Colliding Particles - Part 4 ‘Problems’
Filming with Mike Paterson in Paris
The latest of Mike Patersons great films about the work of particle physicists hunting for the Higgs Boson has just been put on the web - you can see it at www.colliding particles or watch it in HD below…
We travelled to Paris earlier in the year to speak to Gavin Salam who is a theorist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Paris, and his PhD student, Mathieu. Gavin completed his PhD at Cambridge in 1996, and went on to hold postdoctoral fellowships in Milan and at CERN. His research has mostly been centred on the area of quantum chromodynamics, the theory which describes the behaviour of quarks and gluons. Together with his PhD student Mathieu he has been working on the theory side of Project Eurostar - the project designed to find the Higgs Boson that the films focuses on. Gavin was an excellent host, and one of the advantages of working in Paris is above average lunches and dinners 
As you can see in the film Gavin plays the piano. Mike was interested in exploring the relationship between the work of a particle physicist and the mathematical patterns and processes inherent in music, so we filmed Gavin playing the piano in his flat in Paris.
This presented a couple of problems from a sound point of view - the acoustics of the flat were not too bad to the naked ear, but with the microphone i had intended to use - the Rode NT4 stereo mic - the late and early reflections present when i listened on headphones didn’t sound nearly as nice as i had hoped. It was tricky to position the mic effectively over the piano (i tend to use a mic position either with the XY axis of the mic facing across the strings along the open top of the piano, or a similar position underneath, giving a nice wide stereo image - i would love to hear of any other techniques people find effective for this setup) without getting some strange reflections from the walls and objects within the flat, or being in shot.
I then tried my Sennheiser MK60 short gun mic out of it’s Rycote windgag, with just a foam windgag on. It is my ‘go to’ mic in so many different situations. It has a nice open sound considering its excellent rejection off axis, and this rejection allowed me to get a cleaner recording of the piano. The music you hear played in the final film is recorded using the MK60 with the boom positioned under the piano, just out of shot.
I think it sounds rather nice, although that probably has more to do with Gavins musical talents than my mic selection!
Colliding Particles - Episode 4: Problems from Mike Paterson on Vimeo.
The physicist Dr Brian Cox is a physicist at the University of Manchester gives this rousing talk at a recent TED conference on why the work at the LHC is so important;
— Posted by Matt in Work | No Comments
