I need some mic advice!

[Bruce Watson]

Originally Posted by Dan Gunn

Thanks all for your understanding. I will have two Oktava MK 12 mics in the middle of the stage. Because of the advice I have received here and on another forum, the mics will be 10' to 15' from the stage in a ORTF configuration.

I wouldn't. Why? Typically in these situations there are only two sound sources that dominate everything. That is, the stacks of speakers on L/R of the stage.

ORTF works great with something like an acoustic orchestra. It's great a locating the instruments in a stereo field. But that's not what you have here. Your ORTF setup won't hear a bleeding thing from the center -- it will only hear the stacks (same as you and everyone in the audience). It's not going to place the lead guitar off center to the left unless the FOH guys do that and the stack on the left has him a little louder than the stack on the right.

This is why the Tapers came up with the "point at stacks" method. It probably came from ORTF, but it's been modified to work with live amplified shows that have stacks of speakers as output. Instead of hearing the stacks from the off-axis response of the cards, you hear the stacks from the on-axis response of the cards. The Tapers claim this sounds considerably better. And the logic of it is spot on.

[Steven Digges]

+1 on what Bruce said.

Also, It sounds like you have given up on a board feed but I have one more easy suggestion. In my experience Planners, Organizers, Promoters and other non technical people often say "no" to a lot of requests for things they don't understand just because it sounds like a big deal to them. I am not too pushy of a guy (OK, thats debatable sometimes). But when I run into a "no" I look for the easy yes.

A board feed is not technically a big deal, as long as your not going to have it monitored and adjusted on the fly as it should be. I would have a recorder and have XLR and 1/4" jumper cables in hand and I would ask the sound engineer himself if I could have a feed. When your behind the board this happens all the time. You might be surprised how willing he is to help you out. The key is timing. If you ask right before the show you will get a resounding no. There are always sound checks. You can set your levels then. If that feed is not monitored I do not consider it to be a main record, it is a back up record. But sometimes it turns out to be a great track to mix in when I go to post. It depends on a lot of things.

I have been a part of numerous threads on this board about recording live events. The number one thing many of us are always preaching is use back up recordings independent of each other. My guess is your PZM & SM58 tracks will not end up getting used unless everything else is not good. You can improve the SM58s by placing in front of a speaker stack instead of on stage front.

Good Luck Dan. We have all tried to do the best we can with little support and resources.

Kind Regards,

Steve

[Dan Gunn]

I think this dilemma is unique but I am semi-retired now and I will not have these problems anymore. If the gig is not fun I will let someone else do it.

[Bernie Beaudry]

Originally Posted by Dan Gunn

I think this dilemma is unique but I am semi-retired now and I will not have these problems anymore. If the gig is not fun I will let someone else do it.

Please let us know what you ended up doing and how it worked out for you!
BB

[Bernie Beaudry]

Have you done the concert yet? How did it go?

[Bob Hart]

For curiosity sake, here is a clip of a public event I recorded pro-bono. It is indeed a frustrating exercise when you cannot get desk audio.

For perceived reasons of public liability by the organiser and venue owner, I had to sit off behind the audience arena with two cameras and zoom lenses. I had a X-Y pair of old Sony C74 shotgun mikes at the side camera position as a backup. It was to receive a feed from the mix desk via my own two channel mixer at the camera. There was a Decca Tree on a high stand with the rear camera audio mixed from three Rode NT2a mikes into two channels.

There was a feed sent from the mix desk which initially tested successful but the desk operator ran into some late problems. In the resolving of those, the desk feed was disconnected. The event kicked off before I could trouble-shoot the desk feed issue and in any event, I was not prepared to hassle the desk operator at that late stage. The final sound in this clip was mixed from the two camera ambient audio tracks alone.

One of the students from the college carried my EX1 around and also at full zoom picked off a few shaky close-ups from within the crowd area.

ROLEYSTONE COMMUNITY COLLEGE CHOIR AT ARALUEN 2014 2 - YouTube

[Bernie Beaudry]

Originally Posted by Bob Hart

For curiosity sake, here is a clip of a public event I recorded pro-bono. It is indeed a frustrating exercise when you cannot get desk audio.

For perceived reasons of public liability by the organiser and venue owner, I had to sit off behind the audience arena with two cameras and zoom lenses. I had a X-Y pair of old Sony C74 shotgun mikes at the side camera position as a backup. It was to receive a feed from the mix desk via my own two channel mixer at the camera. There was a Decca Tree on a high stand with the rear camera audio mixed from three Rode NT2a mikes into two channels.

There was a feed sent from the mix desk which initially tested successful but the desk operator ran into some late problems. In the resolving of those, the desk feed was disconnected. The event kicked off before I could trouble-shoot the desk feed issue and in any event, I was not prepared to hassle the desk operator at that late stage. The final sound in this clip was mixed from the two camera ambient audio tracks alone.

One of the students from the college carried my EX1 around and also at full zoom picked off a few shaky close-ups from within the crowd area.

ROLEYSTONE COMMUNITY COLLEGE CHOIR AT ARALUEN 2014 2 - YouTube

Sounds very good IMHO! So I'm a little confused as to which mics this was from. Was it the Decca tree, the xy pair or both? Or something mounted on the cameras?

[Dan Gunn]

UPDATE: At my age, I should have remembered an old addage one of my ministers told me "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished!"
.
I invested a lot of time and some money into this event only to BOW OUT!

The final straw was trying to get AC power to my position. I did not have sufficient battery power to run two cameras for eight hours. The only response I received from my requests was "the stage has a 60amp service". I am 100% dependent on a pacemaker. If I get a shock, goodbye.

THAT IS THE END OF THE STORY.

Thanks All

[Pete Cofrancesco]

Sorry to hear it didn’t work out. The gist of what many of us were saying that doesn’t matter that it was pro bono ask for what you need otherwise you’re setting yourself for failure. When you aren’t proactive or ignore red flags bad things happen. From everything you described leading up it sounded that you would be on your own and that the video wasn’t a priority.

[Paul R Johnson]

Bob's video made me think that he probably got the best sound - because very little of what we heard would be from the PA system - so quite good I think.

Dan - with your pacemaker, you're probably less likely to die if you get a shock - because your tachycardia rhythm is maintained by your pacemaker, and it's this that gets interrupted by a shock - your pacemaker is designed to resist outside influences.

I don't quite understand what you mean by the stage having a 60 amp supply? In my venue, we have multiple three phase supplies for people who visit us - and in our case, these go up to 415V at 125A. When we have visiting camera crews who ask for power, we usually point them to these too? However, if what they mean is they want us to provide them with power at various points, then this would usually be a chargeable item - either in time, as in tasking a crew member to provide what you need. If asked for in advance in a rider or even an email, it's usually free - so if they ask for a 13A outlet situated in X and Y for a camera position we'd do this - but we also might point out that one of these locations is a fire route, and even though it is clear, it cannot be blocked with a camera and operator for any reason. We would then suggest suitable places. I have had video companies who reject these positions and then complain we were uncooperative.

I'm sorry the event didn't work out as you expected, but the warning signs were there, clear and loud. You wanted an audio feed. The organiser couldn't arrange it, you wanted power, this wasn't going to happen either. The problem here was that nobody in authority was on your side, and frankly - let you sink. This shows what they really wanted. A video on the cheap, with no effort on their part and no expense or planning. You were best not to do it.

Just a thought - was this an outside event?

[Dan Gunn]

YUP! Outside with chance of thunderstorms.

[Bernie Beaudry]

Originally Posted by Dan Gunn

UPDATE: At my age, I should have remembered an old addage one of my ministers told me "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished!"
.
I invested a lot of time and some money into this event only to BOW OUT!

The final straw was trying to get AC power to my position. I did not have sufficient battery power to run two cameras for eight hours. The only response I received from my requests was "the stage has a 60amp service". I am 100% dependent on a pacemaker. If I get a shock, goodbye.

THAT IS THE END OF THE STORY.

Thanks All

Dang I was looking forward to hearing about your experiences with this! Shame on them for being so cavalier about helping you do something your were doing for all the right reasons. You did the right thing to step away as frustrating as that must have been. The lack of appreciation for your efforts is telling.

[Steven Digges]

In US staging jargon "the stage has 60 amp service" often means there is a 60 amp "power drop box" backstage, or many of them. It is usually 3 legs of 60 amps each. Sometimes each leg is separated to power audio/video/lighting. A random third party video guy at an unorganized event like this could easily end up running into problems plugging into that service without proper communication from the stage hands working the box. Power supplies are often hard to come by back stage. If a stagehand or rigger finds something unknown plugged into a source dedicated for his use some of them don't hesitate to "yank it out". It's not their problem what is on the other end. Murphy strikes!

Side note: Years ago I was freelancing at a show. There was a 60 amp box leaning against a wall about thirty feet away from our technicians control area. Someone had thrown a piece of black drape over it to kind of hide the ugly box with 36 stingers plugged into it. To my horror, after the show started I looked over and saw a guy sitting on the box and leaning against the wall the box was leaning against. What was so scary is he was precariously setting down a giant big gulp type soda cup on the box. I went over and nicely told him he could not stay there. Without moving he gave me some crap about there not being enough seats in the house. I was no longer in nice guy mode. I said "your sitting on a high powered electrical box. If you spill that Coke it is going to weld your balls to a steel box. Move!" He did!

Kind Regards,

Steve

[Don Palomaki]

...the stage has 60 amp service...

Sometimes techies can overthink problems and solutions. Was the power you wanted just a plain vanilla old 120 volt, 15 (or 20) amp wall outlet? FWIW: For modest camcorder power at long events I often carry about 100' of indoor/outdoor orange extension cord (#14 works well, on a spool), gaffers tape to hold it down, and a surge protected power strip.

If far from outlets, a typical 35 Ahr golf cart battery and a car power charger/adapter that works with your camcorder can give a lot of run time. Expect perhaps 15 hours run time with a 2-amp (14 watt) camcorder.

[Boyd Ostroff]

Originally Posted by Don Palomaki

If far from outlets, a typical 35 Ahr golf cart battery and a car power charger/adapter that works with your camcorder can give a lot of run time. Expect perhaps 15 hours run time with a 2-amp (14 watt) camcorder.

I have a Yeti 400 which would (theoretically) give you 20 hours run time with a 20 watt load. Haven't done much with it yet, but will use it for a family event soon in my micro-venue out in the woods.

The same company (Goal Zero) makes portable power supplies in a whole range of sizes. They can be daisy-chained and plugged into solar panels too.

https://www.goalzero.com/shop/power-...power-station/