Wednesday 7th September 2011

Today I was on day 2 of work placement at PRG (production resource group) http://www.prg.com/ in Dandgenong. I working with the lighting rigging crew to make looms for the several lighting trusses needed for the state school spectacular next week at Hisense Arena. I had to run out hundreds of meters worth of cable and then loom them together using electrical tape. Then I had to tag and label each loom at both ends with specifically coloured tape so that the crew next week will know exactly where the cable needs to go and which lighting truss it belongs to. I then put the looms into specific road-cases ready to be put on the truck on friday. It was a great experience to learn what goes into preparing for a production as big as the state school spectacular. Everyone at PRG were really nice and taught me heaps about different aspects of production that I had not have had experience in. Hopefully I will work alongside some of the crew from PRG during bump in for School Spec next week.

Wednesday 31st August 2011

Today we recorded Jess' song in the studio for the music video. Seeing that it was only vocals and acoustic guitar that we had to record, it didn't take us long to set up the studio and start recording. Firstly i set up a KSM27 on a mic stand with a pop filter on the front of it. I plugged this mic into channel 1 on the desk. Then I set up a SM57 on a stand positioned around 5 inches from the sound hole of Olivers guitar. I then ran a channel through the DI and into the guitar. Jess (vocals) and Oliver (guitar) both did a few run throughs so that we could get an understanding for different levels of the mics and also to see where the peaks in the track were so our levels matched accordingly to that. Once all the levels were correct Taylah and myself were able to start recording. We only needed to record the track twice which was really good. Jess sang really well into the mic which made it easier to get clarity within the track. Oliver originally had his guitar set on half volume and the signal strength wasn't very strong so we boosted it to full to help balance the vocals and guitar before recording, much like what you would do for a live performance, however this brought us peaks on the guitar signal so we once again brought olivers guitar back to half level volume and then adjusted the vocal signal accordingly. The only hard thing about recording Jess' song was that it had low and high parts which made balancing the track difficult. Overall I believe the track turned out reasonably well. The vocal signal was good considering it was a live recording with the acoustic guitar. If I wanted to produce a better quality track then I probably should have recording the vocals and acoustic guitar separately at different times so that I could then get a better overall mix.