Going Acoustic in Hadestown
I recently had the absolute pleasure to be invited to join Mann Bros Media to capture a very special performance of “The Wedding Song” from the hit Westend show "Hadestown” by one of the shows leading cast members Donal Finn & the shows writer & creator herself Anais Mitchell.
The variables of the shoot were incredibly constrained, as we had to setup & shoot the piece between the matinee & evening performances of the show, which meant myself & the 2-person camera & lighting team, had exactly 45 minutes to load onto the stage, setup, camera & sound check, shoot 3 takes of the piece, & then completely clear out of the location before preparations for the evening show began. This took a good amount of preparation ahead of time, liaising with the always excellent team from Mann Bros Media (who always come prepared), with both an A, B, & C plan.
The shoot was somewhat of an excise in “simpler is better”, for in this instance, myself & project director Tim from Mann Bros, we decided to actually show the mics, & not shy away from exposing them in the shot, this enabled me to work incredibly fast & not have to worry about using precious time hiding the mics, & also enabled me to deploy larger condenser mics with a far wider dynamic & frequency range than Lavalier mics (often used for hidden microphone solutions). My choice of mics were a little unorthodox for capturing an acoustic performance, but I felt where apt for this particular scenario; 2x Sennhesier MKH8060 shotgun mics used for the two vocals, selected for its clarity & excellent response for the human voice, along with its longer proximity reach & rear-side rejection, allowing separation with each other & the acoustic guitar on stage, with the extended reach meaning they didn’t have to be right in front of the performers faces, leaving them open for camera. On the acoustic guitar, I setup a Sennheiser MKH50 mic, known for its wide & warm sound, perfect to collect the detail & lower register of the guitar, underpinning the vocal range in the song. Recorded with my trusty Sound Devices MixPre 10ii, using its excellent clean preamps, with Radius Windshield RAD1 & RAD2 microphone mounts.
The team worked incredibly quickly, & wrapped it up with time to spare! Donal & Anais were wonderful to work with, & as you can see in the video below, sound absolutely amazing together. This was certainly a break from my usual work of sync-sound dialogue, with hidden mics, but was easily one of my most enjoyable jobs for a while, capturing a live musical performance like this was such a pleasure!
ENJOY THE VIDEO BELOW!
