Classical Visions
|
This month's email commentary follows the theme of arts and culture reporting that I've offered over the past few months with a discourse on entertainment technology in the symphony hall. For those readers who are tired of this high-brow subject matter, perhaps I'll be able to comment on more mainstream corporate presentation matters, now that the first green shoots of that business have begun to poke their heads up through the soil.
First, I have to admit a bias related to this article and that's because I'm a bi g fan of the "Lord of the Rings" movies. For me, there's nothing like a film featuring bows, arrows, monsters, swords and bearded dudes speaking quasi-Old English to keep me entertained. Therefore, imagine my delight while I was sitting mostly alone in Radio City Music Hall listening to the rehearsal for LOTR - The Symphony, performed by a 100-piece orchestra and a 230-person choir, downstage of a 60'-wide HD projection. Better still; the show was sold out the following night.
Thus we have a fine example to illustrate the additive power of media as it relates to symphonic performance and a counterpoint to the struggles that many symphony orchestras and symphony halls are facing as a result of declining subscription and ticket sales. However, before I tackle the broader subject, I'd like to review a few of the unique technical concepts supporting LOTR-The Symphony.
The basic concept is to display the movie while the full orchestra performs a version of the film score re-written and re-arranged by the composer, Howard Shore and superficially, that seems simple and not too far from the days of silent films exhibited alongside a live musician. The details, of course, are a little more complicated and utilize some very modern technical approaches to pull off.
The primary video issue is related to the orchestra conductor and his ability to keep the orchestra at the exact tempo needed to match the film throughout the entire 178-minute running length. Eschewing an audio click-track and the headphones necessary to hear it, in this case the conductor views a specially prepared version of the movie on a monitor located at the podium. This SD video stream has been edited to include a visual click-track (the white "hole-punch" commonly used) that indicates the tempo as well as moving vertical bars to indicate the lead-in to a specific cue.
In the case of LOTR, an HD-Cam deck is sync'd to the conductor playback device - a SD Doremi unit - to provide the feed to two Barco FLM-HD18k video projectors. The two source devices are slaved together so that the conductor can skip around the score during rehearsals, while the tape op shuttles the machines to keep up.
The other peculiarities of this live production are the presence of sub-titles in the film as well as the presence of over 80 micr ophones, which are used to support the orchestra and vocalists. The reason the orchestra is amplified, while that may be an anathema to symphony purists, is to balance the sound of the live orchestra against the dialogue and sound effects tracks included in the video playback of the movie. To give the sound mixer (in this case Mr. Paul Bevan mixing FOH on a Digico SD7) more freedom, the dialogue is also provided via sub-titles, allowing the music to overwhelm the dialogue when it's appropriate without compromising the story flow.
The end result appeared to be very successful based on the reactions of ticket holders and buzz on the web. Other applications of media to the symphony hall experience have included Bill Viola's hypnotic and successful video accompaniment to a concert staging of Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" as performed by the LA Philharmonic under the title "The Tristan Project" and, in another worthwhile attempt by the LA Phil, a performance of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf with puppet i-mag.
 While we weren't involved in the Peter and the Wolf escapade, I recently met up with the director and creative team responsible who showed me some of the media. The concept behind this production utilizes a miniature stage set populated by paper puppets and hand-animated backgrounds. This set is magnified on a large projection screen, providing the audience with a great view of the puppet activity working in concert with symphony and the narrator.
The promotional video for the production I was shown was totally charming and I understand that for this piece and it's young audience, the experience was memorable. I think it's very likely that this approach will be applied to some more grown-up content next year and it should be very interesting to see how a more typical classical music audience reacts to the playful nature of this presentation.
Another aspect of this approach worth noting is the effect that media in the concert hall has on the lighting design and staging of the production. Since most traditional symphony halls do not have the lighting and rigging equipment required to stage elaborate media installations, designers need to be careful not to overwhelm the capabilities of the venue or more importantly, the production budget.
For the prototypical classical music concert goer, the intrusion of visual media into the symphony hall may be seen as an unwelcome addition. However, if these institutions are looking to expand outside their traditional audience, the examples I've described, along with their creative brethren, provide much food for thought.
|
