A really useful post: how to make an audition video without pain
mainNathan Cole of the Los Angeles Philharmonic tells it as it is.
Sample:
The camera
It doesn’t particularly matter what kind of digital video camera you use. Imagine that: when making a video, your video camera is one of the least important factors.
It’s true! A cheap camera or a smartphone will work just fine. Of course, there are expensive (and ultra-expensive) video cameras out there, but we won’t see much benefit for our purposes. Expensive cameras are expensive for reasons that go far beyond the scope of an audition video….
The microphones
It shouldn’t be a surprise that you get better sound with better microphones. And we’ve already covered the fact that video cameras don’t record great audio because they have crummy microphones built in. Simple, you think, I’ll just plug in a nice external mic! It’s not so simple. Besides the fact that the vast majority of cameras don’t have professional microphone inputs (XLR), most cameras introduce noise when a mic is plugged in.
The bottom line is that if you’ve spent any money on a decent mic, you don’t want it plugged directly into your camera.
Read the full post here.
Sincere congratulations to Nathan Cole on another auditioning victory a couple of weeks ago by his wife Akiko Tarumoto who did not need to make any video recordings this time: all she needed to do was to play brilliantly, which she did as is her usual custom, thus winning another audition the result of which was her being promoted to a titled chair just behind that of her husband (who is effectively the orchestra’s second concertmaster) and becoming LA Phil’s new Assistant Concertmaster effective the end of next month.