Ensemble Cymru
Amazing musicianship and a beautiful location – a real pleasure to be asked by Peryn Clement-Evans, artistic director for Ensemble Cymru, to video and record a series of Chamber Music events at Gregynog Hall. We initially met up to look at how we could best capture these events with an emphasis on the idyllic surroundings of a historic music room at Gregynog and Ensemble Cymru’s passion for classical music accessible to everyone, from families with young children to die hard classical enthusiasts.
This blog is more about the technical challenges that we faced and how we overcame these challenges.
The music room at Gregynog was, in its hay-day, a central hub for Chamber Music from England and France, created and run by the Davies Sisters.
Since then, it has changed little but due to its present day multifunction services, it’s now basically a blank canvass to cater to those that wish to use it for various events such as weddings etc. With that, there is little acoustic damping on the walls and no fabric such as curtains, so the acoustics of the room varied from performance to performance along with the limited lighting in the room.
For acoustic arrangements such as this we used a range of
condenser mics, two in an XY configuration for the piano and one for voice and clarinets. Where violins were used, we mounted mics on tall stands around 2
metres away from the musician – some of this positioning was not ideal as
musicians move around, it was a case of getting the right balance of position
without intruding on the musician and the best audio experience.
We used our Zoom F8n for audio capture allowing us to post
produce individual instruments from the main mix and shot in Sony Cinetone at
30fps to give us manageability of gain, exposure, DoF and movement while
maintaining as much dynamic range as possible.
A series of claps allow us to sync the various camera angles
and sync was done through audio elements during postproduction although for
future productions with multiple cameras we will be making use of time code
generators to make things more streamlined.
For video, we used up to 3 cameras including a GoPro. The
lighting was crucial as the stage area was very dark with some musicians
requiring a modelling light just so they could read the music sheets.
Two
500-watt studio lights were used to light the stage as well as smaller
modelling lights to create softer lights for skin tones and hair highlights
without becoming to bright to cause reflections or burnouts on instruments and
skin.
The rewards from setting up like this are wonderful, with
the correct mic placements, listening on headphones via the output mix of the
Zoom recorder, was like listening to a live radio broadcast and the visual
affects of the studio lights in key locations added to the warmth of the music.
With so many pieces from famous composers, each session was unique, it was
a real pleasure to be involved with such a talented mix of muscians for the
Gregynog Summer Lights Season
Ensemble Cymru Summer Lights Concerts
Gregynog
