Top soundman Steve Morantz, C.A.S., who won an Emmy this year for his work on HBO’s Entourage, is now working as the production mixer on the new ABC/Touchstone show Samantha Who? starring Christina Applegate as the shallow, materialistic title character with a severe case of amnesia. The show is shot entirely on the lot at CBS Radford in Studio City, Calif. “We shoot five day weeks, on average 12 hours a day, and we don’t leave the lot that often, and basically work on two stages, so it’s very unlike Entourage which was all location,” reports Morantz.

“The big challenge is getting clean audio and making sure it’s all the same as during rehearsals,” adds Morantz, whose credits include the upcoming Val Kilmer movie Columbus Day and Thirteen as well as over 100 commercials. “So we try to boom as much as possible because it’s not compressed ─  it’s cleaner, and you don’t have to deal with mics being buried under clothes. It’s just a much fuller, richer sound.” To this end, he runs a crew with two boom operators running “pretty much all the time, so that if an actor has to walk across a set halfway through the scene, I may start with one guy and then have the other operator pick up the second half. And then you also have to deal with mixing all that.” Until recently he used a Sennheiser MK 60 setup, “but I recently switched to all Schoeps CMIT-5 shotgun mics, because I really like their audio quality,” he says. “It’s cleaner and I feel just more natural-sounding, and for the close-ups, I like using a Schoeps MK 41. They complement each other well and I try to keep the equipment consistent. Another reason for using the shotgun or cardiod microphone over the lavs is that it’s fuller and has more presence. Obviously, when you are outdoors and there is traffic, lavs become the more useful tool.”

The soundman also uses a lot of plant mics, “So rather than wiring someone, I like to use the Sanken CUB-01, which is a plant mic. We also plant Schoeps mics a lot, and sometimes a lavelier mic, such as the Sanken COS-11.” For a recorder, Morantz uses a Deva V. “I used to use a Fostex PD6 when I got into non-linear,” he notes, “but I found I needed the extra tracks on occasion, and I swapped to the Deva for Entourage and have been very happy with it. It’s a great machine and very reliable.” For his mixing board Morantz uses the Cooper CS208D.

 “It can be quite a demanding show,” he says, “and in my opinion, if you shoot a wide master shot and then a tight close up shot, and then they use five seconds of the wide master and all of the scenes during the close up, I still want the wide master to sound as good as the close up. So you face certain challenges like that, and also if there are lighting issues where you can’t swing a boom overhead. But that’s the nature of the job; you’re always making adjustments to get the best audio you can.”