AngelWorld Stream — Cameron Johnston

I was asked recently hired by a fashion designer who goes by the name of Angelworld to stream a show he was producing in LA on 1/27/23. His whole aesthetic revolves around up-cycling thrifted clothes. This is something I support so working with him was something I was really excited to do.

The stream concept was something immensely interesting was well. Angelworld was hosting another show in Paris at the same time as the LA show. The LA show will be displayed in Paris and vice versa for the show in LA. I appreciate the integration of the live show and the stream, which has always be something that I have been interested in.

The audio and video component of the LA show was designed entirely by me. I was collaborating with a DJ, Pax Silva, who was running music for the event. The venue only provided a DJ mixer which did not have the amount of outs I needed to sufficiently run the sound . I was hoping to create a bus mix of the speaking mics and a bus mix for the DJ that I can then send to the stream and mix. I ending up bringing my Berhinger XENYX mixer to provide me with the required routing.

The routing capability of that board isn’t even that feature rich. Other than the main outs, there are three other output sources: alt 3-4, AUX OUT 1-2, and control room out. The alt 3-4 mix is pretty useless because channels cannot route both to the main mix and alt out. That leaves me with just the aux outs and control room, which themselves have some issues. Aux 1 is pre-fader and aux 2 is post-fader. Using both of them for a single mix I thought would be too complicated, trying to manage post and pre-fader at the same time. I decided to go with aux 1, pre-fader so that the live mix and the stream mix can be different. I assigned that to the speaking mix.

That left me with the DJ mix to deal with. The only other out I had besides the mains was the control room out. I ended up choosing that mix for the control room outs because of the stereo capabilities of that channel. What I did not realize while planning audio is that I could not take anything out of the control room mix AND it was post fader. Although this was not the original plan, the end result on the mix was the same. Although the speaking signal was in the DJ mix channel, I could just increase the level of the speaking mix to better control the balance between the two busses.

Of course, with this setup I ended up running both the live sound and stream sound, which was not ideal. In retrospect, I probably would have a to get dedicated live sound person. Another issue I inevitably presented myself with was my position in the space. Due to my need to pull audio out of the DJ console, I was forced to set up nearby. I decided to set up directly in front of one of the house speakers. This became an issue because it was extreme hard to tell the difference between the house speakers and the stream mix on headphones, resulting in a less than perfect mix for both. Something else I did not realize: the DJ booth monitors was coming from an aux channel on the DJ board. My understanding of the set up had the monitors mix originating from the DJ mains. This resulted me in mixing based on the the monitor speakers that were right behind me, thinking they were the mains, making the level much lower than they needed to be. Reflecting on this mistake, I wondered if setting up behind the DJ booth would be any better. However, this would not have solved that issue. I would still only be hearing mostly the monitor audio. The best solution would have been to set up in the audience or turn down the monitors. Setting up in the audience woulnt’t work since I would need to run five total cables, meaning managing the monitors better would have been the best solution. Noticing these mistakes are good, that way I can avoid them in the future. Additionally, I am just hyper focused to the details and the audience probably didn’t even notice… Hopefully.

The video component was also my design. I originally was going to go with a two camera setup. One wide and one active cam. But after taking a look at the space, I decided three cameras would be better. One on the DJ, and two for the runway. Part of the reason I set up in front of the DJ booth is so I can get a good vantage of the performance. In retrospect, I could have set up behind the DJ booth and still could have seen all the performance. I had a second camera in the audience, but it was blocked most of the time by the photographers, making that camera not very useful.

HDMI continues to be the bane of my existence. Thinking on it again, I may have not been able to set up behind the DJ booth. I may have been limited on HDMI length. Also, long HDMI cables are super thick and heavy, making it difficult to run and travel with. Another reason to try and switch to SDI, which has been a long-standing goal of mine.

Overall, I was very happy with how the show turned out. Despite my missteps, I thought they were good learning experiences.