Gareth Malone St John Passion

[Bert Coules]

I agree about the sound/staging problems. I also thought the balance (or simply the overall sound) of the orchestra at the very beginning was a little odd though admittedly I wasn't paying full attention having just stumbled across the broadcast.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Thanks for t(e excellent analysis OOO . I Must have a look. The word choreography implies singers were moving around, that might explain the sound anomalies. If they were moving they would almost certainly have been radio miked,: the problem with radio mikes is they compress the sound and they are also omni directional. The audio quality in them is pretty poor compared to the sort of mikes that would be used in a studio sessio. - high quality Neumanns for example. Radio mikes are fine for speech (just) but not acceptable for singing . They are used all the time in the West End for musicals - something that makes them , to me at least , something of a shrill compressed torture.
On a separate note the number of Tv music docs I’ve seen that have been spoilt by poor sound is legion. It’s a real skill and not helped by directors who insist on no visible microphones. On the few occasions I’ve made classical music films where practical I’ve prerecorded a master take from the musicians and then got them to mime or in fact play along to playback . You’d be amazed how good they are at it ( much harder with singers though ) .The advantage of this is they don’t get bored or tired with unnecessary retakes , you can take all the close mikes out and with one camera get lots of closeups, and it all cuts together . Oh and the sound recordist can put the mikes where they want for the master take.

[smittims]

You remind me of a Mahler 3 from the Proms. The offstage posthorn sounded fine on Radio 3 but onTV the camera was just behind the player's shoulder, from where we would have had a very different sound. It didn't seem to have occurred to the Tv people that this wasn't appropriate.

[oddoneout]

Thanks for t(e excellent analysis OOO . I Must have a look. The word choreography implies singers were moving around, that might explain the sound anomalies. If they were moving they would almost certainly have been radio miked,: the problem with radio mikes is they compress the sound and they are also omni directional. The audio quality in them is pretty poor compared to the sort of mikes that would be used in a studio sessio. - high quality Neumanns for example. Audio mikes are fine for speech (just) but not acceptable for singing . They are used all the time in the West End for musicals - something that makes them , to me at least , something of a shrill compressed torture.
On a separate nite the number of Tv music docs I’ve seen that have been spoilt by poor sound is legion. It’s a real skill and not helped by directors who insist on no visible microphones.

I could have understood some of the sound issues if there had been simultaneous singing and movement but that wasn't the case. There was some movement while singing was taking place, but not of those singing at the time, and the rest was more staging movement - putting some of the singers/players in different positions for particular points of the narrative. As all that would have been worked out beforehand the sound bods(and producers?) should have got that covered.
The movement of the amateur performers was a surprise - no mention was made in the 2 preliminary programmes, and I wonder how much notice they had. It was a bold move not least because one of the group is severely sight-impaired so the combination of low lighting and navigation in unfamiliar surroundings would have been a challenge.