FEATURE RECORDING The recording team outside Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim
because Brian was sending TV trucks out there so everything had to be discreetly placed and any equipment had to be pretty much invisible.” With this kind of
complexity and with the requirement to make sure the recording equipment wasn’t obscuring important camera angles, a recky of the location was inevitable. “Brian, the Lighting
Director, Mike Le Fevre and his crew, and myself went over to Norway for a day at the cathedral,” says Summerhayes. “We measured the building and got an idea of where everything was. Mike and myself drew up some plans and I presented a few ideas to Jeff as to where and how we should place the microphones. Jeff ’s a purist which I really respect. “Every week there were
conference calls between myself, Brian, Jeff, the production people, and the director, just to make sure that everything was going to work not only for the sound recording but for TV – so there was a lot of discussion about lighting and cameras as well.”
The whole project was
going to be a 5.1 surround production, but a stereo mix would also be required. “We were very interested in using the DPA 5100 surround microphones and we were able to put these pretty much right in the middle of the performance area as they were playing,” says Summerhayes.
www.audiomedia.com
“That gave us a very good sort of sound feel of the space of this cathedral. We were only using the quiet end of the building, but it was still a massive space!” The St Olaf choir were situated at the altar area of the building, while the girl’s choir were at the opposite end. “I had never heard anything like it, it was incredible,” enthuses Summerhayes. “We suspended microphones across the triforium of the church about 10 metres above the floor of the cathedral, so we had some slings developed by a company called Extreme Rigging which we used to drop some Schoeps MK2 microphones down to approximately four metres above ground level. We suspended the DPA 5100s in the centre of the performance area along with a few spot microphones for the strings and the brass. We used a radio pack on the Hardanger fiddle, because the player had to walk from one end of the performance area to the other. We didn’t want to fit a microphone on the strings because it sounded too brittle and too close, so I mounted the microphone right by the fiddler’s left ear so it was picking up what he was hearing. We employed Alison Dale, who is an absolute expert in mic placement, and she marked them up to be put back in exactly the same place for every performance – she also made them as invisible as she possibly
could, which is what she does so well.”
TRUCK SETUP The Red TX truck is basically a high-quality studio control room on wheels and features PMC’s AML1 speakers for surround monitoring. “When we first started planning this we thought we could build a control room on site, but that idea was quickly kicked into touch,” says Summerhayes. “So we decided that we’d take the truck up there as the
“I had never heard anything like it, it was incredible.” Tim Summerhayes
monitoring inside it has been tried and tested over the years. Ian Dyckoff, Co-director of Red TX, was looking after the recording equipment and acted as our engineer. Jeff originally suggested that we try and use some high-end microphone preamps and other recording gear, but we eventually settled on the ones in our Studer Vista 8 system and we were recording directly to a Pro Tools mix system at 48kHz.” During rehearsals,
Summerhayes took fader snapshots of the performances – which rarely used more than seven microphones. “I think there
was a big section at the end where one choir walked up the aisle to meet the other choir along with the brass and congregation, where we mic’d almost everything up, but generally it was a fairly localised setup and the snapshot system on the Studer just worked a treat,” he says. “After the first day of rehearsals, Jeff and myself sat down for a few hours before the morning session and went through all the recordings that we’d made and just fine- tuned the snapshots. We used those settings pretty much for all the main three performances, with only a few little tweaks here and there.”
CABLE RUNS As the cathedral is such a large space, the issue of long cable run lengths was an initial concern. “I was looking at some of the specifications of the microphones we planned to use that had limitations of 100-metre cable runs and, on some of the earlier plans, that was pushing the limits,” says Summerhayes. “I did not want to compromise anything but because of the lighting situation, which was important for TV, I didn’t want to risk induction on the mic cables. So we redesigned the routing back to the converters to keep the cable length as short as possible. “We kept in constant
communication with Mike Le Fevre and we agreed that if his lighting cables were going to run one way, ours were going to run the other. So there was constant co-operation between all departments. There was also a sound crew from Brian’s vision team who were looking after all the connections for the cameras and making sure that our stereo feed was routed correctly to all the various VTs that were running. We were only producing stereo for local monitoring, but we retained the 5.1 for post-production use, of course. The Americans took that straight away with them as all the post production is going to be done in the US.”
As any producer of a live
recording knows, the one thing that can cock up the otherwise perfect capture of a wonderful performance is the bronchial problems of an audience. The small congregation at the concert were hopefully nasally clear friends and parents of the Norwegian choir and those travelling with the St Olaf ’s entourage on the Scandinavian tour, so these problems were limited. All this preparation and co-operation obviously paid off handsomely as Summerhayes says that the recording process went smoothly with no major hassles and the St Olaf ’s choir were pleased with the results. But even a seasoned engineer like Summerhayes can learn a few new tricks from old audio dogs. “As I said earlier, Jeff is a
purist and for the brass quartet he wanted us to use an ORTF (Office de Radiodiffusion-Television Francaise) microphone setup – I had to look up what it means!” says Summerhayes with a laugh. “I had heard of it, of course, but I had never ever used a configuration like that. I could not believe the clarity and openness of this microphone setup and I thought it was absolutely amazing and I’m definitely going to use it more in the future.” Catherine Allan, the executive producer from Twin Cities Public Television (TPT), says: “Editing is taking place in August and September this year and we aim to air the programme, which currently has a working title of A St Olaf Christmas in Norway, on PBS stations nationwide during December 2013. The programme will consist of a one-hour Christmas special and there will also be an extended DVD and Blu-ray release. We hope that the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) will also purchase the special for broadcast and we also will be seeking additional distribution.”
www.red-tx.com
August 2013 31
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76