Michael Morgan directs audio and cameras for "CineSymphony" television shoot.
From Concert to Surround Sound Broadcast:
Composer, Elmer Bernstein, Conducts at the Sarasota Film Festival.
In a career that spans half a century and over 200 scores for both film
and television, Elmer Bernstein is credited as one of the cinema’s pioneer innovators, changing the sound of American film music. On January 25th, Bernstein was honored at the Sarasota Film Festival’s “CineSymphony!” where he conducted the Florida West Coast Symphony at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall.
Bernstein led the full symphony orchestra in a retrospective of some of his best-known film scores: The Sons of Katie Elder; To Kill a Mockingbird; The Great Escape; The Ten Commandments, Kings of the Sun; The Age of Innocence; Thoroughly Modern Millie; The Man with the Golden Arm; Walk on the Wild Side; The Magnificent Seven; and the recently-released Far From Heaven, which garnered Bernstein his 14th Academy Award nomination, starring Julianne Moore and Dennis Quaid.
“CineSymphony!” was taped as a PBS concert, a co-production of WEDU-TV , Tampa, the Florida West Coast Symphony, and the Sarasota Film Festival, as a fundraiser for both the Symphony and the Festival. Paul Grove, VP of National Programming &Production at WEDU, selected Bruno White Entertainment for the project. Bruno White and audio producer, Gary Baldassari, in turn sought out audio engineer/producer, Mike Morgan, not only to handle audio for the production, but to direct the television shoot. Morgan has a background and a degree in classical music, and there was no doubt in Baldassari’s mind that he was the man for the job.
The 90-minute program that resulted aired in late April on WEDU to 1.6 million households in West Central Florida, and may be distributed nationwide for broadcast on PBS.
“CineSymphony,” the Concert
by Michael Morgan In preparation for this program, I obtained copies of the conductor’s scores in order to determine camera angles and shots for the production. I attended two rehearsals where I marked the scores and developed a basic vision of what I wanted the program to look like.
From the outset, I had artistic goals for both the audio and video domains. The recording was being laid down to both multi-track and two-track recorders, with surround sound, I hoped, being a feature of the finished program. With this in mind, I used a full bevy of DPA microphones ,
including the 4041-S and the new 4016 wide cardioids. The main front array was a custom made Decca Tree—the omni 4041’s to the outside, and the 4016 in the middle—with the rear array being a set of spaced omnis, also 4041’s.
The extremely revealing nature of the 4041-S is its greatest strength. Though the mic is an omni, the high frequency boost lobe between 8khz and 16khz is not completely omni-directional, so positioning the lobe towards the desired area allows instruments or voices to be highlighted without losing the rest of the ensemble or acoustic environment. This mic has a great “reach”, an ability to produce a coherent sound from a greater distance than other mic’s.
Using the high voltage DPA 4016 wide cardioid allowed me to achieve a very even polar pattern across the front, with the ability to focus on particular parts of the orchestra, usually not achievable with three omnis. The 4016 gives you high SPL’s (168dB peak) with lower noise, but with a better low frequency response at distance from the sound source.
The signals went straight from the mics to three DPA HMA-4000 high voltage pre-amps, and then directly into the wonderful Crane Song Spider, an eight-channel, class-A, mic pre/mixer/AtoD processor. The Spider is a completely discrete (as opposed to op-amp), minimalist based circuit. It possesses the warmth of tubes with the clarity of solid-state. Musical images recorded with it sound “taller”, with more inner detail. Digital audio came from the Crane Song into a Tascam DA-88 for multitrack, and into a Fostex DAT for the live two-track mixes.
Good audio and clean sight lines seem like opposing goals. But the clarity and reach of the DPA microphones made this a non-issue. The Decca Tree proved to be a perfect solution for this problem, picking up the orchestra beautifully without intruding into the camera shots. A close-miked (i.e. multi-mic) approach, normally used for television programs, would not have produced these sonic and visual results.
During the weeks after the concert and the completion of the video edit by Bruno White, Gary and I thought that we would probably be delivering a stereo mix to the client. In late March, Gary spoke with Paul Grove, VP of National Programming &Production at WEDU, and told him that we could deliver both a stereo mix and a surround sound mix—at no extra cost. Mr. Grove knew that surround would have an instant appeal to one of the three private WEDU supporters in the Sarasota area who funded the production: Tana and John Sandefur. John Sandefur is a technology buff. So when Mr. Grove found that surround sound was possible, he gave us an enthusiastic go-ahead.
We decided to encode the multi-track audio with the new SRS Labs CSE-07 Circle Surround encoder . SRS Labs Circle Surround technology, a matrixed audio format, is the only surround sound format that can encode up to 6.1 channels of surround sound for transmission using any two channel medium--broadcast, internet streams, VHS, PC and console games, and CD.
The Sandefur’s unveiled the finished product at their home during a private premier screening. “CineSymphony” played on ten video screens, including the home theater—in stunning Circle Surround. That, according to Grove, was “the highlight of the evening, the perfect final element to the production.”
Michael Morgan is an audio engineer/producer with a degree in vocal performance from Wheaton College Conservatory of Music . He can be reached at: tenor39@mindspring.com
