Claudia Katayanagi has had a long career in sound mixing and recording that has taken her on location with HBO documentaries, including the acclaimed Food, Inc., Crude and Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, PBS’ Frontline, and the BBC’s arts-focused Imagine series. She has also made dozens of programs for San Francisco’s public media station KQED, and worked on the second and first units of feature films.
“I generally record dialogue for films, documentaries, and corporate shoots,” said Katayanagi, “ But like all sound recordists on these types of projects, ambient sound is a delight to record. Surf sounds in stereo are always one of my favorites, as are bell towers and train stations all over the world.”
A convert to Sound Devices’ portable recording and mixing equipment when the products first appeared on the market, Katayanagi owns a Sound Devices 302 three-channel field mixer, a 744T four-track audio recorder, and a 664 12 input, 16 track field production mixer. Katayanagi bought the 664 mixer just a few months after it was first introduced, a decision made much simpler by her prior exposure to the brand.
“Owning the previous Sound Devices mixers made for an easier transition to the 664,” she added. “ I knew how important all its capabilities were going to be and now I feel as though I have a mini computer in the guise of a mixer/recorder on location. The numerous permutations of input to output selections have been invaluable for so many different types of shoots.”
Her favorite Sound Devices gear is still by her side and proved instrumental in her first turn as a feature documentary director, a project she has worked on for the past five years. Her new film, A Bitter Legacy, was recently awarded “ Best Documentary” at the Women’s Independent Film Festival. The project, recounts the concentration camps created by the United States government to confine Japanese Americans and others of Japanese ancestry during World War II. The film focuses on the lesser-known, essentially secret isolation outposts that served as concentration camps for the more vocal among those incarcerated. These “ more harsh prisons,” said Katayanagi, were “for those who stood up, spoke up and resisted what they saw to be an injustice.”
Given her limited resources as a first-time director, Katayanagi is also the documentary’s producer and its primary location sound mixer. “During interviews, I would set up the boom and a lav mic on talent, and with my headphones on, I would conduct the interviews for hours at a time,” she said. “Knowing how well the 664 performed, I simply had to trust my ears as I directed the interviews, and several times, a re-enactment.”
She particularly enjoyed hearing the final product as a member of the audience during the film’s screenings. “I recently got to see and hear my film played in a theatre with a THX sound system for the first time and I was so blown away by how good my film sounded,” she said. “ I give a large amount of credit to my Sound Devices 664, and to my sound editor and mixer, Philip Perkins.”
A Bitter Legacy screened in April at the Arizona International Film Festival and Vail Film Festival.
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads — essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More