Audio for Fireworks Broadcast

This past weekend I had the interesting job of mixing Fireworks for television broadcast.

The best treat was we used the All Mobile Video "Resolution" TV truck which provides a Sony OXFORD OXF3R console to mix on. Now if you havent had the privledge of using this or the Sony Oxford Dynamic plug ins you should know that nothing compares to the way the Oxford handles dynamics.

For Fireworks FX sound we used 2 816 mics in a X-Y configuration to provide fireworks high in the sky FX and 2 416 shotguns to provide the thump of the launch off the barges in the Detroit river.

The 816 mic were EQ'd to provide a significant more bright tone (+6 around 6kHz) and panned hard left / right.
The Low mics were EQ'd to have a +6dB bump around 100Hz and panned to be somewhat more narrow in the stereo sound field.

So, as the fireworks are ignited they had a nice tight thump on launch and then bloomed into a big wide explosion when they detonated high in the sky.

The biggest difficulty was actually hearing the mix since we were located very close to the river / fireworks area.

Dynamics wise all FX mics were compressed 4:1 with a gentle knee and on average were getting about 6-8 dB of compression on launch / explosion.

KC