Film Students Place in Shure Recording Competition
Biola University's Cinema and Media Arts (CMA) students Jeremy Davidson, Michael Kilpatrick and Christopher Irwin were third place winners in Shure microphones Fantastic Scholastic Recording competition. The CMA department was awarded a $1,000 scholarship from Shure and the students were awarded over $1,000 in audio gear.
Students competed against 10 other finalist teams and submitted a recording with documentation including photographs of all microphone placements. Shure supplied a $12,500 microphone toolkit for each team to use during the contest.
Eight professional recording engineers judged all 10 final songs. The judges have recorded or produced hundreds of albums, including gold and platinum sellers, and won dozens of Grammies.
Lisa Swain, department chair, stated, “We are so proud of what these students have accomplished.” Gerald Fisher, audio program coordinator commented that, “Four years ago we set out to build a solid recording emphasis. This award confirms the progress of our program. We are so blessed to have Oscar and Grammy winning instructors for our classes.”
Judge Frank Filipetti, recording engineer for artists such as Barbara Streisand, Luciano Pavarotti, Rod Stewart and others had this to say about the Biola project, “Very nice warm and airy sound on drums. Sweet sound on guitars. Nice placement of instruments in stereo field. Main criticism would be a slight lack of clarity of vocals.”
Their winning song Awake and Breathing can be listened to below. The students recorded 35 audio tracks for the six instruments. Each track had a different microphone setup that was documented with a written description and a photo for the judges. The description included the microphone used, exact placement, preamp settings and filters. A final stereo mix was performed using ProTools.