I have done a few shows with the
orchestra far upstage. My experience is that the result has been far better then when trying to balance the volume from onstage actors and pit volume.
Here's what has worked for me:
Make sure the
orchestra is miced properly. Even for ensembles I sometimes consume 20 channels or so. Next, I subgroup them. I then calculate the acoustic delay between the actual
orchestra location and the
FOH speakers. I use the ballpark of 1ms per ft. Then I use the
channel insert of the
orchestra subgroup and insert a delay (in my case the
orchestra was 30 ft upstage resulting in a 30ms delay). This time alignes the
orchestra's acoustic signature with the amplified signal. This more than anything has tighened up the sound of the miced
orchestra, especially with piano and drum.
I also provide the
downstage acting areas with some wedges giving them a
bit of piano and drum for key,
pitch, and timing.
The music director gets a
monitor feed of the wireless from the actors.
I also provide the music director with an
infrared camera feed of the
stage, allowing her to see in the dark and gives her confidence in the SM's cues.
With proper gating, the bleed from the
orchestra to the actor's mics should be easily manageable.
Of course, nothing will really help if the actors are whispering to each other and not projecting. This is been my biggest problem with miced actors. They quit projecting, thinking that the mic will make up for their lack of projecting skills. I've also experienced this with live bands. The more
monitor you give them, the softer they sing, not realizing that their mix and the audience mix are entirely different. This is less true of experienced actors and musicians.
Personally, I like having the live music upstage. For me the key to making this work has been to time align the
orchestra (it's just like time aligning a
backline), soft gating the actor's mics, and tweaking the
monitor locations and levels to encourage the actors to speak (or sing) up.
I just got brought on to do the sound design of a local high school's production of The Pajama Game. I’m going to be running about 20 RF mics with a
Shure ULX radio
system and B6 mic elements. They also informed me of an aspect of their set design that has me bothered. Because the theater doesn’t have a "real"
orchestra pit and the "pit area" they have is very close to the audience, they have complained that in past shows the
orchestra has always created serious balance problems for the first 10 or so rows. Before I was even brought on they decided to fix this problem by moving the
orchestra onstage all the way upstage behind a skrim and to let the
orchestra be seen in certain scenes. I am starting to think this is going to become a nightmare for me because every time they
play a song its going to the bleeding into everyone’s mic all at different times. Is this setup even doable? I had planned to do forehead mounts but that seems out of the question now. I’m thinking the only way to salvage the situation is to ear mount as far down the cheek as possible to give me enough
gain to avoid picking up much of the
orchestra. Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.
