We churn out lots of content at Fender, but the Orville Peck Fender White Falcon Video Shoot was extra special. Seeing it released in the wild makes me very proud of our team, knowing we were firing on all cylinders to pull this off is what teamwork is all about.
As Audio Supervisor, I'm responsible for everything heard. This includes production and post. On the production side, we captured 28 tracks, and sent those tracks to 3 different places within the facility via Dante (fiber). The first destination was the Sound Devices Scorpio capturing all Pre-Fader Iso's, the second destination was Reaper, for immediate multitrack playback (in the room) and the third destination was Nuendo for monitoring (and tracking redundancy) in my office on the other side of the building - away from the sound of the band, to provide a true and unbiased listening environment.
Band personnel:
Band Members:
Danny Presant (Bass)
Emily Rose (Acoustic / BGVs)
Evan Weiss (Electric / BGVs)
Matt Pynn (Pedal Steel / BGVs)
Kane Ritchotte (Drums)
Some of the mics used included a 57/Royer combo on Deluxe Reverb amps (both electric guitars), 5 SM58's for vocals, L.R. Baggs DI feeding a Fender acoustic amp, Fractal line out (pedal steel), SM7B/line out of Basshead 800 + 410 cab (bass), and various mics capturing drums (see below).
All of the above fed the Yamaha Rio, which fed the QL5 and Scorpio. All Iso's were routed to Reaper via Dante for immediate multitrack playback (for band and producer/director approval). The same Iso sources were routed to Nuendo in my office for QC monitoring, and fast (temp) 2-track reference bouncing to deliver to video editors.
The production schedule was tight (as usual), so prepping the day before and staying organized across all systems with track labeling/routing was key to success here.
To stay malleable with production changes, I captured Orville's interview with a separate smaller rig (633 with Cmit5u/COS11d combo)
Next up, Audio Post!
Because of this project's specific post process, stakeholders needed rough mixes of everything ASAP in order to determine which takes would be used for the edit. Having the Iso's tracked directly to Nuendo/Reaper allowed me to render quick "mixes" of each take and deliver the requested assets ASAP. Expediting this step buys as much time as possible for audio post in general.
As you can imagine, one challenging bit of this mix was isolating each source (because of the way we had to capture the performances). After cleaning up and phase aligning the drums (I used Auto Align 2 in ARA mode), I went down the list (starting with bass/the foundation), isolating/tailoring each instrument/voice to work with (or highlight) the natural reverb and resonance of the room (our Studio 1, in Corona).
Here is a quick video highlighting the aural differences between the raw Iso's captured vs my "final" mix.
Please check out the officially released video, and most importantly, the White Falcon (Orville's custom guitar).
Orville and team were amazing to work with, both during production and post. He's such a talented artist, and I'll be watching closely as he takes over whatever musical genre he wants to fill!
Overall this was fun for me and my team, and I can't wait for what's next. Between this and the Boygenius Broadkaster, I'm loving our recent assignments for Gretsch exclusives!
Thanks to my friend, Andre Rivera for his production audio assistance.
Please feel free to reach out if you'd like any additional details.
Thanks for reading/listening!
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