This year's high-tech superhero action movie, Iron Man, is yet another major Hollywood film relying on Aviom Pro16® digital snakes for recording audio on location. The movie, which hit theaters on May 2, stars Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark/Iron Man in this big screen adaptation of the Marvel comic hero.

The Pro16 digital snake used on the set of the film is becoming a familiar setup used by industry veteran Mark Ulano, who records the location sound for many Hollywood blockbusters. His movie credits include Kill Bill, The Wedding Crashers, The Empire Falls, Austin Powers, The Patriot, as well as Titanic, for which he won an Academy Award, and last year's Rocky Balboa, Disturbia, and Grindhouse-Death Proof, for which he also used an Aviom Pro16 snake.

Ulano acknowledges that his industry is one that changes rapidly, especially now as the film industry moves toward an all-digital workflow. In the midst of all this change, Ulano says, "The Aviom digital snake speeds up our workflow considerably. It's revolutionizing some of the things I can do."

For the location sound recording of Iron Man, Ulano set up a 16x16 Aviom digital snake consisting of AN-16/i-M Mic Input Modules and AN-16/o Output Modules to send the actors' wireless mics, boom mics, and intercom signals to the recording truck from the recording cart placed near the set. He also sends playback signals through the snake for on-location evaluation of each scene. The audio is distributed over a single Cat-5e cable, which allows for simple transport over long distances, without the difficulty of dealing with heavy, bulky analog cabling. The inexpensive Cat-5 also endures the weather, traffic, and people that accompany a busy movie set.

"On the set of Iron Man," Ulano says, "the old Howard Hughes Spruce Goose hangers were used for stage space, and the distances between things were so great that without the Aviom gear, it would have taken twice as long to change setups from scene to scene."

Ulano's work is done from a distance where he works in a truck to connect the source signals he's receiving from the set to a Yamaha 01V96 digital mixer connected digitally to a variety of recording devices, including a hard disk recorder, a Mac, and a DAT machine. Ulano creates multiple copies of all recorded data to ensure that nothing is lost. At the same time, he mixes the production audio live to a stereo mix during the action. In this demanding on-location atmosphere, Ulano says, "Things like the Aviom gear that help us are a godsend."