Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1179544
34 of recording the vocals live, only to find out footsteps had ruined the recordings and having to go into ADR to fix it. It was decided that each performer would have three levels of footwear and they would choose whatever they needed that was appropriate for a particular scene or dance move. I was very lucky that many of the cast had classical ballet training even if they were now street-style dancers, and were generally happy to perform in bare feet or ballet shoes unless a particu- lar move or song demanded more support on their feet. The three choices for the performers were bare feet, bal- let shoes, or a type of shoe Paco and his team found that was halfway between a ballet shoe and a trainer and were designed for parkour (free running). The footwear was always near the set and available at all times. If Arthur saw a performer wearing heavier footwear than he thought a par- ticular piece of choreography required, we would ask them if they could change shoes or go bare foot. Most of the time, they would realize they had forgotten that they were wearing parkour shoes and change them immediately. This was a very productive process and it removed approxi- mately seventy percent of the heavier footfalls from the live- recorded vocals than we would have otherwise encountered. There were a couple of dancers whose moves were so extreme, they had to wear trainers, and sometimes a character would be in high heels for a song; we took care of this the same way we would any other film, and treated the soles as much as we could while still keeping them safe for the performer. Our soundproofed keyboard booths were first developed on Les Miserables. We needed to put a keyboard into a ply box that was on castor wheels and soundproofed, so we would not hear the noise of the electric keyboard being played on set. It worked successfully, but on Cats we wanted to go bigger and better. One of the discussions with production was about the complexity of our Sound/Music technical workflow and how quickly the equipment could be moved from stage to stage. Right now it was two production sound carts, two IEM mix- ing carts, one Pro Tools cart, and a keyboard booth, all linked together by a myriad of cables in the analog, digital, Dante, and MADI domains. Unfortunately, because of artist availability and time con- straints, there were many days in the schedule where we had to move stages. We were asked to look at where we could save time within our workflow, and one of the ways was to have construction build three keyboard booths, all containing a keyboard, flat-screen monitors, Midas mixers and the cables pre-rigged. The booths would be leap-frogged to the next stage by a swing gang on a telehandler or forklift truck to enable us to move from stage to stage and have a fully rigged booth waiting for us. Our stage moves would still take us three hours for Sound/ Music to be able to be ready to shoot. These moves were generally timed to coincide with our one-hour lunch break, which we would work through, and then by the time that stage was lit and cameras were ready, we were all in the same ballpark. The important factor was there was no way for the performers to rehearse until we were ready. They could block a dance routine with the choreographers counting out a rhythm verbally, but until the keyboard, Pro Tools, IEM's, and radio mics were rigged, our cast could not hear any music, or each other, so the whole show was extremely reli- ant on our team being ready. The three booths we had built for Cats were made of double-skinned ply with an eight-inch cavity in the walls, ceiling, and floor. We had construction spray expanding foam inside the cavity. The interiors and exteriors of the booths were lined with rubber-backed carpets. This meant they were Construction of the keyboard booth Soundproofing the keyboard booth Inside the keyboard booth