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Photo, video & social March 2021 — June 2021 completed

Bach’s six cello suites, in the parish church of Vigoleno

Between March and June 2021, in three sessions, we filmed and edited Bach’s six suites for solo cello in the Romanesque parish church of Vigoleno: four cameras, multitrack recording and an edit made bar by bar, following the cellist’s notes. Three streamed concerts.

The nave of Vigoleno’s parish church with its stone columns and frescoes; among the wooden pews, a stand with microphones and two cameras on tripods.

Six suites, three sessions. Between March and May 2021 a cellist recorded Johann Sebastian Bach’s six suites for solo cello in Vigoleno, in the Romanesque parish church of San Giorgio: two suites at a time, for three streamed concerts within a 2021 series. The filming, the audio and the edit were ours.

Three sessions

  • 11 March: Suites II and IV.
  • 14 April: Suites III and V.
  • 3 May: Suites I and VI.

Each time four cameras around the cello, among the columns of the nave, and the microphones among the pews. The audio recorded multitrack, then edited movement by movement. The pictures, shot in V-Log, brought to their final colour with a LUT.

The frescoed apse of the church, with a knight on a white horse in the middle, between two narrow windows; in front, the pale altar, a wooden statue and a gilded cross.
The apse of the church, on the morning of 14 April 2021.

The edit, bar by bar

For each suite the cellist sent us the score, with the alternatives marked in blue, and the timings: from which bar to which bar to keep a take, and from which minute to take it. “From bar 33 to bar 77 included: 1.45 – 3.20.” Where a note did not convince him he wrote it down, and asked whether another piece could be spliced in. The edit followed those notes, across four cameras, up to the final video with titles.

Two microphones with round grilles, mounted one above the other on a stand, in focus; behind, out of focus, the columns of the nave with frescoes and the pews.
The microphone pair among the pews.

Three concerts

Suites II and IV were ready on 26 March, III and V on 30 April, VI and I between 28 May and 10 June. Each concert went out as a stream, one pair of suites at a time.

Photos: GR STUDIO SRL, Vigoleno, 14 April 2021.

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