Crash Symphony Productions, our Sydney recording studio, had the honour of recording the internationally acclaimed Flamenco guitarist, Juan Carmona, at the Sydney Opera House. Sinfonia Flamenca was the official name of the event. The concert took place in early September and Juan was accompanied by the wonderful and flawless Sydney Symphony Orchestra. This is the story of that recording and how our engineers worked to capture a beautiful video of the event.
When the Sydney Opera House became a Sydney Recording Studio
The highest temple of musical performance in the southern hemisphere is the Sydney Opera House. It matches most other venues around the globe in both sound quality and architectural uniqueness. For any music lover to work there is an immense honour and extremely exciting.
There are some challenges in recording at the Sydney Opera House. Understandably, they do not permit cameras to be used on stage. This was the first challenge. It is important to the management of the Sydney Opera House that guests not be interrupted by cameras that are visible on the stage while the symphony is performing. Anything that would be considered a distraction from the musical performance is strictly forbidden. This means that our video crew required positions that were away from the audience. We needed to have very powerful high-definition telescopic lenses. These lenses would allow us to get in close to the musicians from far away.
How we used a Telescopic lens to get in close to Juan
In Juan’s case this is particularly important. Juan is royalty in the flamenco guitar world. The way his hands and fingers move across the fret board of his classical guitar was awe inspiring. We really wanted to capture that magic. Using the new Sony 100-400mm G Master series lens allowed us to zoom in close to his hands and make the viewer feel as though they were right on stage with him as he performed.
Our star engineer is Stewart Havill. Stew is the guy in our Sydney recording studio that has the most experience with videography. He operated the telescopic lens. Stew coupled the telescopic lens with a wide angle lens. This lens’ purpose was to capture the entire orchestra. We did this in 4k so that we could crop into sections if we need to do so. This wide angle was setup with a 4k recorder that allowed us to set and forget the camera as it recorded the whole performance.
The third and last camera was setup in the back of the auditorium looking down on to the stage. It had the eagle eye view. We were able to move between these spectacular angles quite seamlessly.
About the Performance
Importantly, there were two sections to this concert. The first was a small ensemble of seven musicians. Juan was the focal point and leader of the ensemble. Worthy of note, Juan had a marvellous flamenco dancer, Karen Lugo, that would take to the dance floor in front of the musicians. She had as much musical impact as the surrounding band members with her feet clapping away to the rhythm of the music. Her confidence and her musical grace was immense and, there’s no doubt, she certainly complimented Juan’s magical flamenco guitar work.
The second half of the concert saw the full symphony orchestra introduced into the musical equation. David Robertson conducted the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. He brought them into synch with the latin group with absolute command and ease.
Thankfully the Sydney Opera House already has extremely high-end recording equipment. For an evening it became the superlative Sydney recording studio. French engineer, Lauren Serrano, organised capturing the audio captured by the orchestral microphones while the CSP team focused on the videography.
It is worth mentioning that the audio mixer and video editor. Lauren Serrano worked on the audio mixing of the recording. Luca, our video editor and sound engineer, worked on the final cut of the video at Crash Symphony Productions. Luca did a wonderful job and put in a significant effort. His skills in videography are completely remarkable. He used a lot of slow-fade cuts to show off the multiple angles, simultaneously. For these kinds of concerts this is a commonly used technique.
Contact us if you need a concert recorded
In conclusion, Juan’s performance at the Sydney Opera House was nothing less than dazzling, and as a result, we had a ball capturing the event. If you would like your concert videoed and recorded by our Sydney Recording studio contact us here. Alternatively, call us on 0408 300 402.
