rob aylestone
Moderator
Got a real conflict coming up later in the week. We're quite small but work is steady, and I got a call about doing an audio recording of two opera singers in a church. Some light opera, accompanied by a pianist, in a quite nice sounding large UK church. Had a chat, agreed to do it and got on with some more work. My colleague, who does more of our video work, unknown to me has a job the same day - to video a recital in a church, featuring two opera singers, and a pianist ........... Yep the same recital. Normally, when we get an audio job like this come in, we get the client to make it clear the audio is the primary requirement, and if it also turns out to have a video element - we get lead, and the video people work around us. If we take on a video commission, we insist video comes first and sound, if involved is second to where we put our cameras and set things up.
We kind of shot ourselves in the foot, and at a site meeting, our preferred way of dong this one, which being unamplified, in a nice setting would probably have meant a visually compromised result, with our mic stands in the way and looking pretty unpleasant. The client says the video actually is more important, while the performers want an audio recording as their main aim, but it is a performance for the audience - video and audio recording is secondary and is an exposure thing, not a revenue driven one.
I'm going to try something a bit new, having had a good listen. I'm going to put a mic, type to be determined when I hear them, on a short stand, waist height looking towards the mouth - on each of the two soloists (who may, or may not include a duet in the programme - again to yet decided). I'm going to put a twin capsule mic dead centre using a Blumlein pair again at about 3ft above ground, between them, and I am going to mid-field mic, BBC style in the cut out area of the piano with the full stick lid facing the audience. I'll probably use a 414 for this as it's going to be a Yamaha grand, and they seem to like 414s. I shall probably add a couple of mics focussing on the audience, which should get me some of the clapping/applause, as the performer mics won't have good rear coverage. The angle of the centre Blumlein mic at low level will have reduced coverage of the big space, because I will have to tilt it up. I have the option of setting the capsules to A/B, or other similar techniques, or I could set it to do M/S?
I'm going to record this through our Midas M32, going direct to a MacBook - so 7 channels max planned, but I've got scope to add extra channels if necessary - but hope that 3 or 5 channels will be sufficient for tweaking afterwards.
Above waist height won't be possible, although I could close mic them with some gooseneck mics I have, but they will look a bit strange and feature in closeups. Keeping the above waist is a no go rule, has anyone any interesting alternatives I've not thought of. It's Mozart - so oldish, in opera terms.
Cameras will be ten rows back on the centre line, one left, which will probably be locked of and looks nice with the (unused for the recording) organ pipes in the background, and a separate camera for the pianist, with the mid-field mic hopefully out of shot.
That's the job. We're split - my colleague will handle video, I'll handle audio and we will fight later! I think we will end up with m ore a close mic sound to the recording which I can then manipulate either with some of the space mics, and artificial reverb. We've done proper close mic re wordings and of course 100% ambient ones with stereo techniques, but this will be a half way house - with singer to mic distances of perhaps 1m (3ft), no closer.
It will also be with very short rehearsal time - if we are lucky we'll maybe have a few minutes of rehearsal, then a conventional service, then half an hour to reset things. I've sorted all the usual tricky things - cable routes, power, obstructions etc - but we will NOT have time to start moving mics or swapping them - a quick setup is essential.
Any comments appreciated.
We kind of shot ourselves in the foot, and at a site meeting, our preferred way of dong this one, which being unamplified, in a nice setting would probably have meant a visually compromised result, with our mic stands in the way and looking pretty unpleasant. The client says the video actually is more important, while the performers want an audio recording as their main aim, but it is a performance for the audience - video and audio recording is secondary and is an exposure thing, not a revenue driven one.
I'm going to try something a bit new, having had a good listen. I'm going to put a mic, type to be determined when I hear them, on a short stand, waist height looking towards the mouth - on each of the two soloists (who may, or may not include a duet in the programme - again to yet decided). I'm going to put a twin capsule mic dead centre using a Blumlein pair again at about 3ft above ground, between them, and I am going to mid-field mic, BBC style in the cut out area of the piano with the full stick lid facing the audience. I'll probably use a 414 for this as it's going to be a Yamaha grand, and they seem to like 414s. I shall probably add a couple of mics focussing on the audience, which should get me some of the clapping/applause, as the performer mics won't have good rear coverage. The angle of the centre Blumlein mic at low level will have reduced coverage of the big space, because I will have to tilt it up. I have the option of setting the capsules to A/B, or other similar techniques, or I could set it to do M/S?
I'm going to record this through our Midas M32, going direct to a MacBook - so 7 channels max planned, but I've got scope to add extra channels if necessary - but hope that 3 or 5 channels will be sufficient for tweaking afterwards.
Above waist height won't be possible, although I could close mic them with some gooseneck mics I have, but they will look a bit strange and feature in closeups. Keeping the above waist is a no go rule, has anyone any interesting alternatives I've not thought of. It's Mozart - so oldish, in opera terms.
Cameras will be ten rows back on the centre line, one left, which will probably be locked of and looks nice with the (unused for the recording) organ pipes in the background, and a separate camera for the pianist, with the mid-field mic hopefully out of shot.
That's the job. We're split - my colleague will handle video, I'll handle audio and we will fight later! I think we will end up with m ore a close mic sound to the recording which I can then manipulate either with some of the space mics, and artificial reverb. We've done proper close mic re wordings and of course 100% ambient ones with stereo techniques, but this will be a half way house - with singer to mic distances of perhaps 1m (3ft), no closer.
It will also be with very short rehearsal time - if we are lucky we'll maybe have a few minutes of rehearsal, then a conventional service, then half an hour to reset things. I've sorted all the usual tricky things - cable routes, power, obstructions etc - but we will NOT have time to start moving mics or swapping them - a quick setup is essential.
Any comments appreciated.