I’m proud to share this video as it is one of the projects I most enjoyed producing. The video features music by the Renaissance lute player and composer John Dowland, performed beautifully by Jeffrey Thompson, early music star tenor from the United States, as well as Slovenian lutenist Bor Zuljan.

The hall at Radovljica Mansion was beautiful but quite echoey so we decided to place several curtains and sheets all over the hall, which improved the sound a lot. The audio is recorded using a matched pair of DPA 4006 omnidirectional microphones.

Video was shot using two cameras: Canon EOS 600D with Canon EF 50 mm F/1.8 lens and Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera with Minolta MC 50mm F/1.7 lens, connected to the camera with a simple MD-M4/3 adapter.

While Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera produces an extremely detailed and cinematic looking image, its low-light sensitivity is not the best to be honest. I was shooting with the Minolta MC 50mm F/1.7 wide open at maximum ISO (1600) throughout the session and still the image was quite grainy. At the time of the shooting I was still waiting for my RJ Lens Turbo focal reducer (MD-M4/3) which makes the image sharper, wider and adds a stop of light.

The LUT used to color correct the BMPCC footage was the Final Cut Pro X’s built-in Blackmagic 4k LUT as the ImpulZ Pro LUTs were too noisy for this instance.

Thankfully, though, Neat video plugin I recenlty purchased came to the rescue and cleaned up the footage beautifully. Really pleased with results…

I hope you’ll enjoy the video and especially the music!

4 Comments

  • Just saw him preform in Vancouver, Canada, and I’d love to get a copy of this performance in it’s entirety on CD. Will that be available?

    • Sorry, Jerik, I’m afraid this is all we recorded – a demo consisting of short parts of Downland’s songs. Maybe next year we get a chance to record a full program.

  • Hi Uros, I am a recording engineer from NL/RSA and currently residing in Portugal.

    I like your approach re your guitar ORTF, especially the omni’s.

    This production however is different with the lute. The overtones on the lute can be nasty
    and mid-highs too crisp through the boost in mid-highs on the DPA’s, which I have used
    many times.
    The vocalist sound is slightly too much reverb information. Also the stereo imaging is
    placing the vocalist lower left and lute right top through my Beyerdynamic Pro DT770
    250 ohm headphones.

    Beautiful artistic performance by both performers and fantastic visual setting.

    Thank you for sharing

    • Hi Deon, thanks for your comment! On this project I was responsible for video shooting and editing only, I don’t own the DPAs. But I remember the space was very difficult to work with, we had to bring in tons of curtains and chairs to even make it work…

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