The Power Is In The Microphone and The Story

I've been watching the Susan Boyle video from the TV show "Britain's Got Talent". It's a fantastic seven minute roller-coaster ride than ends well. (New Link Here)  YouTube makes it easy to see this kind of thing, after the fact, so people link back and forth to it, though there are a lot of really bad versions out there, too truncated (you need to see the whole thing), bad audio, wrong aspect ratio. In fact the "official BGT" site on YouTube has the worst version of the performance – brutally edited down until it looses all of the tension. After watching a squished SD version, I finally found a full 16:9 version that looks and sounds good too. I was surprised by how choked up I was the first few times I watched it – it's quite emotional.

A few days later on BoingBoing I found this "Playing For Change" video that's a great music event, but doesn't have the full emotional impact of the other. The common thread is the power of a microphone, getting a great recording, and what mixing audio skillfully can produce.

On Wednesday I saw Hampshire student Will Bangs' Division III presentation. It was held in the Red Barn, a large rustic structure. He sat at a small table with a desk lamp, audio mixer, and microphone and just talked to the audience while he showed videos he and high school students he worked with had made projected onto a very small movie screen placed next to him. It was terriffic, but the microphone made all of the difference. If he had just sat there and talked to us – a crowd of over 50 people – it would have been a weak presentation. It was simple, but intimate because of the presentational power of amplification. Audio amplification is a lot like film lighting. It separates the subject from the background and draws our eye to what is meant to be seen or in this case heard. It was a lot like a "This American Life" show on stage. There were stories he just told as radio - voice only, then there were stories that were shown on the video projector and then he moved back and forth – each form playing off of the other.

The music video "Playing for Change" is a tour deforce of audio recording and mixing. It's subtle and builds and weaves instruments and voices as it progresses in complexity. It's one of the most restrained audio mixes I've heard. Think of all the audio they didn't use. The video part documents the making of it as much as showing the musicians and locations. You come to understand what's going on as it unfolds making it more enjoyable because of your growing understanding.

Susan Boyle, however, has a story behind it that adds more punch to the unfolding of events. It is a great recording and you can see fully how a microphone changes the sound of a voice from ordinary to extraordinary, but it's the context of the events that builds tension, surprise, irony, pleasure and hope. The performance by itself would be good, but not as uniquely memorable. However, what we are seeing is also heavily edited with the wisdom of hindsight and the power of a soundtrack that continues even after she's done singing. What we see has been arranged to bring out as much emotion as possible. It works. I wish all of my stories were as well told, succinct, and carried as much impact and warmth. Britain is a better place because it got to see Susan Boyle sing and I'm certainly looking forward to hearing more of her voice.

gunther