Car-to-Car with Lectro's SMV

   Recently, I was on a shoot following bounty hunters around a city every night for about 10 days. Both cars worked together, with two hunters in each. Each car had a camera operator inside,  and both "hunters" were mic'd with Lectro SMV's , transmitting directly to an SRb 2-channel receiver on the camera. 

    Camera mic was on channel 3/4.  Now the fun part-   a plant mic was placed in the car's headliner dead center, and fed to an external SMv transmitter on each car. Both SMv's at 250mw full power, and taking 12 volts  from each car's cigar lighter. Our follow vehicle had two Lectro SNA-600 dipoles mounted about 12" above the roof on fiberglass poles, feeding a Venue Field inside the van. The Field received the 4 officer's wireless, & the two plant mic wireless.  

Rubber band pulls transmit antenna away from car to maximze range. Fixed to glass with heavy-duty Velcro.

Transmitter  then covered in gaff tape 

Follow vehicle SNA-600 antennas fed a Lectrosonics Venue Field inside. 

On the road, the follow vehicle could reliably  hear those plant mics  up to 1/2 mile away from the hunter cars-  sometimes more in the countryside!  In the city, we would routinely loose the cars in traffic, but could usually still hear them.   This made for great follow vehicle IFB, & two clear recorded tracks of car interior when bad guys were loaded in the car. 

-by Pete Verrando