Today's "Job I Wish I Was On" : Adele Car Karaoke

[Philip Perkins]

James Corden drives around London in the rain with Adele, singing to playback.  Well done, WAY fun.

 

 

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_3070556225&feature=iv&src_vid=O6REBmZ0NDY&v=Nck6BZga7TQ

[old school]

Like

[new mexico]

Thanks for dropping the 'A-bomb,' Phil. After a hard day - I got lost in it. (Amazing ... something as simple as 2 people just being silly.)

Really enjoyed it. I appreciate you sharing that.

Jim

[Philip Perkins]

Thank Jim Feeley, he reposted the link on Facebook!  Thanks Jim!

 

 

[Jim Feeley]

I think I just liked someone else's posting. Turns out Carpool Karaoke is a regular (and apparently regularly great) Corden gag. I'm going to check out Stevie Wonder this weekend:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Philip Perkins]

How do I get on that crew….?

 

[Jim Feeley]

57 minutes ago, Philip Perkins said:

How do I get on that crew….?

Oh ya!

[RPSharman]

Good times. Adele is such a nerd, it's incredibly great. So is Cordon, which makes it even more fun.

[Jason Todd]

Sounds great. Would be curious to know where the plant mics are or if it's strictly lavs. Seatbelts and driving are always such a pain.

[Michael Miramontes]

12 minutes ago, Jason Todd said:

Sounds great. Would be curious to know where the plant mics are or if it's strictly lavs. Seatbelts and driving are always such a pain.

Yes, cars suck!

Who did this and what was their technique. It sounds good. 

[Jim Feeley]

Not as amazing as Adele and Stevie in the car, but this better than it has any right to be. Man, Corden seems pretty solid. I should watch his show sometime... Three minutes:

 

 

[Christopher Mills]

Loved the Rod Stewart one as well.

[new mexico]

Below are just a few screen grabs showing a Sanken CUB 01 - only visible from this (particular) camera's angle.

Oh!!!  Wait ... What???      I'm supposed to be paying attention to something else?

Seems to gotz a 'dangling participle,' in this one, here?

 

This screen grab, below, is just begging for a caption ( I mean ... she's pointing right at the mic!)

 

 

 

[Rich Reilly]

Any further info available on placement etc? Plant(s) and lavs? IEM for playback? I'll be wrangling a green screen version of this scenario but with rear (secondary) passengers as well.

[Philip Perkins]

No lavs, no IEM.  Plants as seen, playback thru the car system, add back the hero track overall in the mix.  Have done up to 5 people this way, lotsa plants (back seat is easy).   The jobs like this that I've done lately were big-schedule-crunch-panty-bunch deals, so there was no opportunity to wire anyone with anything.  We rolled, they jumped in, the music started and they sang.  It was over pretty fast!

[Rich Reilly]

Only plant I see is a Cub..so..what else and where?
 

[jhharvest]

They do use lavs on the James Corden gag, at least occasionally.

 

[Jeff Wexler]

I love these carpool karaoke segments (and it looks like they are very popular with everyone) and the only thing that find myself thinking about from a technical standpoint is how much of them, if any, use stationary vehicle and greenscreen process. I am pretty sure whoever is shown driving is not actually driving the car (most probably towed) and I really think that some of them were done greenscreen process with some real driving (obviously exterior shots of the vehicle moving in traffic,  also vehicle stopped and people getting in and out, stuff like that). Does anyone know if any of these have used process shooting?  

[ryanpeds]

I don't think there is any green screen. If you watch through them you will notice that there is always a minivan and then a sprinter that is following. I have also noticed that a lot of the segments of singing occur at stationary moments such as stop lights or heavy traffic. They do occasionally cut to the van shot from behind and you can see the go pros attached to the outside of the vehicle. 

[Philip Perkins]

On 4/2/2017 at 10:04 AM, Jeff Wexler said:

I love these carpool karaoke segments (and it looks like they are very popular with everyone) and the only thing that find myself thinking about from a technical standpoint is how much of them, if any, use stationary vehicle and greenscreen process. I am pretty sure whoever is shown driving is not actually driving the car (most probably towed) and I really think that some of them were done greenscreen process with some real driving (obviously exterior shots of the vehicle moving in traffic,  also vehicle stopped and people getting in and out, stuff like that). Does anyone know if any of these have used process shooting?  

The people I've worked with on Corden-esqe car karaoke stuff emphasized to me that this was going to be guerilla-style pretty much all the way, as I've said (and that they were using Mr. Corden's methods).  Like no process trailer, no wiring talent ahead of time, get in and go.  It does work, pretty darn well I must admit.  But to Jeff's point--Corden (and my recent car shoots) were for TV and web--not for theatrical features (or even high-end commercials), so the rough edges aren't such a  big deal and the budgets don't allow for that level of equipment and time with the talent.  As was said, they kind of don't care that exterior-mounted GoPros end up in the car-to-car shots, and so on.  Having done a good deal of this kind of thing I'd venture that the lav-mics stuck on the shirtless boys for the Chili Peppers piece might have been props--they certainly call attention to the ridiculousness of the situation.   On my shoots the talent was thrashing around (w/ seatbelts on) way too much that a buried lav would have ever worked for more than a few seconds at a time, and those mics on the Chili Peppers didn't seem very heavily rigged--like no reinforcing tape etc...  For a long, intimate, dramatic dialog scene (not with loud playback music) I don't think the rules have changed re: both safety and what you end up with sound-wise...

[cjh]

Class A stuff all round, dynamic range is impressively well handled. My set up would be 3 cubs, with a centre one set for the big vocals, or is it zax remote trx's? Quiet and nice acoustically treated cars such as this are a good start. Well done whoever did it.

[Rich Reilly]

..will be 9 folks picked up sequentially in a Suburban...most lines during entry.

[mono]

 

[Doc Justice]

While I have not worked on Carpool Karaoke, I was the audio supervisor for a similar show called Car-aoke Showdown with Craig Robinson.

 

The gag here is that the show is sort of a mashup between Carpool Karaoke and Cash Cab, where "unsuspecting" (read: careful casted) taxi patrons play karaoke style games on the way to their destination, and the top two teams would compete in some sort of live concert karaoke competition.

 

We had a sprinter van tricked out with cameras, lights, and lots of sound power.  There were CUB-01's and MKH50's all over the car, in addition to the talent's lavs.  All of that, plus the producer's music from a laptop were being fed into a Mackie DL32R.  A Sound Devices 970 was the recorder of choice, which had a lot of tracks going at any one point in time.

 

The Mackie is a rackmount mixer that works via Wifi through an iPad.  A wifi router was installed on TOP of the Sprinter van, to allow mixing from the follow vehicle. This was important because talent would get in and out of the car, the mic's that were best used were continuously changing, and routing needed to be adjusted as well.  There were times where the music would need to be routed to the exterior speakers so that passers-by could sing and dance along as well.

 

This was a POWERFUL build.  It contained a lot of firepower, and was extremely flexible for a demanding show.  It took some serious engineering to power the audio and video racks in the vehicle, and keep heat from being a problem.  In the end, the sound turned out pretty amazing.