Recently, the SOTU team has been looking at a lot of spaces, and considering the impact of the space on the work presented within.
Our first day of production on the film was in and around Mackey Auditorium in Boulder, CO. Truly a great way to kick off the movie, especially the concert itself, with about 2000 audience members packing the space to capacity for a performance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Mackey was a great space for the work, being one of the biggest and best concert venues in Colorado. It's hard to think of a space that would be too big for such a monumental work of music, but the union of space, sound, and audience was just right on that evening.
St. John's Cathedral in Denver
Recently, we had the chance to attend the world premiere of Greg Walker's work titled Uneasy Sits The King, which is a reference to a passage in the great Choral work Carmina Burana, in which a king sits high... too high... and fears ruin. The work was presented at St. John's Cathederal in Denver in association with the Niwot Timberline Symphony Orchestra and the Colorado Choral Sociey. Greg's work was presented along with a powerful recital of Carmina Burana, which has been used as the epic climax music in so many films that it has become a cliche' of Hollywood movies. St John's is an awesome space although not well suited to music requiring precise timing or clarity of instruments. Due to the length of the hall, the reverberation (which is well suited to choral performances) made some of the instruments less clear than they usually sound in a more conventional concert hall.
Shortly after that performance, we had the chance to meet up with the folks responsible for helping us present Song of The Untouchable at the King Center on the CU Denver campus. We discussed how to best present the film, and how to get everything on the stage in a fashion that suits the concept of the piece, and still allows enough room for a full 65-piece orchestra. The concert, which is also the finale of the film, is almost a year away but still there are some technical challenges we need to start working on right away. Coordinating a concert with video projection and a simultaneous film shoot is a daunting challenge.
Currently, we're organizing the pre-production for our trip to India. It's a complicated process but we're slowly getting a grip on the trip!
Cheers,
Chuck
