Record a "backyard theatre production"

[chilly923]

Hi, Thanks for reading this!
This is not a professional gig (obv), but I would like to get the best sound possible for a friend's backyard stage production of Hamilton. This is in a relatively quiet neighborhood, small backyard, 8-person production of a musical. Video is being captured on a 6D and I offered to get the audio, only because I have some equipment that was loaned to me. I have the zoom h4n pro audio recorder and two Sony ECM-VG1 shotgun mics. I was thinking I'd setup the two shotgun mics at stage left and right and place the h4n downstage center and record in 4CH or MTR... Also I wanted to ask what other settings I should consider given these parameters? Or any other setup ideas with what I have? Happy to fill in other details if tat helps.. thanks!

 

[TAE]

Trying to capture this all and get the audio of all the actors as they talk, sing and move about without each one wearing a mic going to a mixer will be a challenge but doable. With the limitation of 3 mic pick up areas your going to pick up a lot of peripheral noise along with the actors voices. I would definitely do a few trial runs during their rehearsals. Back in the day when my daughters were in school and church plays I'd shoot video with a video camera for memory keepsakes. In those cases just the actual camera mic worked well enough to capture the audio . You didn't clarify but it sounds like you are going to run the two shotguns to the h4n ..In that case you will have 4 tracks there and the audio from the 6D...You didn't mention what audio software you were going to use to mix down and place in the video but you will need that. If you haven't worked with any multitrack audio software programs one free one that will let you do most everything you will want to do to get a nice stereo audio track is Audacity. It is free and dang easy to figure out. Audiotonic is Audacity for windows 10 and I love it for simple stuff like this..I use Reaper when I want to go deep. Good luck

 

[rob aylestone]

How much money have you? The key feature here is what is making the sound you intend to record? I mean is it tracks, or real musicians and what kind of audio level are we talking about? Given the production, the music is likely to be loud, but the feel of this musical requires all kinds of decisions being made. I'm not quite sure how I'd stage a 'backyard' version of this production - it's designed around loud music, rap, musical theatre and many of the songs would be dreadful, karaoke style - so it strikes me as a very difficult show to do acoustically? 8 people means to me 8 headsets and at a minimum a stereo track. The idea of a couple of shotguns will sound pretty poor. The other thing is the style - are we talking a concert performance around fixed mic stands, or people acting, singing and dancing. Very different techniques.

If you are thinking about spending money on this, I'd be careful - as to my knowledge these kind of things cannot be licenced (certainly not here in the UK) so you could find what you record unable to be used. You might find that of word gets out, you get a rather abrupt cease and desist letter banning you from doing it. The rights holder for this show is quite adept at social media monitoring.

It's a great project but outside means your shotguns will need careful wind protection - so the usual ugly methods apply. Boundary mics could be a possibility, but again - outside with wind drifting the sound, it's pretty horrible normally. I hate live outside events they are so often spoiled by light breeze, when they need a bit of gain.