Depending on the type of production, there might be a need for specialized mics that you don’t have in the inventory. While it’s true a string section can be mic’d by a single (Shure) SM58, it’s probably not going to provide the desired results.
If you haven’t mic’d a string section before, check with someone who has and gather ideas on how to do it, then figure out if renting or buying mics is the best option. This principle applies to other unusual mic’ing needs as well.
Ideally, you’re sorting all this out by November, which gives you plenty of time to come up with solutions. Items like wireless mics, larger mixers, extra snakes, and monitors can all be rented.
However, keep in mind that Christmas season is in fact a wonderful time of year for rental houses. So wonderful that they often rent out much or all of their gear. Good for them, not so good if you waited until mid-December to start calling around looking for more wireless mics.
More Assembly Required
With all requirements for equipment in place, you can start calling around for rental quotes and put your budget together. In these tough economic times, budgets might need to be trimmed and the production scaled back.
Make sure those in charge of the production know what it’s going to cost, and work with them to figure how to come in at or under budget.
The next step is figuring out staffing needs. For example, any time I do a big dramatic production with more than a few wireless mics involved, I always appoint a wireless mic “wrangler.”
Last year, I had 14 channels of wireless with 18 headsets (meaning some channels were shared). There’s no way to track that from front of house, so I set up a room with all the packs and mics, staffed by someone whose sole job it was to make sure the right actor had the right pack at the right time.
We also ran comm (intercom) into that room so we could communicate if there were issues (and there were).
There may also be the need to add a monitor mix engineer if the band requirements are more than you can mix from the house. Or you may need to bring in a sub mixer to handle additional input channels and, depending on the production, someone to run it. I’ve done really big shows with three house engineers running two consoles –each one was dedicated to a subset of the production (actors, choir/vocals, band).
A previous Christmas fell on a Sunday, and that made it challenging for us to staff our events, with a lot of people leaving town on Friday to spend the whole week with family. Again, now is the time to start finding that out. You don’t want to be calling all your volunteers the week prior only to find out no one is in town.
Big Christmas productions can be the highlight of the church calendar. They’re often tremendous fun for tech teams, and very rewarding from a ministry standpoint.
With proper planning, preparation and communication, December can become a time of year that everyone looks forward to, rather than dreads.
