Something that deserves a lot of time and attention are alternatives to live rounds being fired on set. Here in New Mexico, we are understandably VERY motivated to look for alternatives. In the past, my team has done remote triggers attached to the gun (needs a lot of space to hide things), but on Honey Don’t!, the character was going to be shooting with a revolver…and was nude. No place to hide anything. I wish I could claim this brilliant and cost effective solution, but it was our Fixtures Foreman Todd Roberts that came up with it.
Link to the Product
This little $10.58 item (well, the package includes two of them- which is good as they are delicate) was the answer, along with a solid state relay and some good old-fashioned contact closures on the console side. It’s basically a microphone that, when triggered, outputs current. We had the mic/circuit board just out of frame and any noise above the (adjustable) threshold would close the circuit. Since we decided to use contact closures- that’s all I needed to set up a cue list with the muzzle flash lights going to whatever my gaffer and the DP wanted in the moment.
In Todd’s words:
“This is the sound sensor I used. You can adjust the sensitivity threshold, as well as how long it passes current once it detects sound above that level. I wired it up to a solid-state relay, which acts as a switch to close the circuit on the I/O box you had (MLP- it’s an Eos Response Analogue IO Gateway). We also used a mechanical relay, but the audible “click” sometimes triggered the sensor a second time, and the solid-state relay should have been faster anyways.”
Here is the diagram included with the purchase:
On the day, we found that random movements or the expected shouting before a character fires a weapon, could trigger the mic relay. It was an easy fix- I wrote two macros. One that disarmed the trigger in Eos and one that armed the trigger. I’d fire the “arm” macro right before they shot. The mic/relay setup was reliable and worked really well once the threshold and duration was set correctly.
That’s it for this week. I’ll be taking two weeks off for the holidays and will be back in the new year. What muzzle flash triggers have y’all used and how did it go? I’m hoping to work up a remote midi trigger using a drum pad on the inside of the character’s hand that will register the pulling of the trigger and send to a contact closure, but that’s a ways out for me. Let me know what you have done in the comments!
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Mark LaPierre is a programmer in film and television based out of Albuquerque. He grew up in live entertainment and has been a designer/programmer for musicals, concert dance, live music, circus and corporate. Mark is a proud member of IATSE and an ETC Eos trainer. If you enjoy his content, please consider commenting on his posts on the website to appease the Algorithm.