Microphones wedding singer water drop

[TheatrePros]

Hey all,

I am TDing a production of wedding singer. We have gone back and forth about the water drop and fianlly decided to go for it. The only problem is protecting the brand new lav that the actress will be wearing. I'm not worried about the pack (we will wrap it in a condom and saran wrap) but rather the element that will be on her soon to be soaking wet body/head. Ideas?

 

[rsmentele]

I just did a production of this a month ago or so, we also did the water drop. What we did was to have the actress playing Holly leave the stage and remove her mic element before the water drop, the director was able to cover her exit with choreo and it was un-noticable, she then re-entered in time to step on the chair and get wet, exc. To cover her vocals we had an actress off stage sing the one line she has while she just mouthed the words. I also saw a tour of the show a year ago or so, and talked to the tech staff about that same scene, and they did it the same way. Another option is to have the Holly line prerecorded if you cannot find anyone to cover the line and make it sound convincing. Also as a side note, you do not need much water to make the effect look good. We used about two cups and it looked great, but experiment with it, less water = less of a mess = good!

Another option that would nix the water and still look convincing is to use empty pill casings they look like water, sound like water... but no wetness. We experimented with this, and although it looked good, the director wanted the real thing.


Good luck!

 

[lparks1]

I am by no means a professional -- but I would say it depends on the amount of water. If you soak the head of the mic - I would venture a guess that you might ruin in or it will at least be out for a while while it dries.

You might also have to worry about a mic-head rusting if it's left wet and there are metal parts in it.

Just my $0.02.

 

[cpf]

Getting soaked in water would kill the acoustic pickup of the element until it dried, at very least. I think the best plan is to just do what rsmentele did and get the mic off of the person immediately before they get soaked, covering any missed lines with pre-recorded ones.

 

[TheatrePros]

We went with the empty pill capsules, it looked fantastic under the lights.




Pic of what it looked like at rehearsal.