“Getting good audio on documentaries presents all sorts of special challenges,” says soundman Steve Blazewick. “You’re usually working in very difficult locations.” He’s not kidding. In the past year alone, Blazewick has teamed with famed filmmaker Jean-Michel Cousteau for two big projects: Return to the Amazon shot in Brazil, and Sea Ghosts, a documentary about Beluga whales shot in Alaska and Canada.  Both documentaries took “several months” to shoot, he reports, “and the environments are always very challenging, as you’re dealing with extremes of cold and heat, not to mention water – after all, it’s a Cousteau film so you’re constantly in and out of boats and your gear is always being exposed to salt or fresh water and some kind of moisture.”

Given all that, Blazewick relies on a Sound Devices 442 mixer and the 744T recorder, “because in my opinion [its] products are as bullet-proof as you can get today, and they stood up to all the bad conditions like a champion. Despite constantly moving them around, tossing them in and out of small planes and boats, I rarely had any kind of problem with them. And they needed minimal maintenance to keep them running. In fact, when I did do maintenance, it was just to keep them clean and in good working condition. 

For microphones, Blazewick relied on different set ups depending on the shooting situation. “First off, there are all the interviews, which is the core of the audio work I do on these documentaries,” he says. “For those, I use Lectrosonics 411 digital wireless systems. I’ve used them on features, on TV shows and commercials, and they’ve always been very reliable – and they performed just as well in these documentary conditions. They’re very well-built; you never get sand inside them. For instance, I only cleaned them once on each trip. Another plus is that they allow me to scan for open frequencies whatever area I’m in.”

As both projects are feature documentaries, Blazewick also recorded sound effects, and says that, “the sounds of nature are just as important as the interviews to me.” To capture ambient effects, he uses three different mics: a Sennheiser 416F, “as it has a flat frequency response and it’s very rugged – you can drop it in water or on a rock and it won’t affect it;” a Shure VP88, “a stereo mic that’s also very durable and reliable, and best for recording close up or louder effects;” and a DPA 8011 hydrophone mic, “a very interesting mic for recording underwater, that you only get to use on a project like Sea Ghosts.”

“I had it cabled for 15 meters to record the whales, and we went out with some scientists who’ve studied them for years, and they told me that the DPA mic gave them the best recordings they’d ever heard, which is pretty impressive coming from them,” says Blazewick. “You face daily challenges on documentary projects like these, so having reliable, sturdy equipment is vital."