High Five Sound has handled location mixing and post-production for documentary, reality, auto racing, and news programs across a wide range of platforms including A&E, Bravo, CMT, ESPN, Freeform, MTV, and Vice. Founder Edson Alvarez has relied on Lectrosonics Digital Hybrid Wireless for everything from unscripted buzz-builders like My Big Redneck Wedding to behind-the-scenes explorations of Walt Disney World such as The Imagineering Story and The Magic of Disney’s Animal Kingdom. Alvarez shared highlights of how High Five crushes assignments using SRc and UCR411 series and receivers, SMWB and SMDWB wideband transmitters, and the IFB-T4 for communications.
“My dad played guitar in a band, but oddly that gave me an interest in mixing rather than playing,” he says of the gestation of his career. “I graduated from Full Sail University in 2001 with a degree in Recording Arts. I did the music production thing for a while, then wanted to get into TV. A reality production company called Pink Sneakers gave me an internship, and my mentor was a mixer named Jimmy Van Winkle. He taught me everything I know, and he used Lectrosonics. He’d order several pieces for an upcoming show, and I’d put together the kits, which caused me to appreciate how solid Lectrosonics is. Through rain, snow, sand, heat, or cold, it will never give up on you.”
One such story of grace under fire — make that water — comes from Fiji. “We were working on a reality-survival type competition show there,” recalls Alvarez. “We had, like, a total of 20 SMDB and SMDWB transmitters on cast members, and though we wrapped them up pretty tightly, some would inevitably come back having taken on salt water. At that location, there was no time to send them back and wait for new ones to arrive. My supervisor had read that you could disassemble a pack, remove the batteries, expose the motherboard, and clean it with distilled water. Then, you dry it out in the sun. I’m not saying to try this at home, but we had no choice, and it worked. If we had this kind of accident, we could get packs back up and running in about three hours.”
Closer to home, promotional and documentary shoots inside Disney theme parks have brought different challenges. “Walt Disney World is, as you’d imagine, a very active RF environment because of all the things that are under some kind of radio or remote control,” Alvarez explains. “I usually have to stay in the A1 block, but I can always find six or seven channels I can use, thanks to Lectro receivers’ ability to find and hang onto frequencies. I was just there for four days, in fact, working across three of the different parks. I was able to use mostly the same frequencies all the time, which was surprising given that I had four or five people miked at all times.”
Sometimes, this work takes the High Five crew deep into the belly of the beast to show viewers how Disney works its animatronic and multimedia magic. “Sometimes we need IFB inside a ride,” says Alvarez. “For this, one of my bags is always equipped with a T4 transmitter, as if necessary, it can go up to 250 milliwatts of output power, which is more than enough to cut through all the metal in the structure and the RF in the air. Next to my SRCs, I also still use the UCR411 even, and honestly, I think it has a certain magic about signal acquisition.”
Another Florida staple, the Daytona 500 NASCAR race, was proof of for Lectrosonics’ reputation for range that exceeds expectations. “The Daytona International Speedway is also an RF-heavy environment during an event,” says Alvarez, “with all the two-way radios and TV crews on site. I was once shooting a pre-race test drive and had to set up in the stands with fin antennas. We could receive the driver’s voice around the entire run of the track, which I didn’t think would happen.”
Edson’s most recent gig, for the Rafa Racing Club at Florida’s Sebring Raceway, was a frequency coordination challenge. “I have eight channels in my bag for mics,” he explains. “We use two scanners to hone in on the conversations going on between drivers and crews. Then there’s the IFB for the producers, which I have on T4 [transmitters]. At one point, we couldn’t find the coaches but we had their signal. The producer was really impressed and he was probably 70 yards from our position. That gives me a lot of confidence in Lectrosonics.”
Looking to upcoming projects, Alvarez is excited to audition his latest Lectrosonics acquisition, the DSR4 digital four-channel receiver. “My SRcs and 411s have always had great sound quality, so I’m looking forward to comparing them,” he notes. “Four channels in a single slot mount, plus backward compatibility with all my transmitters, sounds interesting. But I already know this — I’ve never met a Lectrosonics piece that wasn’t a beast in the field.”
