Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1530210
Winter 2025 – LOCAL695.COM 35 keyboard. The one hundred metres of AES cable meant our antennas and receivers could follow the cameras and cast around the huge, expansive backlot sets. I contacted the brilliant Gaffer, David Smith, and asked about his plans for generator placement. I have worked with David many times in my career, and he supports production sound and will always provide helpful solutions to difficult circumstances. The issue on the Wicked location build was that due to the size of the set, David would need multiple generators supplying power to a different area of the set. All the generators would need to be running to provide the whole set with light. David said, "I'm going to have a gennie in each corner of each set. How far do they need to be away for you not to hear them and whatever distance that is, we will run cables and cable bridges if necessary." I asked that each genie to be one hundred yards from the edge of the set and that is what David and his fantastic electrical crew delivered! Amazing, we were surrounded by genies, but we could not hear them. Next, we started thinking about the earwig requirements. It was me and Arthur Fenn's opinion that because Ariana and Cynthia were used to wearing cabled, full-range in-ear monitors (IEM's) on stage, the bandwidth and quality of a hidden earwig would not be sufficient enough for them. Earwig systems are adequate when they are simply being fed an electronic keyboard as the frequencies they are required to reproduce are mainly within the midrange. Having listened to Greg Wells' music mixes for the backing tracks, they were extremely deep in the bass and complex musically. I also figured that like an IEM mix on stage, Cynthia and Ariana would want to hear their own voices in their IEM's and would require individual mixes. I contacted Pablo Helman, the VFX Supervisor, who instantly made me feel at ease. Pablo is an extremely collaborative filmmaker who completely understood why our actors would need full-range IEM's. It helped enormously that Pablo is also a musician who plays in a band in his downtime. A plan was made to get Cynthia and Ari custom-made, skin-tone matched full-range IEM's that could be used as one-ear mono or two-ear stereo units, and Arthur would work closely with hair and makeup to hide cables and be sensitive to Pablo's paint out by making the IEM's as low profile as possible. We still decided to get all these cast members earwigs too, so they had a choice and if they decided to, sing live with a keyboard backing. We could offer them their earwig instead to help Pablo. Both IEM's and earwigs would be custom moulded to each actor's ear canal for three reasons: A custom fit device is more comfortable to wear all day, it is also easier to hide as it sits a little deeper in the ear canal, and third, it is less likely to fall out on a dance number. We have been working with Deke Frickey at Puretone IEM's since Les Miserables and he has become used to working with myself and Arthur, liasing with production in prep to schedule Deke and his audiologist the task of taking ear impressions and skin-tone photographs of each actor to enable personal IEM's and earwigs to be manufactured. We have this process down to a fine art nowadays and I can't thank Deke and Puretone enough for their unwavering professionalism and support. Sky Studios Elstree was a hub of activity despite the fact we were still months away from shooting. The recording studio was finished, and Tom Barrow and Robin Baynton were assisting Music Producer Greg Wells, who was starting to pre-record Cynthia and Ari in between their rehearsal time. Arthur Fenn was rigging their mics, and Josh Winslade, our On-Set Pro Tools Operator, started to work alongside the choreography department, providing music playback on the big group dance routine rehearsals with a 10kw JBL PA system to really create an immersive atmosphere in the rehearsal space. Often it sounded like a rave was going on in there! This time was incredibly helpful for Josh to give him a couple of months to get very familiar with the songs, the routines, and potential cue points. He would also be part of each presentation of the routines to Jon Chu and his longtime Choreographer Chris. Josh would have a pretty good idea of how Jon was planning to shoot sequences, which, informed him of potential requirements on each number for Pro Tools As we approached the start of principal photography, I reached out to Jon Chu's longtime sound post team, Supervising Sound Editors John Marquis and Nancy Nugent Title. The collaboration between production and post sound is something I have promoted since the early stages of my career and I wanted to make sure I was going to deliver exactly what Jon and Nancy required and check with them that my creative choices, workflow, and track designation worked for them. Nancy and I jumped onto a Zoom call where I described the workflow I had designed for Wicked, alongside screen sharing my workflow document. I made sure that anything that Nancy asked for was delivered and I adjusted my workflow to include anything she wanted. I described my use of Schoeps Super CMITS in high background noise situations on both interior and exteriors, explaining exactly how the processed track of the mic worked and set her mind at ease, letting her know I would always record the unprocessed "CMIT" track too, so she had a choice on each boom mic. I also explained that using two lavaliers on an actor was standard operating procedure for me on musicals to deal with either noisy costumes (two different mic positions) or extreme dynamic range (two different transmitter gain levels). Nancy was one hundred percent supportive of my suggested workflow. I also gave her a breakdown of my 32-track dailies delivery to Picture Editor Myron Kerstein and 1st Assistant