Dr. Juan Pereira wanted more than anything to see his students perform this past spring in front of a live audience. They worked with choreographers. The singing was on point. There were huge production numbers. The Grand Theatre was booked. “What they had created was magic,” Juan says. “Every last one of them stepped up to the plate.”
Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic forced closure of schools around the country, Juan and others have been working in overdrive to give choir and musical theatre students a platform to show off what they’ve learned while at Salt Lake Community College under Juan’s direction.
Juan taught himself to use FilmMaker Pro and VivaVideo, along with other apps, to stitch together video clips students made at their homes of themselves singing the same song. Students listened to the song on one device using an earphone while recording themselves on another device before sending the video they recorded to Juan.
The goal is to present a seamless virtual performance that makes it seem like the choir is singing in unison. Other apps help Juan to zoom in or pull back on subjects for a uniform look or to add color filters for a creative touch or, like the app Meitu, to even put smiles on faces where they are lacking expression. “It’s crazy,” he says about Meitu. “I didn’t think that was possible. That’s been huge. Students have trouble expressing – it’s been one of my challenges. We are in the business of expression.”
Juan is still working on his project, which will soon be available for public viewing. He’s also working with Jon Clark on another production that is intended to be part of SLCC’s virtual commencement ceremony.
Jon Clark's home studio in his back yard - his "world" since March 15.
As of May 1, Jon had logged about 25 hours and was about 60 percent done with a performance similar in logistics to Juan’s. The song is “Found/Tonight,” which includes a mashup of lyrics mostly from the musicals Hamilton and Dear Evan Hansen – it was originally recorded by Ben Platt and Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Jon is stitching together a dozen performances, including a sign language rendition, of the song. For those singing, the accompanying track begins with a starting pitch and count-off to get everyone on the right track. Videos came to Jon in different lengths and had to be matched on a timeline. The clips had to be converted to the same format. “Because this specific song has a pretty loose timing feel to it, some words had to be shifted in order to maintain intelligibility, otherwise the song would be a cacophonous train wreck in some places,” Jon says. He uses different software to edit video and manipulate audio tracks, all in a sweet soundproof home studio he had already built in his back yard – it’s been his “world” since March 15.
“This is definitely not a quick or easy project if you’re not a skilled editor,” Jon says. “The quality of your sound mix will be determined in large part by your experience in sound mixing. The video production is fairly complicated and having all the clips arrive with different frame rates adds to the complexity of the process.” As with Juan and all of the students, Jon sums up the experience of this past spring, “I’ve learned a lot along the way.”
Jon Clark's workstation where he's working on a virtual choir performance.
