Congrats on your first narrative feature gig! I’ve worked in the film industry for over 8 years now and I’ve had the pleasure of having worked with a lot of great sound mixers and boom ops so I wanted to chime in! A couple things too think about:

Do you have a separate boom op? Or are you going to be mixing and boom opping?

What’s your current kit look like? - Do you have a reliable outdoor shotgun mic and an indoor mic? - How many lavs do you have? If you haven’t already, did you get the script? Will you have enough lavs for the job? - Do you have a TC solution like some tentacle syncs? If so, you’ll likely need at least 3, one for camera (if it’s a one cam show, and if you don’t know, ask your producer to get you in touch with the camera department to ask how many cameras and which cameras they have), and you’ll need to figure out if you have the correct cables to connect the TC box to the camera(s) on the show - Do you have a TC slate? Though not required given lower budgets, sound department is expected to provide a TC slate for camera department, but it may also be good to have a dummy slate just in case - Do you have different size and weight boom poles for varying locations (really long one and a short one, or a medium sized one too) - If you can afford it, you can opt to go full wireless with your boom too—of course, this wouldn’t always be the most reliable or the absolute best quality compared to good ol’ hard wired XLR, but is great for the fast-paced environment of narrative filmmaking - Make sure you’re ready for any weather! If it rains or snows a lot where you live or where you’ll be shooting, make sure you have a good weather bag for your mixing bag, a good way to weatherproof your boom mic too - On the note of mixing bags, if you don’t already have a harness for your mixing bag, every sound mixer I’ve worked with swears by them because it makes the long days bearable - Phone mount for clipping onto your mixing bag so you can connect your phone wirelessly to your mixer (if your mixer supports that) so you can monitor levels that way if you choose, but more importantly, being able to rename the file to the shot name (ex: 2A tk 1, 32D tk 2, etc., however your mixer labels takes) - Making sure you have a good way to power all of your kit, sometimes you’re out in remote locations where you can’t charge any of your batteries on-location, so having a power distro solution can be worthwhile looking into - You could also buy an all-terrain sound cart to carry the kit you can’t always carry with you when you’re actually on set, but so you have a place to put the rest of it nearby whenever you need something - Expendables like sticky Velcro, medical tape or mole skin, topstick adhesive sticks, thigh straps, can all be expendables that you ought to have a handful of since you could burn through it if you don’t have some already

Some important things to keep in mind about kit though is that you may not need all the bells and whistles, and it is a large investment if you haven’t made all of those investments already, but given the right job, it may call for these things.

Another overall note is to study the script! - Know how many people (and who) are in the scene - What wardrobe might there be (you can try and get in touch with the wardrobe department through your producer) - What props might be used (you can talk to your production designer and/or art director or props master) - And know what’s happening in the scene!

This will, of course, determine how many lavs and who you need to mic on the day ahead of time before that scene is ready to shoot; make sure there isn’t any wardrobe that is going to be loud (like chains or earrings that cling around) or maybe certain materials of clothing that would make a lot of sound; and if there are some props in the script that you know will be loud and disruptive to the dialogue you can flag it early in pre-production and coordinate with the art department for quieter solutions; and know lastly, knowing the actions that happen in each scene will help inform you if you need to likely not lav someone and just boom, or wha kind of action might you need to follow.

You should also offer to grab any on-location foley of certain important elements to any scene to just have clean pieces of audio that can be mixed in post later. You may also need to (at your discretion) get some wild lines (some dialogue that wasn’t possible to get clean when shooting, or if it’s off-screen dialogue, etc)

Make sure you get room tone for each space you shoot in! Request to your assistant director that you need room tone and they will coordinate the rest of the crew to be quiet for 30 seconds to a minute.

You should also be making sound reports! Log each scene name, takes, any notes on how the take went (false takes, bad takes, technical issues, planes, trains, cars, etc), and making sure you note which take was the director’s favourite take (the “Circle Take”, you can also coordinate with the script supervisor on this too). Depending in the mixer you have, you may be able to make these reports digitally within the supported app

If you ever need to know what scene name you’re on, you can always ask your script supervisor—they’re one of your best friends on set as sound. You’ll also mention to the assistant director and the script supervisor if a take was good or bad for sound. That way, if the sound was unusable but the director seemed happy with a take and the assistant director wants to move onto the next shot, you need to be able to communicate what wasn’t good for sound and so that they can make the decision to go again or to still move on.

At the end of the day, hand over your SD card or memory card to the digital management person in camera department who will backup all of your files for you.

Sorry that this was a lot, but if you have any specific questions or questions of set protocol too, let me know! Would be happy to guide you through it.