Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1530210
34 PRODUCTION SOUND & VIDEO – Winter 2025 We rig our Music PA and our Voice of God systems as separate entities. The Music PA speakers will be positioned as close as possible to our actors to reduce tempo delay. When the cast is preparing for the camera, to roll it can be distracting and fatiguing to hear the 1st AD giving loud instructions to the crew over the VOG system. Our Pro Tools On-Set Music Editor, Josh Winslade, was a new addition to our main unit team, having worked with us on our previous film Snow White, as a 2nd Unit and rehearsals Pro Tools Operator. We were impressed with Josh and when the position became available, I asked him to join us on Wicked. We also decided to use me and my team's experiences on the last five musical films together to completely redesign our Pro Tools rig. This was an excellent step forward as each film had taught us more about the unique requirements of Pro Tools on musicals, and I wanted to build a rig specifically for the challenges of Wicked, and one that was future-proof. It was time to start technical recces, and the Heads of Department (HOD's) made our way to a vast farm about twenty- five miles outside London where our exterior sets were being constructed. I cannot put into words just how awe-inspiring and massive these sets were. I've been working on movie sets for thirty-plus years and have never seen anything on this scale before. They were beautiful but absolutely huge. There was a whole village. Shiz University included a boating river and fountains. It was clear that we were going to have to be extremely progressive with our RF acquisition. It wasn't just a case of moving the sound cart closer when you are attached to Pro Tools, a keyboard and distributing PA and VOG feeds. We decided that we would off-board our RF receivers in each location so we could set up a sound & music base camp out of two trucks on the edge of the set and simply move the RF receiver cart closer to the action when required rather than disrupt the entire sound & music rigs which would have cost us valuable time. Our receivers and antennas could be rigged high up overlooking the huge sets and we had one hundred metres of AES cable drums so that the vans could park alongside each other outside the set. Van 1 was Production Sound, van 2 was Pro Tools, and live keyboards with huge 50-inch monitors so every nuance of the performance could be seen to provide absolutely seamless frame-accurate cueing for Pro Tools and Off-board receivers 100 metres from sound cart up high looking over Shiz University Dancers' earwigs