Iain Titman - The Lord of The Rings
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Iain Titman on recording a BAFTA award-winning score.
CTS Studios' orchestral recording and film scoring facility is located at
a renowned symphonic hall in Watford, just north of London. It offers immense
capacity with space for a 130-piece orchestra, plus additional stage and
gallery areas for up to a 150-voice choir. It was these renowned acoustics
and capacity to handle the size and scope of a film score such as The Lord
Of The Rings that made it the obvious choice for composer Howard Shore.
CTS’s involvement with The Lord of the Rings began back in 2001 with
the first part of the trilogy ‘The Fellowship the Ring’. Howard
visited the studios in March 2001, during the recording of ‘The Mummy
Returns’, to see for himself the newly installed facility and get a
feel for the place. Initially the first recording sessions were due to start
in mid August, but because of production delays and re-scheduling the sessions
finally began on 29th August 2001.
Previous recordings had taken place in New Zealand earlier that year, and
although little of what was recorded made it into the final film, these proved
to be essential for the planning and operation of the London sessions. Like
every big orchestral scoring session a lot of planning and time was required
to make sure when the ‘down beat’ happened every piece of equipment,
from the session DAT to the Talkback stations, were set-up and ready.
The recording sessions took place over a two-week period and was a great
success producing some of the most dramatic classical pieces in the film.
During the sessions interesting techniques such as striking piano strings
with balls of chains were employed to create the sounds heard in battle scenes,
and although not used because of separation issues, impressive takes of both
the 60 piece choir and the 100 piece orchestra were recorded performing together.
Following on from ‘The Fellowship Of The Ring’ the LOTR crew
returned to CTS in April 2002 to record music for a further half an hour
of original footage edited into the film for the DVD Extended release. The
main difference between the recording of ‘The Fellowship Of The Ring’ and
these recording were the addition of David Gleeson and Mark Willshire to
the production crew, who were instrumental in the switch to recording on
Pro-Tools directly.
Another change was the absence of director Peter Jackson who, because of
production commitments for ‘The Two Towers’, had to stay in New
Zealand. Because of this during the break from recording at 18:30 every day
a live video/stereo audio/timecode conference took place between CTS and
New Zealand. The link was to Peters house as it was early in the morning
New Zealand time. Howard and the production crew would then review the day’s
recordings with Peter, checking that he was happy with the results.
Again these sessions were a great success with a similar set-up being repeated
for the recordings of ‘The Two Towers’ when Peter Jackson’s
schedule did not allow him to attend in person. These recording took place
over several weeks during the summer of 2002, with a virtually identical
set up to keep continuity with the first film. An addition of a Small Area
Network to enable even greater productivity was introduced, allowing two
Pro-Tools systems access to the same drives and files.
In March 2003 CTS played host to the recording of the extended DVD for ‘The Two Towers’, followed by ‘The Return Of The King’ in the summer.
Many new techniques were used and developed for the recording of The Lord
Of The Rings. These were employed to facilitate the organic nature of the
way Howard composed the score, and helped to streamline the production process
and increase productivity.
The console used at CTS is an all digital 48 fader Neve Capricorn with a
CXS surround panel and 192 signal paths, capable of high resolution 24 bit
recordings.
Mic Signal Path
The Capricorn has 4 mic/line racks located under the stage to provide the
shortest microphone level runs as possible. These providing up to a total
of 64 mic or line inputs linked to stage boxes in the Auditorium. In addition
64 microphone tie lines can link the stage boxes to the control room if
separate mic pre-amps are being used.
Both of these techniques were employed on the sessions; with stage box’s
feeding both the Capricorns own microphone racks, and Avalon microphone preamps
located under the stage. These pre-amps then provided a line level signal
that was linked to Prism A-D converters in the control room, where 32 AES
in’s & out’s (or 16 pairs) are available. A total of up to
40 different microphone signals were recorded at once, depending on instrumentation
variations throughout the score.
Recording Media
The Capricorn has support for all tape machine formats, with MADI capabilities
for Studer and Sony 48 track digital multitracks. Additional MADI racks provide
64 analogue inputs and outputs, which can be dedicated to up to 2 analogue
multitracks. During the recording of ‘The Fellowship Of The Rings’ two
Sony 3348 machines were used to record the sessions connected by MADI to
the Capricorn. The second multitrack was used to record a safety copy, in
case of any failure. These were augmented by two synchronised Tascam DA98HR
8-track recorders, for master and safety recordings of the choir. Both of
the Sony 3348 machines were synchronised using a Timeline Microlynx, which
also controlled the video machine with the Tascam's locked to in house Video
Reference and timecode.
In subsequent recordings for the extended DVD and ‘The Two Towers’ Pro-Tools
has been utilised to cut production times and give greater flexibility to
the scoring process. A Sony 3348 is still used for safety backup but the
main record machine has been replaced with a 48-track G4 Mix Plus Pro-Tools
system with a Euphonix FC-727 MADI to Pro-Tools interface. This allows non-linear
benefits as well as cutting out the process of transferring the digital tapes
to Pro-Tools at a later date. Using Pro-Tools to record also allows rough
edits of different takes to be performed in seconds to check continuity before
moving onto a new cue, saving valuable time later. Initially SCSI drives
were used to record onto, but on ‘The Two Towers’ a mini SAN
network drive solution was used. This enabled a separate Pro-Tools edit rig
to share access to the files, once recorded, and perform edits whilst the
main rig was recording the next take. Synchronisation was achieved by locking
everything to Video Reference and making the Pro-Tools rig a timecode-only
master.
Hard Disk Picture
A Doremi hard disk recorder was used as the main video machine to provide
the picture, as well as a traditional Betacam player as backup. The advantage
of using a non-linear source for picture playback was so that any point
in the film could be quickly located and jumped to. Synchronised with the
record machines it was dually controlled by the control room and the Auricle
operator, who was located in the auditorium. The Auricle operator added
wipes and timing references to the images, before being distributed throughout
the facility. The composer then uses the synchronised images and wipes,
along with a click track, to score to. Howard preferred to use a standard
video monitor to display the picture, however a high-resolution digital
video projector can produce large (25ft x 14ft) images in the auditorium,
to make scoring to picture like being in the cinema.
Monitoring/Talkback
The monitoring for the control room was provided by 3 x ATC SCM 150 main
monitors, 2 x ATC SCM 20 surround monitors and an ATC Sub Woofer. John Kurlander
also supplied his own set of ATC SCM 20 nearfield monitors for referencing.
Two large Plasma screens provide two-way picture and video links with the
hall, supported by a 5-station Orator Trilogy talkback system. This enabled
communication throughout the facility and is fully programmable for individual
requirements.
Talkback was also integrated into the foldback headphones providing communication as well as reference click track. Industry standard Beyerdynamic DT-102 single sided and DT-100 double-sided headphones were used for the 100-piece orchestra, the orchestral soloists and the 60-piece choir, powered by Quad amplifiers.
Network and external communications were well catered for too as a complete
computer network was set up connecting vital computer systems together, also
utilising an Apple Airport wireless network, with email and video file transfer
available via a fast, dedicated 2Mbps aDSL Internet connection.
John Kurlander
John Kurlander has collected a lot of his own recording equipment during
his years as an engineer, some of which he used to create The Lord of the
Rings sound. During the recordings John brought over his classic collection
of microphones such as Neumann M150’s and AEA R44C’s, to augment
the already extensive CTS microphone inventory. Other items included a Lexicon
960L for live reverb and an impressive rack of Avalon 2022 and 737 microphone
preamps.