Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1530210
Winter 2025 – LOCAL695.COM 39 THE CHALLENGES Behind the scenes on Wicked, a key process of our entire team facilitated the ability to support not only the cast's live performances but also camera moves and lighting cues. This was an extremely close and symbiotic relationship between Ben Holder, who played the keyboard during performances that were free of tempo and full of emotion, and Josh, who would seamlessly cue the Pro Tools music tracks to blend with Cynthia and Ari's IEM's from live keyboard to pre-recorded music. Arthur, the 1st AS, was on the edge of frame on our live sound & music comms whispering positional cues to myself as I was mixing the live vocals. We worked as one to give the actors unwavering perfect musical accompaniment, but also to ensure the vocal mix was in perfect sync with the camera moves and cues of the filmmakers. THE CHALLENGES Each shooting day threw up more challenges. One of them was the Wizard's head that needed to talk in real time with real visual head movement to our cast. We had been planning to trigger the Wizard's head with a pre-recorded vocal and timecode but it became evident during the rehearsal that Jon wanted more fluidity and an ability to riff with the dialog. We put a DPA cheek mic on the SFX technician who was controlling the Wizard's head and lips with a joystick 'drone' type controller, and put his voice though the same plug-ins and FX in Pro Tools that we had used to create the booming, bassey, and synthetic Wizard's voice in pre-records. He could then speak in real time to the cast through 10kw of JBL speakers, his voice completely synthesised with Jon Chu's approved "Wizard" voice. During their duets, Cynthia and Ariana's voices complemented each other, the harmonies were breathtaking. Whether we were in the studio or at the huge 'backlot' set outside of West London, their live singing was incredible. One of the technical innovations we were using for our boom microphones was the new Schoeps CMD42 digital preamp, which takes the performance into the digital domain in the mic itself. On ninety percent of the movie, we used booms with AES cables back to the mixer. When we would get the booms into close- up positions on the more intimate and emotional vocal performances, it delivered spectacular results. On some of the massive exterior builds, Alice and David Smith (Gaffer) were using multiple soft suns on cranes above the set which meant we used our Schoeps Super CMITS to provide a level of off-axis cancellation of unwanted background noise, but of course, we always provided both 'processed' and 'unprocessed' tracks to Nancy Nugent Title, the dialog editor. I am a great believer in delivering choices, not just for the Director, but for all of my colleagues in sound post, too. One of my lasting memories of Wicked will be recording Cynthia Erivo's performance of "Defying Gravity." Throughout the shoot, there had been behind-the-scenes conversations between me, the music department, SFX, the grips, the stunt department, and the whole shooting crew which focussed on the fact that we were going to spend a week flying Cynthia on wires in extremely dynamic and athletic movements as she sang. Everyone would say to me, "Surely we can't do that live?" "How would you capture it if she's twenty-five feet up in the air Madame Morrible's mic