Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1543098
28 PRODUCTION SOUND & VIDEO – Spring 2026 Across the wider rig, we carried a huge array of stems. Mono music. Stereo playback. Vocal-only stems. Thumper feeds for chorus timing. The keyboard stem. MIDI. My production mix. And each of those mixes could be routed independently to different departments: lighting for cue timing, playback for monitoring, choreography for spatial alignment, Camera Operators for movement synchronisation. Every member of the crew was listening to a version of the moment that supported their job. This is why I say production sound became the orchestra and conductor: our mixes became the heartbeat of the entire film set. With the four months of prep and year of shooting, that is exactly what the Sound & Music Department became, the support system, the quiet machinery behind the emotion. The instrument that made the impossible possible and allowed this film to be made the way Jon Chu always intended: truthfully, musically, and with the full emotional weight of live performance. The IEM System: Making the Invisible Audible To give the cast the kind of support a pit orchestra provides on stage, the IEM system had to be both powerful and invisible. Wicked: For Good wasn't a concert film, so the presence of an in-ear monitor or an earwig had to disappear completely. Costume and Makeup were essential collaborators from Day One. Every IEM cable and shell was colour-matched for the individual actor. Cynthia had green IEM's painted to match her exact Elphaba shade; Ari's were blended to her skin and makeup tone. On wider shots, the IEM's vanished entirely. On mid-shots and close-ups, VFX painted them out only where absolutely necessary. We worked with PureTone in the UK to create custom-moulded IEM's and custom earwigs for our principal cast. That achieved two crucial things: They fit deep and securely in the ear canal, so when Ari was swinging from a chandelier in "Popular" or when Cynthia was flying through the air in "Defying Gravity," the units didn't budge. They protrude less, making VFX paint-out far easier—and on wider shots, often unnecessary. Inside those IEM's they heard: • Ben Holder's live keyboard • Greg Wells's backing track • A blend of their own voice and their scene partner's voice • A version of my boom/lav production mix emphasised for emotional clarity rather than technical neutrality From a signal perspective, we used two tiers of in-ear support: • Full-range IEM's (Sennheiser EW IEM system) for serious live singing—capable of carrying Greg's full-bandwidth backing tracks, the live keyboard, and their personal vocal blend with proper bass extension. • Earwigs for moments that required only timing cues or simple guide information—no full-range fidelity, no cable from pack to ear, extremely low profile and often requiring no VFX paint-out. Every principal actor had a personal mix. Before a take, you'd see Arthur standing beside the actors saying, "Give us a level—just a line," and Josh would tweak their vocal level in the IEM against either keyboard or track so that emotionally they were exactly where they needed to be. And when they reached for a note emotionally, everything in their ear should rise to meet it—invisibly. Boom Operator Arthur Fenn setting the lav on the Tin Man Ariana Grande, with two DPA's exposed for later paint-out by VFX