Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1543098
Spring 2026 – LOCAL695.COM 31 Day One: Crane Day, No Booms Allowed Once we moved deeper into the body of "For Good," Jon and Alice made a choice that would reshape my approach to the scene. They wanted to release the cameras from the balcony edge and let it swoop and drift around the space using two Technocranes. The moves they designed were beautiful: big, sweeping passes that would start at the edge of the soundstage and sail in over the balcony, finding the actors in mid-shot and then retreating back out to reveal the world, and feel the song open up. There is simply no safe harbor to place a pole that will not end up in the shot, and even if you manage one pass, the crane move will have changed on the next. Day One of "For Good" would be lavalier-only for the singing sections. We ran two DPA 4061 lavaliers on each actor, each feeding its own transmitter and ISO track. There were two reasons for this: • Technical redundancy. If we took an RF hit on one transmitter at a critical moment, we had a second, entirely separate capture of the same performance. • Creative flexibility. We did not stack the mics on top of each other. We placed one on the left chest and one on the right. With a left and a right, one of those mics will always be favouring the direction of the voice. Incredibly dynamic performances like Ari and Cynthia's do not sit neatly in a grid. There are phrases where one of them sings a little softer, one syllable that falls away because of emotion or breath. With four lavs in total covering the duet, Robin can look at a word where, for instance, Cynthia drops slightly under Ari and ask: Which of the four mics has the best capture of that exact syllable in that exact head position? This is what I mean when I say that choice is king for live vocals. You do not ask for more microphones because you are unsure. You ask for them because you are certain that the performance is unique and that it deserves to be sculpted from as many angles as possible. The DPA's sounded beautiful, and because of the double-mic strategy, I never had that creeping anxiety of "if something goes wrong here, we have nothing to fall back on." During the day, especially once we hit the harmonic duet toward the end of the song, it was clear that we were dealing with something very special. When Ari and Cynthia start to mesh their voices together on that balcony, you feel that they are not just singing lines; they are essentially becoming one instrument. From a mix perspective, that is wonderful and terrifying in equal measure. Day Two: Extending the Balcony and Bringing the Booms Back At the end of Day One, Jon looked at those crane passes and said something that changed the way we approached the rest of "For Good." He was happy with the scale, but he wanted to lean further into the intimacy of the performance. He wanted the audience to feel as if they were standing on the balcony with Elphaba and Glinda. To do that, he needed the camera to physically get closer and to be able to move around the actors in a fluid, human way. The solution was to extend the balcony. That change had a knock-on effect for sound: Suddenly, we could bring both the booms back in. The Oz set Boom Operators: Arthur Fenn swings Ariana Grande (Glinda) & Robin Johnson swings Cynthia Erivo (Elphaba)