AudioMedia - June 2008 - (Page 64)

06|08 AMSR blue Several years after The Blue Planet originally took television screens in 140-plus countries by storm, JONATHAN MILLER meets the team charged with taking its stunning sights and sounds to the stage (and a much bigger screen) at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall on the final date of The Blue Planet Live! tour. the planet LIVE the country in 2006. This (potentially) risky business paid dividends with ‘Fenton & Co’ coming back for a second bite at the (performance) cherry two years later with a unique two-hour edit of the countless inspiring scenes from the much-loved programme being projected onto some of the largest screens ever used in the UK. n creating The Blue Planet I wanted to take the viewers on a journey to a place that they had never been before, and to be emotionally moved by it. I am delighted that World Class Service has teamed up with BBC Worldwide to produce the live events in 2008, which capture the original spirit of the BBC television series. From the creatures of the deep to the awesome blue whale, The Blue Planet Live! puts the audience in a moving and dramatic world at an immense scale.” So said Alistair Fothergill, Series Producer of the awardwinning BBC documentary The Blue Planet that successfully sought to film previously unseen areas of the world’s oceans using cutting-edge technology and investigate life beneath the waves, calling upon the superlative narrative talents of acclaimed broadcaster and naturalist Sir David Attenborough in order to do so. It’s often been said that a picture paints a thousand words, yet even Attenborough’s carefully chosen script could only convey so much when accompanying the eight 50-minute episodes of often stunning footage originally broadcast back in 2001, themselves five years in the making. Silence can be golden, yet (instrumental) music is arguably a universal language in itself, so who better to call upon to provide a suitable seafaring soundtrack than five-times Academy Award nominee George Fenton, who told a BBC interviewer at the time, “Three years ago, when I was asked to write the music, I imagined footage which would be awesome, terrifying, and magnificent. It is all of these things, but my lasting impression – and, for me, the greatest achievement – is that the remarkable films that Alastair Fothergill, Martha Holmes, and Andy Byatt have made actually manage to make the oceans feel as natural a habitat as the land. They have achieved this by a spectacular mix of scientific knowledge and dramatic flair. The same is true of David Attenborough. His commentaries are distinguished by their understanding, love of the subject, and, luckily for me, their musicality.” It was certainly a winning combination, with Fenton’s suitably emotional and epic score going on to win BAFTA, Emmy, and Ivor Novello awards and rightly so – so much so, in fact, that some bright spark had the idea of taking the ‘show’ to the stage, as it were, with a full-blown orchestra (conducted by none other than Fenton himself ) playing along to a series of synchronised sequences from the television documentary being replayed on a gigantic overhead screen to select four-figure audiences around “I Unusually, Manchester-based employer-driven initiative World Class Service was credited with presenting The Blue Planet Live! latest outing, joined by Arup – a global firm of designers and consultants behind many of the world’s most innovative and sustainable buildings, transport, and civil engineering projects – as their title sponsor. “We are proud to be bringing this spectacular show back to the UK,” stated the former’s Managing Director, Howard Raynor. “Having already thrilled audiences in Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Montreal, and Copenhagen, it is returning to the UK on an even more breathtaking scale than before. Cutting-edge developments in image and sound quality, combined with the awesome images and an unforgettable score, have allowed us to create an exciting new breed of event which we hope will move and inspire audiences.” Living up to advance publicity hype is never easy, yet appointed freelance FOH Engineer Colin Pink – who had previously mainly worked in theatre, undertaking all testing for the Cadac Concert console along the way – took to it like a duck to water. “I was at the National Theatre for ten years,” he begins, by way of background. “Then I thought it was time to move on, went freelance, and did a couple of films; I did a bit of post-production on the remake of Alfie [2004] and Stage Beauty [2004], and then I was ten weeks on set for Mrs Henderson Presents [2005], which George Fenton did the music for – bit of a connection there. His musical director/orchestrator was Simon Chamberlain, who plays keyboards on this show, so when this gig came up and Blitz, the suppliers, were looking for people to crew it, my name came up, so that’s how I got the gig in the first place.” It’s a small (and funny old) world, and, according to Pink, “ a funny old gig, because there’s sort of two versions: the concert hall version, and the arena version.” On the face of it, one might have maybe assumed that mixing a full orchestra in the likes of Birmingham’s S ounding The Deep > 64 AUDIO MEDIA JUNE 2008

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of AudioMedia - June 2008

AudioMedia - June 2008 Contents Recording Post Broadcast AES Review What's Up UK? Geofocus: Australia For the Record Special Report: Videosonics Newstalk: DPA New Microphones Novation SL Compact Allen & Heath IDR-8 Eastwest Quantum Leap SD2 & Goliath Final Cut: Indiana Jones Merging ADR Module Koolworld SSL Duende Good Product Sampler: Microphones Video Guide AMSR Meyer Sound The Blue Planet Live! Royer Labs Mics R-121 & R-122

AudioMedia - June 2008

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