Join Us

Empowering the Next Generation of Women in Audio

Join Us

What I Learned This Week

Four things I learned about sound design this week

This week I took a bit of a break from sitting in a dark theatre (or studio) to go off and learn more about sound design at the Association of Sound Designer’s Winter School. From Foley to speaker system optimisation, the seminars covered a wide range of topics in and around sound for theatre, and there were several social events as well, so we could meet fellow soundies. Of the many interesting and useful pieces of information I’ve encountered this week, I’ve picked out a few to share:

There’s a lot of Foley in nature documentaries

When you think about it, it’s not that surprising that nature documentaries require extensive Foley work. It’d be a bit tricky to get a boom operator close enough to record polar bear footsteps across the snow, for example. I was impressed by the layers of Foley required to create complex sounds, like the sound of an active volcano. Top tip: shampoo rubbed over your hands can be used to create a whole world of sounds, from a large animal licking its young to liquid lava flow (when pitched down).

Recording sound effects will always require more time and more preparation than you think – especially when recording outdoors

There are many variables to consider when recording sound effects in nature, most of which you can’t control – including the weather and external noise. Thorough preparation and patience are attributes to develop if you ever want to invest time and money in recording sound effects. Sound design guru John Leonard told us several entertaining stories which highlighted the need for research before you embark on a location recording session, especially checking if it’s the right time/season/weather to capture the sound you need. He learned this the hard way after standing for several hours late at night (when it would be quiet) waiting for a clock to chime, only to find out the next day that they turned it off every night at 10 pm.

You don’t have to invest in a pricey mic to experiment with surround sound

I investigated using ambisonic (surround) microphones last year as part of my explorations into surround sound formats but was a bit put off by the price. A Sennheiser Ambeo will set you back around £1500GBP or $1650USD, and a DPA 5100 Mobile Surround mic is even more. So I was delighted to learn (thanks again to John Leonard) that there’s a cheaper alternative if you want to experiment with surround before investing. The Zoom H2N (a much more affordable £120GBP/$160USD) has a firmware upgrade that allows for four channel surround sound, combining the X/Y and MS in “Spatial Audio” mode. Also worth keeping an ear out for are Sennheiser’s AMBEO Smart Surround compact earphones (yes, consumer-level) with binaural recording capabilities.

Adding an audience won’t affect the overall level as much as you might have thought

I’ve always considered audience size when setting my levels for a theatre show, in particular, the absorptive effect of a large number of human bodies. It turns out that I don’t need to worry as much for those venues which already contain a high amount of absorbent materials. Bodies sitting on soft seats, for example, won’t increase the amount of absorption. Of course, it’s still important to consider venues with a lot of reflective surfaces and hard seats.

There’s always something new to learn

It’s not just about new gear and technical know-how. More than anything, this week has reminded me how important it is to get out and expose my ears to the world outside my studio. This week was the perfect opportunity to not only learn about techniques and software that have been on my list for a while but also meet and learn from my fellow peers. As well as discovering more about Max DSP and DMEs (Digital Mixing Engines), I also increased my list of preferred theatre sound hire companies,  got a great recommendation for a film composition course and learned more about why and how colleagues choose a particular system.

If you have the opportunity to get out of your particular box this month, I would recommend it. You never know what useful tips you might pick up.

What are you going to stand up for this year?

There is a story in We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, from her childhood in Nigeria. Her teacher told her class that the student with the highest score on a particular test would become the class monitor. But when Adichie got the highest score, her teacher said the class monitor had to be a boy. So the job was given to a male student. At the end of the story, she says this:

“If we do something over and over again, it becomes normal. If we see the same thing over and over again, it becomes normal. If only boys are made class monitor, then at some point we will all think, even if unconsciously, that the class monitor has to be a boy. If we keep seeing only men as heads of corporations, it starts to seem “natural” that only men should be heads of corporations.”

Adichie’s words resonated with me, as I’m sure they resonate with many women working in sound. How many times have you experienced an automatic assumption that sound engineers are male? From the upfront “Oh, I thought you’d be a guy” when you arrive at a gig, to articles in industry publications that consistently use male pronouns when referring to sound engineers, to the lack of women on industry panels.

Last year I was invited to speak on the panel of an audio event. One of the questions put to me was why I thought there were so few women working in professional sound. I asked the audience to consider how visible women are in the industry. Open any industry magazine and count the number of women featured in it – that is to say, women interviewed or profiled, not just included in photographs (although that’s worth noting as well). Unless it’s a publication specifically aimed or about women working in music and sound, I can guarantee that there are significantly fewer women featured than men.

What message does that send to girls and young women wanting to explore a career in sound? Just as Adichie says, if we see something over and over again, it becomes normal. At the moment the industry reinforces the message that it doesn’t look “natural” for a woman to become a sound engineer. As I told the audience at this event, if a young person looks at a career path and they don’t see someone with whom they can identify, then they will be far less inclined to go after that career path.

After the panel, I chatted with organisers of the event, and we discussed the lack of women in the magazine published by their company. One of the organisers suggested that this was because their publication reflected the current makeup of the industry (mainly men) and that they’d include more women if there were more working in the industry. My response back to her was: it may be how the industry looks at the moment, but do you want it to look this way, always?

The turbulent political and social events that shaped last year served as a clear reminder to me that if I want more women to feel they have a place, in general, and in our industry specifically, I have to fight for it. I want to see more women in the sound industry, more active supporters of women working in sound, and more girls and young women actively pursuing careers in audio.

There are many forms of active support. You can speak up when you hear or read bigoted or divisive rhetoric. You can write to industry publications and conferences and ask them about their commitment to diversity. You can volunteer your services to your local SoundGirls chapter for community outreach programmes and be part of encouraging and educating the next generation of sound engineers. Show them that there is a place for them.

Whatever you choose to do, it’s important you act on it. Aim to be heard. The challenges that you see won’t change on their own. This year, what are you going to do about them? How are you going to stand up?

The sound of the Elizabethan era: Sound design for Shakespeare’s Sister

It’s always exciting to work on the first production of a new play. Don’t get me wrong; I’ve loved working on the re-envisioned versions of Shakespeare, Wilde, and others, but there’s something quite special about knowing your production will be the first time anyone has breathed life into this particular story.

So when I accepted the role as the sound designer for ALRA drama school’s production of Shakespeare’s Sister, and I found out that this would be the first full production, I was excited.

Shakespeare’s Sister is a play about the sister of William Shakespeare – nothing to do with the band, in case you were wondering! It follows the fictional character of Judith Shakespeare as a budding playwright when, following an unwanted marriage proposal, she follows in her brother’s footsteps and travels to London to seek a career as a playwright.

From the outset, it was clear to me that music would be an important part of establishing the period and the world of the Elizabethan theatre. In our first sound meeting, the director and I discussed the emotional context for each scene and what we wanted the music to achieve, and I outlined my views on the role of music in the play.

The director, Titania Krimpas, had already researched possible music choices as she wanted the music to be used in rehearsals from the start, particularly in the choreographed scene changes. The tracks she suggested opened up a discussion about how we wanted the music to sound – all period-appropriate pieces or modern tracks with a period feel? Live or recorded? Recordings of Renaissance music played on modern instruments, or on period instruments?

kirsty-gillmore-nov2016-pic5At this point, I looked at the design and lighting design, to give me an idea of their general approach and make sure I was aligning my design with theirs. The set consisted of a raised stage with stairs (quickly named the “raised platform” to avoid confusion with the stage itself) and moveable pieces of furniture and props on the ground in front of it (the “apron”), with action taking place on both levels. The raised platform acted as both the stage of the Rose Theatre in London, the setting for much of the play, and another level for scenes set in Stratford and the Tower of London. Although the design wasn’t intended to be strictly traditionally Elizabethan, it took inspiration from the world that Elizabethan actors would have inhabited: simple, almost stark, in plain neutral colours, with few embellishments except for touches of flamboyance in the costumes, as befitted key characters.kirsty-gillmore-nov2016-pic3

A conversation with the lighting designer, Ben Cowens, revealed his intentions to make the lighting design as naturalistic as possible, supporting the set design, and thus I had a clear direction for the music. I dismissed modern songs and investigated recordings of period compositions on period instruments, which I felt gave a much more raw, natural sound than recordings on modern instruments.

Live music was an element that I also considered from early on in the process. I enjoy using live music elements where possible in my sound designs, as I feel they add immediacy and intimacy that is harder to capture with recorded music. In an ideal world, I would have liked to use a live ensemble, but this wasn’t possible given our budget, so instead, we looked at ways of incorporating live music elements at key points. Taking our lead from the references to trumpets and drums in the script, I suggested the use of a bodhrán drum, played by one of the actors as a “player” (the Elizabethan word for an actor). A bodhrán isn’t entirely period-appropriate, but it was much easier to source than a tabor (a type of snare drum used in the period), and I knew the sound was similar enough to work with pre-recorded sounds of trumpets and other drums.

The music component of a sound design is an area where a collaborative relationship with the director is crucial. Music is a subjective discipline, and directors can have definite choices about the music they want for production. Sometimes this feels a bit restrictive for the sound designer as it can mean they have to build their design around the music they didn’t choose. It’s useful to remember that the sound elements of a production, and music in particular, often play a significant role in the rehearsal process. In the case of Shakespeare’s Sister, the choreography of the scene transitions required music and the actor who was playing the bodhrán needed to rehearse with the pre-recorded music which he was to accompany.

As rehearsals continued, I found I was drawn to create the sonic world of the play’s version of Elizabethan London more with music than with sound effects. While I used sound effects and soundscapes to establish location – the crackling of a fire and chickens in the yard for Stratford, wind whistling through cracks, and dripping water for a cell in the Tower of London – I used musical motifs and drums for moments of heightened emotion and physical tension. One of my favourite sound moments in the play was the use of a repetitive drum beat which slowly increased in volume as the scene built to a climax. Rather than keeping the drums at a level that comfortably underscored the actors’ speech, we chose to use the sound to energise the scene and encourage the actors to raise their voices above the drums.kirsty-gillmore-nov2016-pic2

I haven’t spoken much about the speaker positions for this production because these were straightforward. Any production with a limited budget and space restrictions will require a certain amount of compromise, and I worked around fixed speaker positions and speakers that wouldn’t have been my first choice but worked fine for the production and in the space.

Two challenges that I had to overcome were where to position two speakers behind the raised platform and where to put the two subs. I had expected to attach the two speakers on a horizontal bar between wall beams, and the subs under the seating banks, but had neglected to discuss this with the designer or the lighting designer. During the get in I discovered that the designer and lighting designer had planned to install a lighting feature behind the set and the seating banks would be too low to fit subs underneath them, which slightly marred my plans! Thankfully, I was able to re-position all speakers with minimum fuss, and it was a good lesson to maintain the relationship with the creative team right through the rehearsal and production process.

Having designed a baroque opera and an Elizabethan play, it almost feels like my next design should be medieval, but instead, I’ll be concentrating on two banned plays from the 1920s. From courantes to Charlestons, no two plays are the same and my work is more interesting for it.  

 

Soundgirls Europe Chapter Tour of The Church Studios

Back in August this year, members of our Europe Chapter were offered a unique opportunity to get an inside look at one of London’s most iconic recording studios, The Church Studios.

As the name suggests, the studios are located in half of a historic 19th-century church building in Crouch End, north London. The other half of the building is still a place of worship, as it has been for over one hundred years.

In the early 1980s, half of the building was purchased and converted into a film studio by animators Bob Bura and John Hardwick, best known as the creators of classic British children’s programmes Camberwick Green and Captain Pugwash. After a couple of years, the duo rented the huge upstairs room, which formed half of the original main church space, to another soon-to-be-famous duo: Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox of Eurythmics.kirsty-gillmore-oct2016-pic1 Eurythmics recorded their debut album Sweet Dreams in the studios in 1984, with the title track apparently recorded in an office room. Following the success of the album, Stewart and Lennox bought the entire studio facility and spent the next twenty years recording material, as well as opening the studio for artists such as Bob Dylan, Radiohead, and Depeche Mode.

In 2004 the studio was sold to David Gray, who owned it until 2013 when it was bought by Paul Epworth. The award-winning producer of Adele and Florence and the Machine, among many others, rescued the studio from the threat of becoming luxury flats.

2013 saw the start of a major refurbishment for the studios, a move that would take it from an iconic studio to a world-class recording and production facility. As well as transforming the beautiful main church space into a unique tracking studio (Studio 1), the refurbishment included a total redesign of the SSL studio (Studio 2) into a state-of-the-art space and the creation of a separate writing room.

kirsty-gillmore-oct2016-pic2Walking into Studio 1, I was first struck by the space. Even knowing the building was a former church, the sheer size, and height of the room was still a surprise. The acoustic treatment is effective but not intrusive:  an acoustic ceiling suspended about the Neve desk and a few curtains, carpets, and baffles. House engineer Riley MacIntyre was kind enough to let us experiment with a binaural microphone so we could explore recording in the space.

The second thing I noticed was the gear. So much amazing, vintage gear. From analogue synths to outboards, it’s pretty clear that Paul Epworth is something of a collector. For a dose of serious gear-envy, there’s a full list of the gear available here. I was struck by a few notable examples.kirsty-gillmore-oct2016-pic4

The 72-channel vintage EMI Neve console is pretty unique. The only one in London, it is, in fact, two desks put together – one-half originated from Abbey Road and the other half from the Pathe Marconi studio in Paris. And it’s huge – you need a studio the size of The Church just to house, plus an extensive patch-bay.

Riley told me his personal favourite piece of kit was the1960s EMI RS168 dual limiter. I’ll have to take his word that it makes everything sound amazing, this processor is so rare I think the closest I’ll get to another one will be a virtual model.kirsty-gillmore-oct2016-pic5

We ended the tour with a quick look in the machine room to admire the Studer A80 and Otari MTR 12 1/4” tape machines and the EMT 140 Plate Reverb and to take in the unique décor (baroque-styled wallpaper and iron curlicues) leftover from Dave Stewart’s tenancy.

The infamous tartan carpet is long gone, but The Church continues to welcome famous faces – U2, Kanye, and Thurston Moore were all mentioned as being recent clients during our tour. Long live the regeneration.

With thanks to Riley MacIntyre and The Church Studios for being so welcoming.

 

 

In Search of the Perfect Whoosh: 5 Great Sound Effects Resources

As a sound designer, my sound effects library is one of my most significant resources. It is slightly insane how much time I devote to finding the perfect whoosh, drone, hit or random squishy sound for my sound design work. I can demo hundreds of versions of the same type of sound for hours, looking for one that’s got just a bit more HF or is half a second longer or is a touch more organic than electronic.

I’ve built up my sound effects library with love and care over the years and like most designers, I have my favourite places to find new sounds. Here’s a few:

Pro Sound Effects 

There are two reasons I love ProSoundEffects. One, the single-downloads library is comprehensive, well-organised and the sounds are high-quality. Two, the PSE Hybrid Sound Effects Library is one of the best investments I have ever made as a sound designer and my starting point for creation or inspiration for almost every project. The number of sounds is staggering (tens of thousands), the audio quality is excellent, and it has a good range of more specific sounds not included in a lot of other libraries, underwater, subwoofer, and surround recordings in particular. The Hybrid Library isn’t cheap but you can get a significant discount through the Freelancer Program.

Sonniss 

Sonniss is a great place to find more creative sound effects. I mainly use it to source sound design elements like hits, tones and rises and for interesting atmospheric ambiences and textures for gaming demos. You have to purchase sounds by collection, which can be a little annoying if you’re only after one or two files, but the prices are reasonable, and they do regular sales and giveaways.

A Sound Effect 

A Sound Effect offers libraries from independent sound designers, which means their content is always pretty unique, even if it’s not as comprehensive as some of the other larger websites. It’s also great as a central resource for content that’s otherwise scattered across individual websites. Keep an eye on their social media feeds for sales and free stuff, in particular, the free downloads, which are great for discovering new designers and libraries that you can then explore in more detail.

Freesound 

Freesound is a hidden treasure trove of audio recordings and created sounds. Free to join, it describes itself as a “collaborative database” and as such, although the amount of content is vast, the quality is vastly variable. I use Freesound to find the everyday and the exotic, particularly location recordings of various countries. I’ve found great recordings of medieval battles, Antarctic penguin colonies, Japanese markets and African villages all on Freesound. All sounds are available under a Creative Commons License, so be mindful of this when using the sounds and always attribute as required.

Foley It Up!kirsty-gillmore-aug-2016-pic3

When you can’t find what you’re looking for, record it yourself! It’s fun, free (once you have the kit) and you’re adding to your own FX library. Some of my favourite sounds are ones I created myself and after hours of robotically demo-ing hundreds of sounds, you’ll probably be glad of the fresh air, or at least the blood flowing back into your legs. I created the sound of a girl drowned in a bath with me, my partner, our bathroom, a Zoom H4 out of splash range and well-rehearsed safety signals. Who says sound design isn’t edgy?

There’s a great list of suggestions to get your Foley juices flowing here 

There are tons of sound effects libraries out there, and I’m sure you have your own favourites to add to this list. Once you start building up a collection, the next step is organisation. It’s not as exciting as the sounds themselves, but just as important if you want to avoid hours of trawling to find a precise sound in your database. Expect a future blog post about my journey into audio asset management, but until then, happy whooshing.

 

Kirsty Gillmore – A Diverse and Rewarding Career

kirsty3Kirsty Gillmore is a London-based sound designer, sound engineer, voice demo producer, and voice actor. She started working as a sound engineer in 2000 in her home country of New Zealand. She has had a diverse career since that start, working across a variety of fields including music, post-production, broadcasting, theatre, opera, and live sound.

Musical since the age of five Kirsty was always part of the choir and orchestras at school. As she grew up, she played around with recording technology using cassette players and her mum’s record player. One of her favourite toys was a Casio PT-1 Synth and Kirsty credit’s this with an endearing love of vintage synths! After secondary school, she applied to study for two degrees in music and arts at the University of Auckland in New Zealand because it seemed like the logical choice. At this time. Kirsty wasn’t aware that studying sound engineering was an option until the second year of her degrees.

While playing viola in an outdoor production of Macbeth she struck up a conversation with the composer about a gig they had both been to and how it could have been improved by changing the mix. It was the first time she had thought about what went into making that music and sound happen, and it grabbed her. It was around this time that Kirsty decided that she didn’t have the talent to make it as a solo musician and the only other career option that seemed to have a clear path for music graduates was teaching. Kirsty was already teaching and didn’t consider this to be a lifelong career at this stage of her life. Being a sound engineer gave her an entirely different career path and a way of using her musical training without being a musician.

After that conversation in the mid-1990s, Kirsty spoke to a lot of sound techs and sound engineers, all had learned on the job by attaching themselves to particular bands. At the time, it was a pretty closed shop, exclusively male, and Kirsty couldn’t see a way in. She started looking into courses when her composer friend suggested a course that a friend of his had done. In the ’90s in New Zealand, there were only two institutions that offered sound engineering courses, so Kirsty applied to the one with the best reputation, the Music and Audio Institution of New Zealand. She almost had to decide on studying stage management and technical theatre, as she had been involved with theatre all the way through university, but the only technical theatre course in the country was brand new and didn’t cover sound. She spent two years training as a sound engineer, mostly in music production and also synthesis, live sound, post-production, radio sound, electronics, and sequencing. In her second year, Kirsty did a placement at a post-production studio and was offered a trainee role, which then led to a freelance position.

Her first job after graduating from the Music and Audio Institution of New Zealand was as a freelance ADR & Dubbing Engineer at Native Audio in Auckland, New Zealand. One of Kirsty’s jobs as a dubbing engineer was for a series of English-speaking children’s programmes that were dubbed into Maori. At the time in New Zealand, there weren’t many opportunities to work in sound and in 2002 Kirsty made the decision to move to London, UK. She threw herself into the local scene and applied for any audio job she could find and surprised herself by getting a job within the first month as an audio archivist at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).

For the next eight years, Kirsty built her experience working in various roles at the BBC where she learned about sound for speech-based radio, TV and online.  By 2010 her job had somehow become entirely administrative, and she was pretty unhappy, so when the opportunity for a redundancy came along, Kirsty took it and went back into freelance work.

By the end of 2010, Kirsty had set up her company, Sounds Wilde and spent the next year doing various freelance sound jobs in post-production, live sound and theatre before deciding to focus on theatre, voice acting, and voice production. Currently, Kirsty is looking to expand into sound design for games, which works well alongside voice acting work and directing for voice acting. She is also interested in more composition work.

Kirsty is a big believer and advocate of educating yourself both formally and with ongoing training. Her initial formal training gave her a solid understanding of the basic concepts and a common language for sound, but she finds that since she has been working in sound, she has consolidated these concepts, and it’s allowed her to build and expand her knowledge. Kirsty says there are topics she covered in her formal training which she only now really understands. In the past few years, Kirsty has done short courses on mixing for musicals, radio production and various aspects of theatre sound.

Through the early years of Kirsty’s career, she didn’t have much support, in fact, asking for support was actively discouraged in the jobs she held in the first five or so years of her career. Kirsty found that everyone was just expected to get on with their jobs and learn through mistakes. While Kirsty never had a mentor, (though she would have really loved one) there were people whose work she admired like Nigel Godrich, an English record producer, recording engineer and musician best known for his work with Radiohead, Butch Vig, an American musician and record producer, who is the drummer and co-producer of Garbage and also Sylvia Massy who, at the time was the only female producer, mixer and engineer Kirsty knew of. Massy is recognized for her work on Los Angeles’s alternative metal band Tool. When Kirsty started to specialise in post-production, she found she definitely admired the work and career of Leslie Ann Jones.

In her studio, Kirsty has Focal CMS50s as monitors, (which she loves). Kirsty does all her mixing in the box and in doing it this way – she doesn’t need a console.  Her main go-to mic for voice-overs currently is an AKGC414 and for software, she uses ProTools for most of the recording and mixing she does, Ableton is used for looping and Qlab and Ableton are used for the theatre sound design work. For theatre sound, Kirsty prefers DiGiCo desks (with the theatre sound “T” software) and definitely DPA mics!

kirsty2Kirsty has had her share of discrimination and is a prime example of self-belief and determination to come out the other side. Discussing how she has been accepted in a male-dominated field, Kirsty will tell you she has been discriminated against too many times to count.

Thankfully, the more experienced Kirsty became, the discrimination issues seem to be fewer. She is not sure if the climate is changing or if her body of work speaks for itself but says it’s nice not to have to deal with it as frequently.

Looking at what’s ahead for Kirsty seems pretty exciting. In her studio, Kirsty is looking to invest in more mics. She is interested in what Advanced Audio can offer as alternatives to the Neumann U47 and U87. She is also looking at replacing her soundcard soon and is hoping to trial a Focusrite Claret with Thunderbolt, and the equivalent from Apogee as well.

Hopefully, there will be more international opportunities. After years of working in London Kirsty is looking forward to working at least a few months next year in her home country of New Zealand both as a sound designer and sound design tutor. She would also like to expand into game sound design and develop a composition portfolio, as well as taking on more voice-over directing opportunities.

Kirsty’s message is about being consistent, persistent, and open to opportunities.  She says “It’s great to have your heart set on a particular career in sound but don’t be put off if that doesn’t pan out at first. Once you know the fundamentals of sound, you can apply them to lots of different career paths as long as you’re willing to learn and take the time to meet people and build relationships. Technical skills are obviously imperative, but it’s your people skills that will get you the job. You’ve got to be prepared to hustle and find the opportunities; the jobs won’t come to you. Don’t be afraid to sell yourself, be proud of your achievements and confident in your skills while being open to learning from others”.

By Toni Venditti

 

Theatre Sound Heroes: Overview of the role of a Production Engineer

 

There’s an unsung hero in the world of theatre sound: the production engineer (PE).

As shows get bigger, sound systems become ever-more complex. Someone on your team has to make it all work together, and that person is the production engineer.

Put simply, the production engineer “works with the sound designer to physically and logistically realise the entire sound system from the microphones to the speakers and the kilometres of cable in-between” (Gareth Fry, Theatre Sound: Who Does What?, Lighting and Sound International, April 2015).

Every designer will approach a show from a unique perspective. Some designers focus on the creative aspect; others have a more practical hands-on approach. Most designers will have a definite idea of the speakers and other equipment they want to use and where. The PE makes this happen to the best of their ability and also suggests modifications to make it reliable, effective and adaptable enough to handle every quirky requirement that may come up during tech.

As with sound designers, PEs have different specialties, so it’s important to choose one that suits your show and the way you work as a sound designer. If networking is a crucial element of your show, it won’t make sense to hire a PE who is a master rigger but less knowledgeable when it comes to media networking technology.

Ideally, the PE should get involved with a show at the same time as the sound designer so that the sound design process can be as open as possible with all the creative team. Discussions with the production manager about the budget and integration of the speakers (and associated cabling) within a set are of particular importance.  Involving the PE early on in the process can also help pre-empt tricky situations down the line, for example, when a speaker position doesn’t work for the lighting designer.

The first job for a PE after initial discussions with the sound designer is to look at the size of the venue or space where the show will be staged. They’ll consider what the show needs, what the sound designer wants, how much it will cost, and build a system spec from this. As well as evaluating potential speaker positions, the PE also has to factor in whether the venue can physically support and accommodate the system. Where will racks and radio worlds be stationed? Is there enough power available where it’s needed? Where can cable runs go? Is the proscenium arch stable enough to support the hangs – an important consideration when you’re dealing with theatres that can be 100+ years old, as is quite common in the UK.

Once a system spec has been drawn up, it goes to the production manager to tender out to hire companies.

Having solid technical sound know-how is an indispensable part of a PE’s job. Just as important is their ability to manage relationships with three key stakeholders: the sound designer, the hire company, and the manufacturer(s).

The ideal relationship between a sound designer and PE is two-way. The sound designer needs to communicate their requirements so that the PE understands the show from the creative aspect as well as from a technical perspective. This way they can make informed decisions about the system without involving the sound designer at every stage. Is imaging or coverage more important for the show, for example? Does the design need to allow for high SPL, or is it more important for the speakers to be discretely integrated into the set? The better the PE understands the show, the more trust the sound designer will have in their ability to realise the design with the hire company.

The relationship between the hire company and the PE is important, as a lot of what the PE does is dictated by how the hire company works. Production engineers will, therefore, prefer to work with hire companies they know. Often a single hire company won’t be able to offer the exact system spec, in which case the spec will be redrawn and hire companies will suggest alternatives. It’s a balancing act: the PE needs to include all sound (and related AV and stage) elements of the show within the spec, and they also want to work within the resources of the hire company.Kirsty-Gillmore-Aug2016-pic2

At this point, a PE may want to involve different manufacturers to find alternative solutions for aspects of the design outside of the resources of the hire company. Keeping clear lines of communication with manufacturers is important. They can offer product-specific support as well as solutions to problems, based on their in-depth knowledge of their products. A PE may like to involve a particular manufacturer in the system spec to help them create a kit list before it’s sent to hire companies.

Of course, everything revolves around the budget. One of the central roles of the PE is to make practical decisions given the resources they have at their disposal. They may need to negotiate a compromise with the sound designer, convincing the sound designer of an effective alternative approach.

Once the spec is approved, the next step is for the PE to build the kit: stage racks, fly racks, multis, looms, the Deputy Stage Manager (DSM) post,  radio worlds and more. As well as realising the agreed spec, the PE must allow for changes that will invariably happen during the technical rehearsals, e.g. extra runs in the multicore for additional speakers. Then there’s evaluation, testing, and installation in the space, which may take days or even weeks for a large show. Followed by more testing, modifications, expansions and problem solving during the tech and dress rehearsals and previews, and finally, sign off when the show is up and running.

As you may have gathered, a great production engineer is worth their weight in gold. So if you’re a current or aspiring production engineer, let me know! I may have a job for you in the future.

 

 

Losing your Footing as a Freelancer and Getting it Back

Three years ago, something happened to me that could happen to any freelancer: I woke up one morning to an email from a production company terminating my freelance employment with them. In one click I lost a gig that brought in over half my monthly income at the time. Cue significant worry and mild panic!

The company who employed me assured me that it was nothing to do with the quality of my work, there was suddenly just not enough work to go around. I had been hired as a freelancer when the company was experiencing growth, but as that growth had unexpectedly slowed down to a trickle, my services were surplus to requirements.

It’s hardly an uncommon story in today’s economic climate, especially in the arts. Venues close every week, events stall due to lack of funds; production companies decide it will be cheaper to do certain jobs in-house instead of hiring freelancers. Losing income, especially from a regular gig, can send even the most level-headed freelancer or small business owner into a slump. However, throwing a pity party isn’t going to make the situation easier to manage. As hard as it feels, in my experience what will get you through the tough times is a plan of action. Three years on, I’ve had many more uncertain periods of employment, and each time I’ve been better equipped to bounce back.

Vent offline

We all know moaning about our lot on social media makes us look unprofessional, but it’s so much harder to resist doing it when it seems life has dumped us in it. Resist, resist, resist! Get someone to hide all internet-capable devices if necessary. You can get the sympathy you deserve from your significant other, friends or family. Unless you’re part of a high-powered family firm, you can afford to sound desperate, whiny and disheartened to your nearest and dearest  – but you definitely can’t afford social-media-savvy potential employers to see you that way.

Accept the situation and turn it to your advantage

It sucks but constantly wondering “why me?” isn’t going to change it. It’s happened, now it’s time to move onwards and upwards. If your contract ended for any reason other than your incompetence, a thank you email is a great way to show your appreciation for the company and your employer. You can also use it as an opportunity to offer your services for future work and to ask your employer to recommend you to other clients.

Acknowledge the lessons learned

If you haven’t had a clear answer why your services are no longer required, draft a polite email to your employer and ask them. Take the time to consider all the feedback you receive, positive and negative. It’s a great learning tool and can highlight areas for improvement that you haven’t considered.

Think about what you could have done that might have changed your current situation. Could a written contract have helped avoid this situation? Should you have been clearer about your hours of work, availability, turnaround times, etc.? Something I learned was not to be so quick to consider this job as “regular” income after only a few months. I’ve since taken steps to be better prepared for similar situations by establishing multiple revenue sources, rather than trusting it would come from the same source month after month.

Retrace your steps

How did you get that work in the first place? You must have done something right to get your foot in the door, and it may be worth repeating the same steps.

Go back to your application or cover letter and highlight what you think may have made you stand out to that employer. Revisit the CV, demo or portfolio sample you sent them – did you tailor it to them, or was it more a sample of your strongest work? Re-read any correspondence you had with them before, during, after the job – is there anything about your application, work, or business practices that they single out? If you got the job through personal recommendations, consider why your contact would have recommended you – or better yet, ask them!

Embrace the opportunity

If the work you lost was a large ongoing project or regular work, chances are you’ll have some holes in your schedule. Sure, a portion of that time will be taken up with finding work to replace the work you’ve lost, but you might well find you still have a bit of spare time.

Take the opportunity to work on those projects you’ve put to one side while you concentrated on “real work”. If you’ve put in the time and effort into your business, the work will return, but until then, why not use the time productively and tick off some of those tasks you’ve been saving for a slow period? Updating accounts, revamping your website, polishing and learning new skills, catching up with colleagues, making sure your portfolio is up to date, getting out and experiencing inspirational gigs and shows, all of which can get lost and forgotten in the process of day-to-day money-making. Now’s your chance to catch up.

I remember that in the weeks following losing my major gig three years ago, I became very thankful for the extra time it gave me. I reassessed my priorities, make progress on projects, caught up on articles that I’d been meaning to read, and you know, had a break.

Losing work can be scary, but it doesn’t have to be the end of the world. In fact, it may even increase your chances of being employed in the long run.

A Brief History of Theatre Sound Consoles with Autograph Sound

Last Monday the Europe Chapter of Soundgirls.org had the opportunity to learn about theatre sound from one of the top names in the business: Autograph Sound.

Autograph has been at the forefront of theatre sound in the UK, and internationally, since the early 1970s. Before this time, theatres dictated the sound of every show. Their sound equipment wasn’t designed specifically for theatre use, and as there was no consistency in the sound systems between theatres, one show could sound very different in different theatres.

In the late 1960s, the music industry started to hand over production of their live shows to other companies. Around the same time, Andrew Bruce, who was Head of Sound at the Royal Opera House in London, noticed a need for theatre shows to sound the same in each venue – for each show to have a sonic “signature.” As Peppe Mallozzi, Sales Engineer for Autograph explained, this idea formed the company’s name: once a signature becomes recognised, it becomes an autograph.

Autograph Sound Recording was founded in London, U.K. in 1972 by Andrew Bruce. Theatre sound technology of the time centred on fixed input consoles, like the Trident Fleximix, a live sound console that was used for the production of A Chorus Line in London, 1976. But the requirements for musical theatre sound differ from sound for live music shows. In a very general sense, where the driving factor for music shows is often volume, the primary consideration for theatre sound is clarity, of dialogue as well as songs.

Manufacturers caught on and started producing consoles to accommodate the new specific requirements of theatre sound. Theatre sound took a step closer to achieving the clarity that its engineers desired with consoles like the Midas TR, used for Cats in 1981. This console had an output matrix, which allowed you to split a signal to different speakers to achieve all-important high-frequency coverage, crucial for hearing dialogue and singing with absolute clarity.

By the 1980s, shows were getting bigger and designers needed more inputs, outputs, and more flexibility. In 1982 Autograph commissioned a console from British company Cadac for Little Shop of Horrors at the Comedy Theatre (now the Harold Pinter Theatre), London.

From this first console, christened “The Coffin” for its shape, Cadac’s analogue console have remained in use in theatres up until the present day – Wicked, at the Apollo Theatre in London, will be the last big show to use an analogue Cadac console.

The next step for Autograph was to develop consoles with Cadac for use with any show. This lead to the A-type, used for Les Miserables in London in 1985, which was succeeded by the J-type and E-type. These consoles included automation, using an external computer to send cues to trigger the central VCA section of a console, with VCAs and programmable control groups becoming standard. Early automation was the start of something that became important for theatre sound: being able to operate a show from a central area on a console instead of running up and down a lot of channels.

As shows became bigger, other areas of automation and being able to save settings for individual scenes became crucial, as operators found they struggled to adjust settings manually for expanding numbers of performers. Bruce and his colleagues were also under pressure from producers to find a smaller alternative for the large analogue consoles that took up valuable seat space.

In the early 1990s, Bruce was approached by Soundcraft, a console manufacturer who was exploring the development of a fully assignable digital console for theatre sound. Bruce wanted a console that could digitally save EQ settings, scene snapshots and had the option to save volume levels (or not). Their collaboration led to the Soundcraft Broadway, the first digital theatre sound console.

The Soundcraft Broadway could control analogue input and output racks and be installed for the 1996 production of  Martin Guerre at the Prince Edward theatre in London but never used. Continual bugs and repeated failures with the networking technology of the time meant it couldn’t handle the requirements of the show, and a J-type Cadac replaced it. Soundcraft abandoned its digital theatre console project soon after.

Back at Cadac, analogue consoles were still being produced with digital automation. However, there was another company with an eye on the digital console market: Soundtracs, producer of analogue consoles for studio and live sound since the 1980s. In 2002 the decision was made to launch a new brand focussed on digital consoles for live events. The new company, DiGiCo, and a new digital console, the D5 Live, were launched almost immediately.

James Gordon, the founder of DiGiCo, had already spotted the potential need in the theatre sound market and approached Andrew Bruce directly to develop theatre sound-specific software for the new DiGiCo console. Three months and a lot of research and development later, they launched the D5T: a digital DiGiCo D5 console with “T” (theatre) software, specifically designed to meet the needs of large-scale musical theatre shows. As computer automation control changed the game for theatre sound engineers twenty years earlier, theatre-specific software like T-software took it to a whole new level.

Anyone who has worked on a major West End or Broadway musical knows how complex the sound can get. Thirty-plus performers, all with radio mics, who need to be heard with perfect clarity solely or in duos, trios or choruses that change with every scene. Speaking one minute, singing the next, and wearing a hat (which completely changes the sound of a mic) one minute after that! Every line must be crystal clear for every audience member, no matter where the actors are on stage. And that’s all before you get the musicians involved.

It’s a big ask for the designer to make sure the balance of every one of hundreds of cues is perfectly calibrated. Let alone for the sound operator to set levels, EQ and FX for all actors in one scene, then change it all again with a moment’s notice for a new scene, with a new set of performers.

Theatre-sound-specific hardware and software like the DiGiCo consoles with T software were developed to meet these challenges. They allow for controlled and accurate line-by-line mixing, where each mic is only live when lines are sung or spoken, by pulling groups of channels into the central VCA section. Control of the channels is placed right under the operator’s hands, saving them from to running up and down a long console riding faders for individual channels

They also allow an operator or designer to save settings for individual channels in individual scenes (or even multiple “snapshots” in a single scene) and recall them in an instant. And going one crucial step further – to save different versions of the same channel, with varying settings (“aliases” in DiGiCo terminology), to accommodate understudies playing the same roles, and hats!

As Peppe says, “no one waits for sound.” When a director suddenly decides to jump from the big chorus dance number in Act 1 to the intimate duet between the leads in Act 3, Scene 2, or they suddenly want the lead actor to wear the hat they wore in the very first scene, they don’t want to wait for the sound operator.

Back in the 1980s and even the 1990s with the ability to save only a limited number of settings, jumping between scenes and changes to positions or costume would have meant a break for the company as the sound operator reset everything manually. Now, it’s a matter of a few clicks. What used to take weeks of technical rehearsals can be conquered in a few days.

Many thanks to Peppe at Autograph Sound for putting on a great day for our European Chapter members. We look forward to the next one!

 

X