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From the fundamental necessity of ensuring the actors are heard over any music to making sure the phone stops ringing when someone picks up the receiver, sound is an essential part of making the atmosphere of any show. |
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| For most plays an effects plot can be found at the end of the script, this contains a list of all sound effects required, along with cue lines in. The director may of course add to this list. Ambient sound may be desired to enhance any scene, birdsong if outdoors or a busy street if in a city. Music is also required to play in the interval and before the show begins, which needs to be appropriate. For a play a piece of music will also be required in place of where the overture would usually be, once the lights go down before the curtain rises. |
| Acquiring |
| Firstly all necessary sound effects need to be acquired. Many can be downloaded from the Internet these days, but the group does have access to the BBC sound effects archive should this be required. If absolutely necessary sound effects may have to be created from scratch. I can recommend a load of shoes piled into a pair of trousers with the holes sewn up and thrown down the stairs to give the impression of a body falling into a cellar. |
| Rehearsals |
| It is important that the actors do have the sound effects to practice with at rehearsals, for some productions that may be more crucial that others depending on the number of effects. There are different methods for operating sound effects, it all depends on what the operator is most comfortable with. Whichever medium is used will need to be connected to the sound desk (pictured above). The desk comes into its own during musical productions where radio mics need to be used. |
| Performance |
| The sound desk operator will usual sit at the back of the auditorium as it is important to be able to hear what the audience is hearing. This is necessary to balance the levels of the sounds. With radio mics people have different volumes of voice and these need to sound natural and even in comparison with one another when heard through the speakers, it is doubly important when people are singing in harmony. A musical is the most complicated of productions to operate the sounds for as during any one number there may be a variety of sound effects which need to be operated whilst there are people singing through radio mics which need to be balanced and may be going through an effects box at the same time. |
| Interview |
"The first musical that I was involved with on the sound side where radio microphones were used was Cabaret. The Group had hired a professional sound company to provide and control the microphones. I was in charge of sound effects which required me to use their minidisk system which was still very new and not widely available. I had been used to using cassette tapes for sound although some operators were still using reel to reel tapes as they felt they could position them with greater accuracy. The minidisk provided the ability to crop sound with precision but there was still a delay in the operation which needed to be compensated. With a little practice it was possible to get the effects spot on. One was the sound of a brick dropped to the ground which by initiating the effect when the brick was halfway down, synchonised the crash with the brick’s landing.
These days things have moved on. The theatre no longer has cassette decks with most people using compact discs or minidisks but we have generally moved on to the next stage, running the sound, however complicated direct from a laptop computer. There is plenty of software available which enables not only the precise editing of sound files but pseudo mixing desks where a number of different sound files can be mixed in real time to fit the action on stage rather than trying to achieve the same effect using multiple cassette decks. I do not think we would want to return to those days but who knows what new technology lies just around the corner. Whatever it is, I am sure that the Chandeliers will be in the forefront of its usage, never being afraid to innovate." Alan Britchford
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