Dolby Atmos - Industry visits

AMP students were invited to the Dolby Film School recently for a demonstration of their Dolby Atmos format, a spectacular experience of the mixing techniques used in films such as The Life of Pi and Gravity. Examples of other work was also presented, including some groundbreaking Atmos mixes of the likes of Ellie Goulding and Imagine dragons live. Further to this, students paid avisit to a leading Dolby atmos mixing facility in Soho, at Warner Bros De Lane Lea. Operations manager Mike King provided a rare glimpse inside the world famous Stage1, where soundtracks on titles such as Wonderwoman and Early Man have been mixed to completion, not to mention many of the recent Bond films such as Spectre and Quantum of Solace.

 AMP graduate Mark Timms (now studio assistant at De Lane Lea) was also on hand to demonstrate 

the phenomenal studio facilities here. 

AMP involved in new partnership with BBC Introducing

On Wednesday December 3rd, guests from BBC Introducing will be on-site to launch a new partnership with the department of Production. The partnership will see AMP students capture and post-produce sound which will ultimately be promoted via the BBC Introducing YouTube site.

When asked about how the partnership with the BBC came about, Steve Partridge (head of department for Production) said: 

"We have been filming live music performances for a few years now and have gained a reputation for doing this pretty well. Colleagues from the BBC noted this during a visit a year or so ago and as a result agreed to my proposal that we might partner with them to support their remit from government to promote new music"

Steve continued,  
"The music [captured during multi-camera shoots] will be broadcast via BBC 3 Counties on the Saturday, and the video output will be promoted via the BBC Introducing YouTube site. 
This is increasingly a collaborative project that will engage all three course areas within the Department. The multi-camera crews comprise Film & TV Production students, the audio crews who manage live sound and post-production/mixing are Audio & Music Production students. And the aspiration for when we have installed our new Vizrt VR solution (likely to happen around Christmas), which is of great interest to our partners at the BBC, is that we will soon be able to offer the option of filming a band in a full VR set that has been created by animation students as a full 3D render that will then run in real time via the green screen studio facility."

Trip to The X Factor

On Thursday the 13^th of November, a group of third year students (myself included) took a trip to Fountain Studios in Wembley, to the set of The X Factor. Dan Peters, our live sound lecturer had managed to organize the visit as he had previously toured with sound engineer Ben Milton, and now Ben mixes monitors for the show.

First of all we were taken for a tour of the TV studio. As we walked around, we were given an explanation of how everything works, the procedures that are followed and the equipment that is used for such a massive show. As you can imagine, the equipment used is of the highest caliber and is very impressive. One thing about the studio its self that stood out was how small it looked in person compared to on TV.

Mixing monitors for the show came across a mammoth task as it’s not a case of just sending sound to stage. Traditionally a monitor engineer would be in charge of the foldback, making sure the band can hear each other/what they want to hear to enable them to pull off the gig at an optimum level. A lot of the time this can involve a fair amount of diplomacy which has it’s own problems. The X Factor is broadcast live (roughly 9 million viewers a week) so the monitor engineer has additional tasks to do. As well as providing the foldback for the different contestants/backing bands, the job also includes making sure everybody can hear each other, e.g. the contestants can hear the judges and visa versa, the producers of the show can be heard by basically everyone and as well as the performers, dealing with the presenters, to name a few.

 

For monitoring purposes, the show uses a mix of 14 stereo in ear monitor mixes and a large number of monitors on stage.  The main console for mixing monitors is the DIGICo SD7, however they also use a small SD8 for guest bands that come in to play on the show e.g. One Direction, this means that an external engineer won’t interfere with how the show is mixed. The smaller SD8 is also used to mix The Xtra Factor straight after.

We were also taken up to the gallery to see what is used to mix the sound for broadcast. This is where we met Robert Edwards, the sound supervisor for the show. This means he is in charge of what is heard on TV. He explained to us a little about his role. The backing tracks are received on the Friday morning and are mixed on an in0house protools rig. They are then bounced to stems for the live engineers to mix for the contestants. The desk used for mixing to broadcast is a Calrec Apollo Console that can handle 1000+ inputs and Robert splits the desk into different layers to suit the layout of the show.

 

All in all it was a really good trip that gave an interesting insight into real world live sound and broadcast sound. It was particularly positive to hear that Ben went to University and did a degree in an area of sound before he began working in the live sound industry, with a variety of jobs. This experience will also be useful with what we do at University as even more comparisons can be made to what we learn and what we do as this runs parallel with industry practices.  

BPI invites you to the big music project, London.

The Big Music Project is one of the most exciting and ambitious youth music projects the BPI has ever supported.  Throughout the course of the project we will aim to reach more than 4.5 million young music lovers aged 14 to 24 to give them the chance to pick up an instrument, learn about the music business and make the right moves towards turning their creativity into their career.  We’ve joined forces with Global Radio’s Capital FM and youth work charity UK Youth to help youngsters from every corner of the UK take a step closer to their dream career.  The Big Music Project is funded by The Big Lottery Fund to the tune of £4 million.  You can check out the project at www.thebigmusicproject.co.uk

Following on from The Big Music Project Live in Glasgow where 900 young people came down to see us, we will be making our way toThe Brewery in London on Saturday 4^th October from 11.00am – 7.30pm.  The day will be packed with live music, big name speakers, first class advice from industry experts, information on work opportunities in the local area, the chance to find out how this project can make a difference in the local community and performances from Becky Hill, Chase & Status, Eliza Doolittle, MNEK and more.

We’d love it if you could join us to see the project in action!  Please RSVP to thebigmusicproject@capitalfm.com

Yellow Fish Mobile Studio visit to Bucks: 24th October 2014

As part of the Induction Week activity within the Department of Media Production we will be visited by Yellow Fish (http://www.yellowfishmusicgroup.com), who will bring their mobile recording studio for students to take a look around before taking part in a Q&A with the team that runs the facility.

The unit will park on the concourse at the High Wycombe campus from mid-morning on Wednesday 24th, with the Q&A in the event to follow in Gateway Lecture Theatre from 13.00. Anyone from Bucks would be very welcome to attend.

The unit has been used by many noteworthy performers, with recent clients including Chris De Burgh, Roger Daltrey, Wilko Johnson, The Strypes (UK album chart number 5, iTunes blues chart number 1), The Pretty Things and Brian Eno. The mobile also worked on the One Direction movie last year.