Los Angeles—September 22, 2011: At this year’s Creative Arts Emmy Awards show, audio specialist Sennheiser was tapped to capture the “glamorous” sound bites from the bustling red carpet for one of the entertainment industry’s leading crew-centric magazines, Sound & Picture.
The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences awarded the 2010-2011 Creative Arts Primetime Emmy Awards for programs and individual achievements at the 63rd Emmy Awards presentation at the NOKIA Theatre L.A. LIVE in Los Angeles. Included among the presentations were Emmy Awards for Outstanding Sound Mixing Achievement in a One Hour Comedy or Drama Series and Outstanding Music Composition in a Miniseries, Movie or a Special. For the evening’s events, Sound & Picture looked to the new MKH 8060 shotgun microphone, equipped with the MZD 8000 digital output module, to capture the vibrancy of the red carpet. While the digital microphone provided a clean, concrete audio track, they teamed EK 2000 portable receiver with the SKM 2000 XP handheld transmitter, featuring with an e 935 dynamic cardioid microphone module, for the one-on-one celebrity and crew interviews.
MKH 8060 Delivers Great Frequency Response and Reliability
The two-hour red carpet event managed hundreds of arrivals with stars like Seth Meyers, Rebecca Romijn and the cast of iCarly promoting various up-coming projects or talking about their Emmy nominations. Daron James, editor of Sound & Picture, served as producer. “I wanted to use Sennheiser digital wireless equipment because of the reliability of their frequency range,” James explained. “When you’re working an event like this and you know there is going to be frequency challenges because of the amount of news outlets that will be there covering the action, it’s important to have versatility you can rely on.”
The 100-foot red carpet was packed end-to-end with over 30 different news sources, all of which were using some form of wireless device for audio communications. James mounted the EK 2000 portable receiver to a fixed position on the camera, while host Lauren Mora utilized the SKM 2000 XP handheld transmitter to talk with the arrivals. “With Sennheiser’s easy frequency scan, we were able to find 11 free channels in our bank, which kept us from getting any RF hits during the production,” James said. “The e 935 microphone module performed amazingly well and easily cut through the red carpet clutter with its high output. The low sensitivity to high impact ratio was phenomenal and there was virtually no handling noise present in our audio tracks.”
Crowd Control
Additionally, the MKH 8060 digital microphone was mounted to the camera to capture the ambient sounds of the arrivals and cheers from a nearby crowd approximately 50 feet away. “We didn’t have the luxury of a separate audio mixer moving faders, it was more of a set it and forget it approach, and the MKH 8060 produced great results,” James said.
Since James shot and monitored the audio himself, it was important for him to find an audio solution that allowed him to set input levels and prevent constant readjustment. “It’s not easy working camera and making sure you’ve captured usable audio alone, but the Sennheiser microphones really came through for us,” James concluded.
