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May 2012

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Mic’ing Your Christmas Pageant

We know that getting a mic closer to the sound source will usually give us improved live sound performance, such as better gain-before-feedback and less pick-up of unwanted nearby sound. But sometimes we don’t have the luxury of putting the mic exactly where we want it—or maybe we just don’t have enough mics to do the job properly. We explore some solutions.

by Brad Duryea

As you get ready for your big Christmas production, you're likely to be faced with several challenging mic'ing situations. Perhaps you're using a lot of wireless headworn mics for actors and need to juggle console channels and manage the packs effectively backstage; maybe you're bringing in orchestra players or have special effects and want to make sure they sound good; and perhaps you're recording this-or sending the live stream over the web or to an overflow room-and want to make sure you're considering those needs in your micro- phone techniques, too, so everything "translates" well. Every one of these situations can be very challenging, each one with a variety of possible solutions-some of them unconventional.

I was recently speaking with a broadcast audio engineer who does many of the largest live television broadcasts. He was showing me a clip of a popular Broadway musical, during which one of the actors continues to speak and sing while under running water. There were no mics visible, but he said she was double mic'd. He then illustrated where the elements and transmitters were located-hidden in her hair-and how they do the show so much they've got that scene down to a science. She actually shampoos her hair (only her head is visible), expertly navigating around the mic elements and trans- mitter packs. I was amazed at how well it worked.

It's actually common practice in theatre to place microphones in the hair, but I bet if you mic'd your pastor that way it wouldn't sound very good. Why does that work for the- atre? Professional actors project, and yours should, too. Under a lot of circumstances the pros wouldn't need mics at all, and their voices could still fill a theatre.

Questions of equipment, and people
We know that getting a mic closer to its source will usually give us better live sound performance, such as better gain-before-feedback and less pickup of nearby sound, but sometimes we don't have the luxury of putting a mic exactly where we want. That means the actors' acoustic output is critical-the actors simply must project. Regardless of how you mic them, you need that extra acoustic level as a cushion. If an earset mic slips and they're not projecting, the scene could be ruined. Even a complete mic failure may not be catastrophic, though, if they're projecting, as they may be picked up adequately by another actor's mic, a boundary mic, or be naturally audible in the house.

hat leads us to a creative possibility when channel count is low. When actors project, it can sometimes allow two actors to share a mic. For example, in a scene where two actors are sitting at a table talking, one could wear a lavaliere that picks up both. Or you could have a mic hidden on the table. However, this is really only practical if the blocking works out to your advantage. For some or all of the actors, you may also be able to get by with boundary mics located on props or on the floor, although this can be one of the trickiest situations to pull off successfully. It is perhaps more likely that you'll have a certain number of wireless packs and will move them from person to person backstage between scenes.

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Brad Duryea is an audio engineer at Lakewood Church in Houston.