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Sennheiser RF Captures the 79th Academy Awards, The Red Carpet and Oprah's After Party
This year's 79th annual Academy Awards, broadcast live by ABC on Sunday, February 25, relied almost exclusively on Sennheiser wireless microphone systems for the red carpet arrival segments and awards presentation ceremony, as well as Oprah's After-Oscar Party 2007 from the Kodak Theatre the following day. With the broadcast featuring the most international nominees ever and with a worldwide television audience of several hundred million there was no margin for error. Soundtronics Wireless ensured that all the stars could be heard by deploying Sennheiser RF systems inside and outside the theatre.
Soundtronics Wireless owner and RF guru, David Bellamy, has increasingly come to depend on Sennheiser's RF expertise, which is backed by 50 years of experience with wireless technology, during his ten years of working with production sound specialists ATK AudioTek on the Academy Awards telecast. "Each year we've been getting more and more Sennheiser involved with the show, in key places where I feel comfortable with it," says Bellamy, who this year had 14 channels of Sennheiser RF microphones on the red carpet and 16 channels inside the Kodak Theatre.
Top quality audio is a critical feature on a telecast that has won 38 Emmy Awards over the years. This year, Bellamy employed Sennheiser SKM 5012 and SKM 5212 bodypack transmitters for all of the lavalier and podium mics used during the awards broadcast. In addition, first-time Oscar host Ellen DeGeneres took a Sennheiser SKM 5200 handheld mic into the audience for several informal interview segments.
Onstage, during performances of some of the Oscar-nominated songs, Beyoncé and Celine Dion also made use of Sennheiser RF mics. "Beyoncé was on an SKM5200 in the 900MHz range," explains Bellamy. "Celine brought her own mic – an SKM 5000 – and we put a channel in our antenna system to accommodate her receiver, which was backstage in our rack." Both singers combine the Sennheiser handheld transmitter with a Neumann KK 105-S capsule. Dion also used her preferred Sennheiser RF IEM system.
"I thought it was interesting that Celine Dion and Beyoncé were both holding Sennheiser transmitters. It just feels right," comments Bellamy, who reveals that Soundtronics Wireless now has almost $1.5 million worth of Sennheiser RF equipment in inventory at its Burbank, California facility.
In a break with tradition, Soundtronics this year installed a single Sennheiser receiver system, comprising principally EM 3532, as well as EM 3032 dual channel, true diversity units, to cover the 500 feet of red carpet from Highland Avenue all the way up the Kodak Theatre steps. In the past, multiple receivers and antenna systems, and multiple power sources, made it difficult to guarantee clean audio to the broadcast truck, says Bellamy. "So I said, let's use our Phoenix Phase One antenna system and one set of Sennheiser receivers for the entire red carpet area."
There's little sleep on Oscar day for Bellamy, who also has to set up for Oprah's After-Oscar Party, which broadcasts live the afternoon following the awards ceremony from the Kodak Theatre. "I'm up all night. We finish wrapping the main show then start converting for Oprah's show. By the time I get everything re-patched and labeled for her show it's one o'clock in the morning. Her guys get there at three o'clock, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed." He adds, "On Oprah, I had two Sennheiser bodypack transmitters, one a 900MHz SKM 5212 and the other an SKM 5012 in a lower frequency range."
The Academy Awards telecast and Oprah's After-Oscar show provided Bellamy with an opportunity to take some measurements of the RF systems and his antenna system, on which he has worked to improve its acuity and aperture, he says. "Beyoncé's Sennheiser mic was the lowest-powered transmitter on the stage, but it performed better than any of the others. I was getting a better signal-to-noise ratio from that through the Phoenix Phase One antenna
system than I was through the other brand of microphones."
An estimated 40.2 million viewers saw ABC Television's 79th Academy Awards
show telecast in the U.S., according to Nielsen.
In picture: Oscar host Ellen DeGeneres took a Sennheiser SKM 5200 wireless handheld mic
into the audience for several informal interview segments with Martin Scorsese (shown) Clint Eastwood and Jack Nicholson during the Academy Award telecast at the Kodak Theatre on February 25, 2007. Photo: WireImage.
8th March 2007
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