BBC2 | Optomen Television | "Eight Go Rallying - Road to Saigon"

As Sound Supervisor for the Series my challenge was create a technical solution that co- ordinated the Self-Shooting Producer Director Teams, the on-board rally record and monitoring boxes & the PSC film crews following the 4 pairs of celebrities driving 4000Km across Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam for the Road to Saigon Classic Car Rally.

How We Did It

The technical challenge was to create a very simple system that allowed any Monitor Car to listen to any Talent Rally Car at the push of a button while recording all the conversations that were happening within the 4 Talent Cars. We designed and built the circuits and wrote the code to make use of the serial protocol for the Wisycom MCR42 RX and created the very simplest solution for the Producers Monitor Box.

With one press of a red button any of the 4 Monitor Cars could listen to any of the 4 Talent Rally Cars up to 1Km away driving at speeds up to 100 km/h.

This was a worlds first solution which also incorporated a bespoke made Rally record box which recorded all the conversations in the car with spot mics, and duplicate radio receivers, Wireless Time-Code and could be operated outside of the Rally car using Bluetooth to put them into record and check recording levels.

A key part of the solution had to take Health & Safety into consideration which proved to be priceless when the system was put to the ultimate test when the Rally Car driven by Martin Kemp & his wife Shirlie rolled during a challenging stage of the route. All the equipment stayed in place in what proved to be a very scary incident for all involved. The System proved itself on all levels and the production company Optomen were very pleased with the results in the edit.