The Role of the Specialists - The Sound Designer Part 1
© Marilyn Cameron
Carefully designed artistic sound, integrated into your production will contribute wonderfully towards enabling the realisation of the overall effectiveness desired for the performance.
Often, in Community Theatre, this important aspect of theatre arts is overlooked or thought of as something only to be considered at production time and as an aspect of low priority. This is an unfortunate perspective for any Community Theatre to take because sound plays a huge part in drama and movement workshops, outwith performance times.
The equipment required for sound requirements in your activities should be included in you list of important purchases from the time you set up your group, for it enhances the artistic experience of your workshops, your performers, your designers, your production as a whole, and your audience.
There are also going to be members of your theatre company who are interested in sound and they deserve the chance to develp their skills as much as any actor, dancer or singer, and in turn, actors, dancers and singers, deserve the best quality sound that you can product. You may need to hire equipment that is beyond your budget, but sound equipment can also be bought a little at a time and added to and is worth considering when you make your funding raising plans.
Sound establishes the mood and style of the play and helps tell the story through music, abstract noises or special effects. These can help establish the proper atmosphere for each scene.
Realistic sounds such as rainfall, thunder, ringing doorbells, gunshots and gale force wind noises, add to the mood of the play.
Sound can be live or recorded. Recorded sounds are often used to indicate distant or offstage actions such as a crowd outside or an approaching car. Some noises, such as a buzzing bee can be created on an electronic keyboard.
Often, today, microphones are used on stage to increase or reinforce sound intensity. The Sound Engineer or his Technicians may wire microphones to certain areas of the stage or performers may wear hidden microphones that have transmitters to the amplifiers - radio microphones. There are different types of microphones, and we will explore details of some of them in the next part of our article.
Now that we've explored the important benefits of sound, in Part 2 we will look at how the Sound Engineer prepares for performance and what his role is.
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