Post opening week thoughts.

Wow what a few weeks its been working on this gritty but funny and touching play. End of the Rainbow has opened to some fantastic reviews, Lisa is doing a fabulous job in the role of Judy with a great supporting cast and the audience reaction has been great. Many commenting on the sound of the show on the way out which is always nice. 

Its been great for me to get back to a play al be it with some big music within it.  I hadn't realised how Id missed the intricate detail sound effects that go along with such a serious drama such as sourcing the right traffic noises or having those off stage bathroom sounds just right. It might not have felt like that a few weeks back when I was recording the sounds of hotel doors opening and closing and taps running but it all seems worth it now! I made a real effort to record as many of the sounds I needed as I could and although I couldn't do them all with the time I had it was really nice to take time to record most of them.  

I also made some different choices this time with regards to microphones, this time opting for Countryman B6 hair line microphones. One of the main reasons for this was that I had already decided that I would double mic and pack each of the actors. The play is really a three hander so if we did have radio mic issues the times when our actors leave the stage was very limited. I wanted to ensure we could switch to a spare even whilst on stage.  This left our cast wearing two mic packs and two mics.  The packs I will come to in a minute but I needed to chose a mic that we could hide two of in the hair line. with this play this needed to be as discreet as it could be. The B6 is one of the smallest available and worked a real treat. I was also very pleasantly surprised at the quality and tone from such a small capsule. 

For most of our cast I chose my usual sennheiser evolution radio mic systems however Lisa, our lead has such a small frame I wanted to ensure that hiding both radio mic packs within her dress was going to be possible without seeing them.  I looked at both the Shure and Sennheiser offerings and chose the SK5212 Mk II from Sennheiser.  one of the residing factors in this was the size and weight but also that our other cast would be on Sennheiser using WSM software so it seamed the best option. 

Another Mic that has also blown me away on this show has been the Neumann KSM104.  I needed a vocal mic for Judy to sing down that would take us away from the natural sound of the dialogue scenes and place us right in the club where she was performing.  This had to look the part circa 1968 but also sound phenomenal enhancing Lisas vocals perfectly. I looked at several options from Shure, Audix and Sennheiser and after settling on the KSM104 I have to say it does the job perfectly whilst still sounding so natural. 

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