I just finished up work as a control room sound mixer and engineer for another season of Hells Kitchen. Bexel / ASG provides the gear while Keith Garcia at Bald Sound supervises. This is another temporary installation at Century Stages in Culver City, CA. They build the restaurant, kitchen and dorms every season, then tear them out a month later when the season is wrapped. It’s quite an endeavor. We create a mini-city of about 200 people. Many departments come together to create the show of an imaginary restaurant on a sound stage in California.

My work is part of a team of technicians to facilitate 90 cameras, 74 mics, and 3 control rooms for a network reality competition show. There are a lot of big and small details that go into making it all happen but we are getting pretty good at it by now. These pictures help to show the scale of the operation.

Digital multitrack and multi-channel audio recording ensure all the audio and video is recorded properly for editing and broadcast. 900 channels of audio are passing thru at all times to make it happen. And it’s all torn out within a day or two to move on to the Oscar’s or the Olympics, etc.

Theres a big job of keeping track of all the media we record to make it into the best show it can be. A team of producers, technicians, switchers, camera operators, loggers, and editors create a system of capturing everything and making note of the good stuff so the audience gets the best of the best of everything that happens.

There’s a lot of work that goes into creating reality competition television. I’m happy to be a part of it all! Try not to think about it when you tune in and enjoy!