AV Session at UH (B01)

Along with working on my own music, I've been trying lately to put together some recordings and video for a future showreel that will hopefully go onto the 'Portfolio' section of my website and maybe will help get me some work recording or filming other people.

All the video experience I had before was from shooting my own videos (but, of course, someone else was filming me) and later on, editing them in Final Cut X. I find editing video very satisfying and I usually have a good eye for choosing angles and making people look good on camera, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to make some videos for other people using the facilities at UH. After getting trained on the C100 Cannon cameras at UH, I was ready to go.

This week I had two AV sessions, one solo piano and one for a singer-songwriter (vocals and electric guitar). I recorded the audio using the Soundcraft Vi2 desk in B03 and left the recording going throughout the several takes while I was in the performance space, manning the cameras. I used two cameras at the same time, one static, one moving and changed angles after each take. The audio was not recorded to a click, so the editing will be a bit challenging, but I have done such editing before for my own songs, and even though matching the audio and video takes takes more effort, I found that it's worth the effort to retain the 'live' feel of the performance.

For the piano session I used 2 pairs of KM184s (condenser, cardioid) - one pair for the spots (one mic for the low strings, one for the high strings) and one pair in an ORTF configuration (on a stereo bar, 17cm distance between the mics, angled away from each other at about 110 degrees) to pick up a more distant, roomy sound.
















For the second session I used an SM57 on the guitar amp and also recorded the DI-ed signal. For the vocals I used an U87 and, as a special request from the artist, an SM58 (he wanted the recording to resemble his live performances in which he alternates between two mics - one of them having a lot of reverb on it to create a special effect). I resolved to only use the signal recorded through the U87 but add reverb on the relevant bits.